24: So... now what?

Previously, on 24…

2-hour night of 24 tonight, so this could be a long post. Are they giving us a 2-hour episode to fit in more killing? I sure hope so!

President Hassan continues to be the best new character when he clonks Jack Bauer on the head and turns himself in to the fake terrorists. He just took a page out of the “Jack Bauer: How to be a Hero” handbook, making the decision to sacrifice himself to prevent the bomb from going off. The lone remaining fake terrorist takes Hassan to Tarin, and the bomb is stopped with 0007 seconds left. Nice job stealing a scene out of the James Bond movie Goldfinger!


Just to update everyone, going into tonight, there were 10 hours left of the final season of 24. In the first half hour of this episode, the bomb was recovered. So the next 9.5 hours are going to be about recovering Hassan.

Bauer eventually is able to follow so he steals a car to go after Hassan. He calls President Taylor and lets her know about the traitors, General Beckman and Secretary of State Weiss. Taylor has Beckman and Weiss arrested, giving Weiss a bitch slap in the process. Ethan is still alive from the heart attack and is taken to the hospital. President Taylor says, “Get back to work soon, that’s an order!” She is the WORST 24 president.

Jack also calls CTU and they are able to track Tarin and Hassan. Agent Ortiz is on the phone with Jack, helping set up an ambush with snipers and machine guns. Dana sneaks away and calls Tarin to help him avoid the ambush. Tarin drives into a parking garage and drops Hassan off with some other bad guys. How did they get there so fast if Tarin only learned about the ambush two seconds ago? This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Jack chases Tarin and he drives his car off of the parking garage roof. Tarin’s dead. Jack calls Renee and tells her that there’s got to be a mole at CTU. They figure out that it’s Dana and she makes a break for it, shooting and killing two security guards. Where did Dana get a gun? Do all computer analysts at CTU get guns? This is all very confusing. Agent Ortiz ends up being the one chasing Dana down, shooting out her tires before she can escape. He throws her out of the car and slams her up against a wall and demands to know who the hell she is. Dana replies, “I want to talk to Jack Bauer.”

Jack shows up and asks why she wanted to speak to him. “Because you’re the only one without your head up your ass.” Wow, what an accurate statement. Dana wants immunity and money. Jack says if Hassan isn’t saved, she’ll get nothing. Meanwhile, Hassan is delivered to Johan. They plan to have him confess to his crimes before they kill him on the Internet. Hassan does not agree, and Johan’s men begin the torture. 24 may be ending, but Hassan is prime for a new action-packed spinoff.

Dana gets the immunity from President Taylor and gives up the building where Johan is hiding, but she doesn’t know what apartment they’re in. Ortiz hears about the immunity and is furious. I hope he kills Dana. Johan soon decides that he can’t break Hassan with torture and decides to start up the Internet feed to talk about Hassan’s crimes himself. CTU and President Taylor watch the feed, and Chloe noticed that the shadows on the wall indicate that they are on the East side, 4th floor. Jack and his team are ready to storm in and save Hassan.

Ortiz snipes one of the lookouts on the roof, and a random agent snipes the other rooftop lookout. Jack enters the building and takes out a hostile on the fourth floor. One agent uses an Internet detector to determine what apartment they’re in. It looks like an expensive piece of CTU gear, but really it accomplishes the same thing as this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/hats-ties/bd12/

They find the right apartment and Renee shoots one terrorist while Jack shoots three more. You can hear Johan’s speech the whole time in the background. All hostiles are down and Jack turns to find Hassan. His throat has been slashed. The Internet feed had been pre-recorded, and Jack was too late. I guess there won’t be a spinoff for Hassan after all.

On one hand, I had predicted that 24 would keep Hassan alive and that the series would end with him signing the peace agreement. Kudos to them for not doing something completely predictable. On the other hand, F*** you, 24! Hassan was the only good new character, and now we’ll have 8 hours of President Taylor worrying about politics. Jack will track down Johan eventually, but who cares? The bomb is secured and Hassan is dead. Any agent could track him down and arrest him or kill him. It doesn’t matter. The bad guys won. What motivation is there for Jack to stay on the case? Give Dana the death penalty and Jack can take Crazy Renee to California and concentrate on babysitting his granddaughter. There really isn’t anything else to do. What will they do, have another terrorist shows up out of nowhere with another random bomb for Jack to stop? Ugh. I think the 24 writers have their heads up their asses.

Death Tally:
Bad guys: 4 (Dana shot 2 guards, Tarin killed himself, Johan killed Hassan)
Jack: 4 terrorists
Renee, Ortiz, random agent: 1 terrorist each

Jack is now up to 22 kills, Ortiz up to 6, and Renee up to 4. Bad guys are up to 47. 82 deaths on the season and our projected death total goes up to 123. It will go down over the next 8 hours, and I will likely be grumpy until Dana is finally killed.