24: Adventures in Babysitting

Previously, on 24...

Premiere week continues and the killing spree has slowed to a crawl. Hopefully these first four hours have given us all the setup we need, and Jack can get his groove back. Tonight Hassan was close to being assassinated, but was saved by agent Ortiz. I feel pretty good about my prediction of Hassan surviving the season now. I knew they'd either kill him right away and get into the bigger plot point, or save him right away and get into the bigger plot point. In this case, assassination averted, and Jack must now save the world from nuclear war. Again.

Renee Walker is back from last season, and she's supposedly gone a bit crazy since we've last seen her. Good. As soon as she got of the helicopter I was hopeful for some good torture scenes. She was queasy about Jack's methods last year, and that was annoying, but if she's gone crazy since then maybe she and Jack can double the interrogation fun. Good cop, bad cop routine? I don't think so. I can't wait.

I think the main story with Jack and Renee will be pretty good. We learn that she was an undercover spy looking for the evil Russians known as "Red Square". Ooooh, I hate them already. She's upset with Jack right now for tagging along on her mission, and even calls him her babysitter. Hmmm, I'm noticing a disturbing theme here. Freddy Prinze Jr. saves Hassan, but they've sidelined him back at CTU for the time being. What I dislike greatly is the side story with the engaged CTU lady's secret past. I have no hope for that becoming interesting in any way, and I want her to be killed off pronto.

I like the addition of David Anders as a Russian baddie. He was only in there today for a minute, but I remembered him from Heroes as Takezo Kensei/Adam Monroe. I thought he was pretty good in that, even though I stopped watching Heroes shortly after season 2. I just remember Hiro's line back then we he said, "The hero of Japan is... Gaijin?!" and Kensei was basically just saving Japan to pick up chicks. I'm guessing he'll drop quite a few people in his role as a Russian henchman.

Highlight of the night was Renee chopping off a Russian guy's hand with a grinder. FAN-TASTIC! Looks like Renee's not squeemish anymore! This is more of what I wanted from Renee, but I admit I didn't expect her to just march in and saw off her comrade's hand. That's where the episode concluded, and the Russian guy wasn't dead yet, so looks like we're in for some good ol' interrogation to kick off next week.

Tonight's kill count was pretty low.
Bad guys: 5 (2 in the carbomb, 1 cop knifed by Hassan's bro, cop and wife killed by Davros)
Jack: 1 (Davros)

So that's 3 kills total for Jack, 12 total for the bad guys. Only 3 kills in 4 hours for Jack? 15 kills total to lower our projection to 90 kills for the entire season? TWO BABYSITTING JOBS?? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE???