24 Review/Recap

Day Five, 11 p.m - Midnight
Jack Bauer: Is there anything he can't do? He is a field doctor, he avoids military patrols! He can do it all! He can break into a house in the middle of the night, kidnap a man, break into a bank vault and escape from the forces of evil without breaking a sweat. I'm telling you--there is nothing this man can't do. I seriously think season five will end with Jack taking out Logan and setting himself up to be president when the voters of L.A. all vote him into power. Really at this point, the only thing Jack hasn't done is make jualine fries, but you never know when that might come in handy in the next seven hours.

Wayne: How are we going to tempt Logan out of his secure Presidential compound?

Martha: He sure does love jualine fries.

Jack: I'm on it!

Once again, this is one of those episodes that if you stop and think about it, the little details start to unravel. For example, how did Evelyn find time during the day to record the conversation between Henderson and Logan, leave the Presidential estate with it and open a safety deposit box to put the digital recording in? I mean, sure if she'd had the evidence on her person or hidden somewhere at the compound than Logan could easily get hold of it or Henderson could drop by for pizza and to pick it up. Then we'd have Jack and company chasing Henderson around, trying to retrieve the evidence (something we've seen before many times). Also, it brings in to question that whole timeline of things for setting the events of this day in motion--when did Logan hatch this plot? When did he contact and recruit Henderson? And just how long has he known that Jack is alive? And really, if he knew Jack was alive all this time and wanted to frame him for the murder of Palmer, why would he not have the back-up plan of turnig him over to the Chinese? That more than anything else that Logan has--fake evidence of Jack's involvement in the murder of Plamer aside--is the best bargaining chip and weapon that Logan could have. And they had a perfect way to work that in. Instead of Logan wandering about, blustering that he's got new evidence and everyone should just shup up and accept it because, by jimminy, he's president, if he says--"oh yeah, the Chinese called and they want Bauer. For the safety and security of America, I've got to let them take him in", then you'd get a lot fewer questions of whether or not this order is right, wrong or indifferent.

But that didn't happen. Namely because I think the writing staff has forgotten about this little plot thread. I guess I should just give it up and let it go as well.

Anyway, moving on.

So, Jack's new partner of the moment is Wayne Palmer. Has Wayne checked the track record of Jack's previous partners becuase it's not so good. Anyone want to bet that Wayne is either killed or seriously wounded by day's end?

Meanwhile, over at CTU no one trusts anyone esle. It's like an entire office full of clones of the Cigarette Smoking Man. Seriously, if CTU put half as much effort into finding terrorists as they did into policing themselves, the world would be a much safer place. Chloe is keeping an eye on things for Audrey and the head honchos are watching Chloe and Audrey because they want to get to Jack. And my goodness, my head is starting to hurt as I try to figure out who is on what side of this equation. And the thing is--with 24 it could change from episode to episode. Such as we saw here. Last week, the people from Homeland Security were hell-bent on the "we are sure right in closing y'all down" and then this week they're questioning if they did the right thing. I could see that maybe after a few hours, but 10 minutes later? Again, I sometimes think that 24 forgets that only a few minutes have passed between episodes and not a huge chunk of time like 20 to 30 minutes.

As we often see in the pick-up to the cliffhangers. How they got from last week with Jack and company outside the vehicle with a wounded Evelyn to being inside the car, tearing down the streets of L.A. in two minutes is beyond me. I'm just saying--if I'm shot in the leg like Evelyn was, I'd not be moving so quickly no matter how much Jack yelled at me.

Now, last week I said that it was going to take a lot of work by the episode this week to convince me that having Logan as the chief mastermind of this horrible plot was a good idea. I can't honestly say I'm there yet. The thing is I'm not sure why Logan came up with this elaborate plan or what his motivation was. Yes, he spouted off that he wanted to make America more secure for the future but what led to this mis-guided patriotism of his? What motivated him other than having him as the mastermind behind the entire plot would be a really, really cool cliffhanger? And who approached who is this elaborate plot--was it Logan approaching Henderson or the other way around? Early in the day, we had Logan worried about establishing a legacy for his time in office and this treaty being the best way to do it. So did he create this series of events to help cement his legacy? Is he really so driven and blinded by his own ambition and desire to be part of history that he'd willingly kill thousands of his fellow Americans? And could he get away with setting all this up, considering how closely monitored the President of the United States is? (Not from a Big Brother standpoint, but from the security issues). Did no one go--gee, Logan sure is spending a lot of time off alone and talking on his cell phone....I wonder if he's up to something? And how does the President of the United States find time to get a cell phone that no one else knows about?

So many questions and I bet we only get answers to about one of them. Again, I may be thinking too much, but these seem to me to be pretty obvious questions.

Though I will admit, his scene with Martha was pretty good. Boy is Martha going to be pissed when she finds out she nearly had make-up sex with a man who orchestrated the entire day for his own gain. I am telling you, next season could be all about her righteous fury at Charles for his part in this plot and that would make for one hell of an interesting day.