24 Season 8 Episode 13, 4:00-5:00AM – review

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Terrorists really need to remember the rocket launchers.  The distinct lack of explosives leaves the bad guys at a disadvantage during the episode-long standoff with Jack Bauer, Cole Ortiz, Rookie CTU Guy, and Expendable SWAT Officer.  Action movie rules state that the Rookie CTU Guy must die in Jack’s arms, and we have seen this coming from a long way off.  The suspense wasn’t if he would die, it was how and when would die, thus the fate of Rookie CTU Guy turns into an erstwhile Final Destination wait-and-see guessing game.  At CTU Hastings is trying to put CTU back together again after the disastrous EMP bomb crippled electronics at HQ.  Underground CTU is flooding from dead pumps, without electricity, and  every desk and CTU drone has a cute electric lamp.  The bureaucratic wrangling between Hastings and the NSA support team makes up a round third of the episode; it is hard to understand why every government agent is always trying to pull rank and is never, ever, helpful.  Dana Walsh and the troublesome Parole Officer continue to bother the viewer with persistent annoyance, until a reveal at the end of the episode puts business as usual to a rest.

Jack and company have followed the rogue Kamistan  intelligence officers to a (surprise) nondescript port industrial area.  With CTU down, Jack must enter unaware of the trap that awaits him.  With cell phones and radio jammed, they drive in, but Jack’s acute sense of danger saves them, putting the pedal to the metal screaming backwards while automatic fire tears the SUV to pieces.  Luckily the vehicle is bulletproof, but Jack backs into a corner of shipping containers where the back and forth gunfight begins.  While this gun play isn’t innovative, it keeps your attention surprisingly well, and time seems to pass a little slower from the (gasp) tension the writers have generated.  The key play that Jack pulls off is a bit of a Spartan Phalanx, pulling the bulletproof plating from the SUV, and walking in between the two sheets to get to a land line.  The plan works well until Expendable SWAT Officer loses his cool and bolts.  He is shot again and again, used as sniper bait, which pulls in the Rookie CTU Guy to his untimely death.  Rookie manages to pool his comrade back, but is shot and mortally wounded, and to add insult to injury, the SWAT Guy dies too.  Jack lies to the Rookie that he saved the man’s life, and that he did real good, and what else could you want to make up for your pointless life and death?

At CTU Chloe calls Renee at Jack’s place (she’s finally back after a multi-episode absence) and sends her looking for him.  Jack apparently lives at the Hotel Chelsea, and has good taste, because his furniture is really nice.  Good thing, since he really wants to impress Renee for a little after-crisis sex.  Renee looks real stern as she chambers a round in her pistol and looks blankly into the distance.  Chloe then fights with the NSA asshole about some maneuver of tapping into the “trunk line” to get CTU back up and running.  A trunk line may be completely made up, but she risks electrocution to make it work.  She forces her hand at gunpoint, is caught, and then gets Hastings’ backing to try things her way.  The writers are spoon-feeding the characters’ separate motivations to the viewers with a pretty heavy hand.  Chloe is looking fresh and beautiful after a rather frumpy season, and she succeeds in getting CTU back online.  Dana tries to foil her, which seems like a bitch move, but turns out to be a terrorist move in the end.

Jack’s gunfight gets more and more desperate, and ends on a suicide run by Jack to cover Ortiz.  Jack shoots the shit out of black-clad Middle Eastern men with his usual aplomb, but even pulling his pistol in desperation doesn’t save him from being shot in the chest twice with rifle fire.  The NYPD should get some CTU body armor, as Jack survives rifle fire, but similarly protected NYPD SWAT officers were killed instantly by small caliber pistol rounds just a few episodes ago.  Renee shows up and kills Jack’s assailants with bad-ass cool and collected calm.  Renee is really selling her dangerous role; she has ice cold water running through her veins.  This gunfight was done competently, and Jack’s endgame fall looked pretty good.  24 should ditch the same old industrial sets for some aesthetic/dynamic sets that deliver some color and personality.  Still, I prefer an episode-long gunfight to pretty much anything else I’ve seen this season.

At CTU, the Parole Officer pushes Dana Walsh too far.  Walsh uses all of her lying charm to try and get rid of him, but you can’t fool a country boy like him with country tricks.  Dana kills his ass, strangling him to death, and dumping his body in an unlikely man-sized vent-cover in a holding room.  This body will be discovered at a critical point later this season revealing her true nature.  Dana picks up the phone (provided by NSA) to call (Ortiz? NO!) the terrorist leader, loading his goons and the fuel rods in a taxi, the only New York icon the show wants to use.  Dana is a terrorist traitor, helping them from the inside!  This is a rote 24 plot move, but it raises the question of why Dana didn’t just kill her ex immediately instead of dealing with his shit?  Dana is a cruel and ruthless country girl, and she is going to do what it takes, and have an emotional standoff with Ortiz in the process.  Not too bad, 24, especially considering the performance so far.  Next week, President Hassan is demanded as ransom for the safety of Manhattan, and Jack has to deliver him to the bad guys.  President Taylor will be back pursing her lips in concern, and Dana will be acting more and more suspicious.

