24

Here is where we stand:

The federal government finally brought Jack Bauer back from China, where he spent two brutal years having makeup artists apply fake scars to his back. It goes without saying that the government brought him back for the sole purpose of getting him killed by terrorists, who are setting off bombs in various cities, including (surprise!) Los Angeles. Jack escaped by ripping out a terrorist's throat with his teeth (meaning, Jack's teeth) (at least we assume those were Jack's teeth) and immediately -- without even stopping to floss -- Jack set out to inform the federal government that it was, once again, after the wrong terrorist leader. This is understandable: in 24 World, the United States has a higher population of terrorist leaders than of squirrels. Jack contacted the president (in 24 World, it is easier to contact the president than to order a pizza) but of course the president, played by Gary Payton of your World Champion Miami Heat, did not believe him, because of the mandatory Bad Advice Advisor, played by the weenie from Ally McBeal and Numb3rs. The president now sort of believes Jack, but it May Be Too Late. Also Jack is afraid he might be going soft, because at one point he gave up on torturing a terrorist after stabbing him only once. (!) Also there is a subplot involving President Payton's sister, but it is very boring so far and mainly consists of dialogue from the Wooden Dialogue Generator, which was so active in the first two hours that many of the characters were bleeding from lip splinters. There is a more-promising subplot involving Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, who plays a terrorist stabbed in the thigh by a coffee table. (When coffee tables are outlawed, only terrorists will have coffee tables.)

We are pleased to report that Chloe is still Chloe, and Audrey is nowhere to be seen. We had one perimeter last night, but are hoping for more. Except for ripping out one guy's throat with his teeth and stabbing another guy just the one time and kicking a suicide bomber off a moving subway train and clubbing another guy with a log (possibly dialogue material) Jack has been pretty subdued, but, hey, it's early.

Carry on, people. You too, Steve.

UPDATE: OK, I am at the hotel. Either they're showing a commercial here, or Jack is selling home-theater systems.

UPDATE: OK, does the president ever talk to anybody besides these two people?

UPDATE: Hey, was that a weasel look from Tom? IS TOM THE MOLE? Don't mind me. I just got here.

UPDATE: Jack is going in!

UPDATE: They shot KUMAR!!! Didn't they see his movie, for godsakes?

UPDATE: Seriously, I don't get the feeling I missed anything here. Is that stupid?

UPDATE: It's kind of sad that the guy from "Back to the Future" is making commercials, if you ask me.

UPDATE: NO! NOT CURTIS! I am seriously starting to worry about Chloe.

UPDATE: Apparently, Jack, DOES eat.

UPDATE: OK, let's look on the bright side. This is probably covered by various homeowner insurance policies.

UPDATE: Wow. Big of the president to offer help!

UPDATE: OK, I think we can agree that this is a big step up from the cannister plot.

UPDATE: Hey! Looks like the weird bald scotch-drinking guy is back next week!

Comments

[zmom]

Yes, Cookie, that is the official Chloe Scowl.

I can't remember seeing her smile, but I'd think having 2 computer geek guys fighting over her would do it for most computer geek girls.

[mm]

the computer/router gremlins turned off my computer suddenly around 9:45 last night, so I missed the end and the Steve summary.

*Snork* @ everyone and
*snork* waaaaaaaay back there at Dundee's klaatu mirada nikto

[Siouxie]

In case some people missed this, here's a repeat of my post from last night.

SPECIAL PBA ANNOUNCEMENT:

For anyone that gets hijacked by the bot - here's a "proxy server" for you to be able to post.

http://www.proxy.bz/

THANK YOU - that is all.

Blog Mom

[Robin]

Do you think the guy whose cell phone Jack stole will discover it's missing and cut off service? How will Jack call the president then?

[Ann]

Typepad has blocked me since 9pm the first night...posting at work hopefully they fixed my problem now.

Snork at Dundee WAAAAAAAAAY up there "klaatu barada nikto"

Thanks as always to the fabulous Steve.

Aaaanddd...24 writers, do not think one nuke going off is going to make up for 4 hours of utter nonviolence.

[Blader]

You must've been taking a leak when they went over that part.

The owner of the cell phone parked his car, along with the cell phone in plain sight as bait, in an abandoned warehouse/surreptitious torture chamber district hoping to see it stolen and taken for a joy ride, so he could collect the insurance.

[Steve (The 24 guy)]

ArticAl,

Ack! That's a pretty big mistake for me to have made, I would say. I watched that a couple of times and finally decided that Curtis had just been shot in the shoulder, so that's the way I wrote it.

I, of course, was wrong.... Curtis is indeed setting up perimeters in the afterlife..... He'll be missed.

So, who's going to drive Jack around now?

[ArcticAl]

Steve I am amazed that you capture the amount of detail that you do. I nod my head when I read your summaries but I wouldn't remember half of it if you hadn't mentioned it.

My personal vote for who will drive Jack around is Morris. Milo and Chloe will get fed up with him and boot him out of the office. What Jack needs is a funny chauffeur to drive him around from disaster to disaster.

[Johnnie]

Hey, have we seen a vice president this season?!

[Otis Wildflower]

I don't think Chloe _can_ smile.. I remember when she was on _Mr. Show_, and IIRC her best approximation of a smile resembled rictus, or at the very least the face one makes during a particularly difficult bowel movement.

BTW, Where's Aaron?

[ArcticAl]

I just checked the Fox site and the stuff on Jack's hands is supposed to be scarring from burns and not the some kind of skin fungus. Maybe he was playing with the kung-fu master while he was in China who said "Grasshopper, take this lighted match from my hand."

[Blader]

He should get has hand checked soon, because it looks gangrenous from my couch. Especially if it was from an alligator bite.

Although I'm not as concerned about 3rd noses growing due to radiation injury, what with only 20 hr left in the day, I've seen gangrene set in and kill well within that period of time.

[Suzy Q]

*tosses a gumball to Gabriel*

I was me who pegged Dr. Romano - I've been watching ER for years. Somehow, I just can't stop.

I saw Chloe smile in the movie "Little Miss Sunshine." Other than that, nope! But that's the way we like her.

Re: The nuclear explosion last night. Don't they all realize that everyone who can see it is within the radius of death? Maybe that's why Jack's hand looked like it was shredding lst night; pre-emptive radiation exposure.

[Blader]

Please.

As Jack says over and again, "There isn't enough time!"

I just don't foresee a concentrated play on the post-apocalyptic angle, especially from a limited yield nuclear device. Best case scenario, they'll be able to dramatize 3rd degree radiation burns, blindness, and perhaps some of those wispy shadow burns.

The sort of thing you're talking about, chronic radiation poisoning,that works so well in 'Alas Babylon' doesn't translate to the exigencies that constrain '24'.

There isn't enough time.

[Todd McLaren]

Big Beef of The Night: Genius Terrorist escapes from prison bus/airport and magically makes it "across town" to Secret Terrorist Warehouse Central in EIGHT MINUTES??!!

You can't drive a BLOCK in LA in 8 minutes!

(yes, yes, hold your calls; I know this is 24 World...)

[Blader]

Todd, one word: helicopters

[Jeff Meyerson]

Another: magic.

I was wondering about the VP too. And where's Mike Novick, who seems to have no problem jumping from party to party and President to President.

We know Mrs. President Manilow will be back this year but is she having a hot affair with Aaron is what I want to know.

[Siouxie]

Another: fairy dust

[Stephen]

I find the time line interesting. So it has been a couple years since then end of the events of last season, right? Yet Chloe's guys, Milo and Otis, are dog-fighting like last season ended yesterday. Did I miss something?

[slyeyes]

Thanks, Amazing Steve! I, too, thought Curtis was shot in the shoulder and thought he died rather quickly from a shoulder wound. What a time for Jack to NOT go for the thigh. And *snork* at "That terrorist Jack ate a few hours ago must not have agreed with him because Jack throws up"

Didn't Chloe have a fling with someone last year? Someone who ended up being a bad guy?

While I did recognize Dr. Romano from ER, I pegged him as Bluetooth guy. Others, including Siouxie, made the ER reference. I liked the comment someone made last year about him and his gang being the "Bluetooth Man Group."

Oh, and LOVED the name twentyforgery gave the President: President Halfstate.

[Jeff Meyerson]

Yes, Chloe had a thing with a short curly headed guy who was a mole last year. Can't remember his name.

And the weaselly guy who tattled in order to get a promotion to Homeland Security in D.C. was another effete snobby type, but not (as someone suggested) The Biscuit. His name was Miles Papazian. He was played by Stephen Spinella.

[Jeff Meyerson]

Found it!

Spenser Wolff, played by Jonah Lotan, was the guy Chloe slept with.

[Val]

OK, I think I have it all figured out. At the end of the season, Jack is going to wake up in a Chinese prison - the whole season has just been a case of bad kung pao chicken.

And since my kid moved to Valencia, y'all have had a freak winter freeze and set off a nuclear bomb. Thanks a lot!

