So I’m a little late in watching last week’s 24. But on the good news front, I have 2 hours of 24 to watch tonight! As usual, I’m liveblogging my reaction to the episode as I watch, even though this episode is, in fact, a week old.
Marcos is hard at work attempting to manually rewire his suicide bomb vest.
Jack gets a briefing on the situation from various CTU agents. Jack talks to CTU Director hastings and informs him Marcos might be able to arm his vest. Chloe briefs him on Marcos’s background. Conveniently, his mother lives close by.
Hastings notices on the security camera that Dana and Cole are arriving back at CTU. Probably wishes he had a girlfriend working there he could slip out in the middle of the night with, knowing that everyone would notice, but no one would say anything.
Dana and Cole in the elevator. They work on keeping their stories consistent. Dana is hysterical, while Cole is the model of serenity. Surprise! Hastings meets them when the door opens and rips them a new public a-hole. Dana gets a field demotion, and is now reporting to Chloe. Friction ahead?
Samir gets an update from the terrorists spying on the CTU agents surrounding Marcos’s hidey-hole. Will there be mayhem? Hopefully.
2:13 Samir arrives… somewhere. A warehouse, with the rods.
Dana and Chloe are monitoring for radiation in Manhattan. Chloe uses her superior people skills and tries to make nice. Arlo apologizes to Dana for informing Hastings about “the other guy” she was meeting in the parking lot. Oh Arlo, you romantic.
Jack approaches the chamber where Marcos is holed up and makes contact. He tries to reason with Marcos. “Don’t think you can take the moral high ground with me!” He makes the 2nd connection on rewiring the vest, only 2 more to go.
2:23 Our star-crossed lovers, Kayla and Tarin, are engaging in pillow talk in the hotel room. Tarin tells Kayla it might take a year to 18 months for the State Department to grant them political asylum. When her mother calls again trying to reach her, Kayla lets the call go to voicemail.
Mrs. Hassan scolds President Hassan about having Tarin arrested. He says even his own brother betrayed him, why not Tarin? After fighting, he promises to find and protect Kayla.
Knocking on Marcos’s mother’s door. It’s Cole, and he threatens to break down the door. She lets him in, and he notices her packing. She tells him about the phone call an hour earlier begging her to get out of the city. Cole takes her away to go see him. Will there be a teary reunion?
2:33 Dana comes to see Director Hastings. She informs him Cole is on the way with Marcos’s mother. Hastings is curt to the point of, well, he’s always rude so I guess there’s nothing new there. He takes the time to gently coach her on her unwise choices over the past few hours, and Dana gratefully accepts his feedback.
Dana gets a phone call on the way out of Hastings’s office. It turns out to be Kevin Wade’s parole officer. He found Dana through the phone records of a hotel room that Kevin stayed in, and doesn’t believe Dana’s suggestion that it must have been a misdial since her number showed up multiple times and the calls lasted several minutes. Dana panics, and drops the old “I’m with CTU and we’re in the middle of a crisis here.” Mr. Parole Officer is unimpressed and suggests a call to her supervisor might help get her the time she needs to deal with this important matter. He wants to meet with her immediately. Predictably, Dana caves. I guess when you work at CTU and waterboard four terrorists before breakfast you forget there are things like court orders and due process, and that as a private citizen Dana doesn’t owe a Little Rock parole officer the time of day without a warrant.
Marcos arms the third circuit on the vest. One more to go. Jack arrives to assess the situation. The CTu bomb squad guys are trying to drill through the vault with their super secret stealth drills. Cole arrives with Marcos’s mommy.
Dana calls Cole in a panic. She knows he caught her in a lie and doesn’t know what to do. Cole reminds her she’s good at lying and to just do what comes natural.
cut back to Jack and mom. He’s giving her the lowdown, and tells her they just need Marcos to open the door. Jack promises to do everything he can to help Marcos.
Mom approaches the vault with Jack. The terrorist spies see this and relay the info to Samir. Mom’s doing a pretty good job of talking him down. Chloe notices that there’s a tap on the video feed and informs Hastings that someone’s watching what’s going on. Chloe lets Jack know and Jack orders the video feed to be cut. Mom starts to lose the argument with Marcos and Cole pulls her out of the room. Jack ends the video feed. Marcos connects the final circuit, but Jack tells Marcos that his mother will be taken to the dirty bomb blast site if he blows up his vest. He describes the pain she’ll endure due to the radiation poisoning. Sucker falls for it and comes out.
The spies see that Marcos is out of the chamber and Samir orders them to transmit the remote failsafe to blow the vest. Jack starts to disarm the vest, but the failsafe is triggered, starting a 60 second countdown. Marcos panics and cries out for his mommy. Jack furiously interrogates Marcos. He doesn’t know the target, but he says that Kayla’s loverboy Tarin is involved in the plot. Really? I thought that was just a pointless, time-wasting plotline. At least that’s going somewhere. Running out of time, Jack pushes Marcos back into the chamber where the bomb explodes, blowing Jack back through the air. Bah. No measly suicide bomb vest is going to stop Jack. There’s pieces of Marcos all over the inside of the door though.
2:53 Jack’s on the phone with President Hassan to tell him about the plot. Hassan seems unsurprised that Tarin is involved. Mrs. Hassan finally gets Kayla on the phone when Tarin gets in the shower. She tells Kayla what’s really going on, and gets Kayla to give up their location. Tarin comes out and tells her they’re going to go request their asylum. Kayla’s a good liar, but Tarin knows something’s going on.
Jack and Cole saddle up to go arrest Tarin. Tick, Tick, Tick…
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Really, now. Jack Bauer blows you is it?
This episode of 24, simply blows.