9 Comments

1. 

   Russe;;

   March 23, 2010 at 10:45 am

   Wow! What a surprise, CTU allowed to be bombed & infiltrated by baddies. Can’t the producers of this show come up with something new? And how about Renee…? Jack has a running gunfight with the terrorists and everybody is standing around ankle deep in spent bullet casings and nary a bad guy dead. Renee shows up and 4 bullets later has 3 of the badies dead. What gives? I have been a 24 booster since the beginning and have never missed an episode, but I’m beginning to think I should start grazing elsewhere for my terrorist-ass-kicking fix.

   Reply
2. 

   Azino

   March 23, 2010 at 11:15 am

   The thing is, Russe;;, there’s no where else to graze.

   Reply
3. 

   Andy

   March 23, 2010 at 12:24 pm

   I’m amazed at how bad this season is. CTU is like a friggin brothel, anyone can drop by to say hello! WTF! Then there’s the whole crisis thing, which is obviously a national security issue and everyone and their brother is told about it. Dana Walsh… why even comment? I don’t know, but I will. Crappy actress that can’t stop the tight mouth/mysterious-mean-look-thing for one second, she totally over-acts the whole time. Going from top notch, highly trained IT specialist to wussy ex-girlfriend of badass ex-boyfriend/ex-con, to cold blooded murderer, to terrorist… WTF!
   This season is as crappy as it gets. I hate the president, she’s clueless and would never have been elected POTUS. I love president Hassan hairdo (awesome!), I would bang his daughter and then decapitate her and I would do the first lady on the plane back to wherever they came out from.
   I hate 24, but I’ll be watching next week.

   Reply
4. 

   Joe

   March 24, 2010 at 1:10 am

   Why the spoilers at the end? I mean did you really have to give away the major plot points of the next episode in a review of the current one?

   Reply
5. 

   Roy

   March 24, 2010 at 6:29 pm

   At least the hayseed parole officer from Arkansas finally got his as killed. He deserved it for sticking his nose in places it didn’t belong. I knew this was going to happen at some point but 24 still made it a surprise. Strangling the guy should have raised the red flag that Dana was not who she seemed to be. I was very surprised when Dana phoned the terrorists when I expected she was calling Cole. However, again I should have known that Cole never could have looked the other way on murdering someone that wasn’t physically threatening him or Dana.

   Reply
6. 

   David

   March 25, 2010 at 10:40 am

   I have been a big 24 fan from the start, but this episode 13 of season 8 is by far the worst one I ever saw! Almost everything that happens in this episode is unconvincing and unrealistic. The gunfight reminded me of an action scene from The A-team. Did Dana Walsh swap their ammunition with blanks? CTU has night vision goggles and visors for their automatic rifles, but still all of the thousands of bullets miss their targets, while the terrorists are clearly in sight. Renee walks in with a small hand gun and a few seconds later all terrorists are dead… Chloe’s actions are also very unrealistic. First with the gun and then by attaching some clips to network cables to get CTU’s systems up and running after an EMP attack. Dana stuffs the parole officer in a very practical life size space in the wall (made for this purpose), leaving behind the evidence folder that he has been carrying around with him. It’s on the chair (41:49), you can clearly see her walking out of the room without it (42:10). Dana’s character had already been very unconvincing up to this point, and now the writers decided she is working for the terrorists. Oh, she is the mole, how original, haven’t we seen this before on 24? Can’t they think of something else? An amazingly disappointing and annoying episode.

   Reply
7. 

   Cass

   March 27, 2010 at 9:15 pm

   Ok Andy you must have never seen a single episode of Battlestar Galactica because if there is one thing that Katee Sackhoff can do it’s acting. Just because she got chosen to portray one of 24′s worst characters with some pretty dismal lines to boot, doesn’t make her a bad actress.

   Reply
8. 

   Why

   March 29, 2010 at 7:49 am

   Fun review, until the end!!! WHY TELL US WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WEEK, WITH NO SPOILER WARNINGS!!! Just because you don’t like this season, it doesn’t mean you have to go and ruin it for everyone else. What was the point of that, I don’t understand…

   Reply
9. 

   Eli

   March 29, 2010 at 8:59 am

   It isn’t a spoiler if they show it in the preview of next week’s episode

   Reply