[Jeff Meyerson]

Good one, Val = recycled Dallas!

[Mike Antonucci]

By the way, it's about 45 miles from Palmdale (where the prison supposedly is) to Valencia, where Genius Terrorist Guy sets off a nuclear bomb with a toggle switch. He must have hijacked a 737 because he traveled at 337.5 miles per hour.

[Val]

The posters over on the Entertainment Weekly page are making a big deal over the fact that Curtis was shot on MLK day. Those people obviously take this show waaaayy too seriously.

[M H]

So if the idiot Mr Everydayman just called the pd and had them rescue everydayman-boy and Mrs Everydayman and didn't deliver the bomb trigger to generic Isalimic Bad Guy Terrorist Leader #12,389 like a normal person should have, hmmmmmmm.....well then the season would be over I guess...

[Val]

If everybody on the show acted like "normal" people, it would only be called "12".

[Johnnie Blackwell]

Nah, MH, the season wouldn't have been over. I'm not sure how they plan to detonate bombs 2-4, but they still would've been out there, right? They need to make "24" interactive somehow, allowing the viewers to dictate what direction the story takes by a majority vote. I suspect that the product would not be quite as intriguing or compelling since we'd probably make every idiot victim a hero instead, and every Kim Bauer-type, for instance, would end up being a self-sufficient, Krav Maga weilding, femaie McGuyver if it were left up to us.

[RazzCat]

Don't know if anyone else has seen this, but I don't recall having seen it (damn that Alzheimers!). It's a 10-minute clip of one of Jack's experiences in the Chinese prison, several months after the Shanghai.

Found it at Brightcove.

Jeez, no wonder he's so bummed, after falling for that old faux-rescue trick...

[EB]

I've discovered the plot for next week's episode!
You'll notice that whenever Fayed makes a call, he has some little doo-hicky attached to his phone. I think it's supposed to be a scrambler. If you closely, however, it's REALLY THIS! This is a Motorola device to give Bluetooth functionality to non-Bluetooth phones. So I think Fayed is finally going to realize that he looks like an idiot with a Bluetooth adapter and still using the actual phone to talk. So he's going to go to BluetoothMan (known to Dave as the bald scotch-drinking guy) for advice and BAM!

[RazzCat]

Discovered more about what Jack was doing while he was away for those 20 months. Somehow, he managed to get away to make this ad.

[FunKneeBone06]

Did anyone notice that Kumar slipped out and did a stint on Law & Order as a serial killer/rapist in Brooklyn? Too many White Castle Slyders must make you antisocial big-time...

[The Jack Sack]

Well, here I am, waiting at CTU for Jack to hurry up and take me out into the field. Yes, I am Jack Bauer's trusty manpurse- The Jack Sack. I see Curtis took it in the throat. That's not good. Jack's running out of drinking buddies. I hear Ricky Schroeder is coming on board to help make things better in a male-bonding way. And what about Charles and Martha Logan? Conjugal visits, anyone? Yeah. Well thanks for a great post, Dave. I'll be back. Come check me out if you want to waste ten minutes of your life!

[Cecil]

>EB posted:

>I've discovered the plot for next week's episode!
You'll notice that whenever Fayed makes a call, he has some little doo-hicky attached to his phone. I think it's supposed to be a scrambler. If you closely, however, it's REALLY THIS! This is a Motorola device to give Bluetooth functionality to non-Bluetooth phones.

The funniest thing about this is, if you follow the link, under the small picture is a link labeled "See larger image". If you push it, you see an image that's 50% *smaller* than the one on the original page - but in *much larger* window.

[molly]

OH CHLOE!
Has anybody noticed there's something DIFFERENT about Chloe? Not the hair color. Something else. Her scowl. She scowled at everything in years past. Her stupid co-workers. Edgar's death. Jack's imprisonment. That was her trademark -- that condescending, petulant, judgmental scowl. But now, it's gone. She doesn't scowl anymore because she can't. She got BOTOXED! Look at her brow -- smooth and frozen. She's turned into a mask-faced Hollywood glamourpuss. And the world is a sadder place. I don't know if I can watch anymore.

[Mike Wilkerson - 2GuysTalking]

Crikey! That's a long listing of comments! I'd encourage everyone to check out the 60+ second synopsis of each of the episodes online at:

Greetings everyone!

The reviews of Episodes 1-4 are all available at our new online archive and I wanted to send you a note to pass along to your membership! Check out:

http://www.2guystalking.com/24/

Quick, funny but not realy as entertaining as Dave's Blog!

Go Jack!!