24 Recap: No Biggie...Unsecured Nuclear Materials

Welcome to Sweeps! 24 finally stepped up this week to give us some action as we move on from what has been a boring couple of weeks. This was the episode where we answered the question: who will crack first—Denny, Freckles or Hassan. Not that any of them are with it. Denny is cracking because she has been given Really. Bad. Sideplot. (different from Worst. Sideplot. Ever. which we can discuss later. This doesn’t even rank on the list, though). Hassan is cracking because he’s paranoid and thinks someone close to him is trying to kill him (we'll get back to this later because I believe someone close to him did try to kill him). But it was good ole Dark Freckles who came through with the unhinged moment of the week, though I’m not sure it was enough to put this season back on track.

24 works well when someone has someone they would like to strangle but can’t. Jack had Nina Myers. Charles Logan had Martha and then vice versa. David Palmer had Sherry. Wayne Palmer had Season 6. Every big character had a grudge, but the exciting part was that this person would keep on appearing in their lives in a time they needed them most. So they couldn’t kill them. But the exciting part of 24 was the tension that created and you knew at any point that they could realize that they had nothing more to give and put a few bullets into them. This is what happened with Jack and Nina in Season 3 as he said “I don’t think you have anything left to give me” and shot her on the CTU floor very near to where Nina had done the same to Jack’s wife. It was powerful and exciting and understandable.

I just don’t get the sense that 24 has the same patience for character development anymore. Sure they have certain people who appeared in multiple seasons (Buchanan, Tony, Kim, Curtis, Edgar, etc.) but the fact is that besides Jack and Chloe, we’re developing all new characters every season*. The emotional pull you felt seeing Edgar double over and die in front of us in CTU as gasses filled up the room was because he had been around for almost two seasons and we had a reason to be upset when he died. When we realized Mandy, the one who had blown up the plane in the pilot and had injured President Palmer at the end of Season 2 was back and was asking for a pardon, we had to weigh the idea of letting this woman go free for all the harm she had caused.

*Side Note: During the Super Bowl commercials, there was a spot where Dr. Pierre Chang from LOST appears as a scientist for about 10 seconds (if that). There was also a commercial where Ziya is a producer who keeps on changing his mind about squirrels on bicycles and he’s basically the entire commercial. Don’t remember Ziya? He’s the thumbless guy floating in the river. That was only a few episodes ago. But my point is that I guarantee any fan of both shows only recognized the guy from LOST.

I think we’re getting some of the same familiarity coming back with Freckles and President Taylor but I’m not sure it’s the same emotions. Be honest: in the last episode were you more upset about Vladimir beating the crap out of Freckles because of our emotional attachment to Renee or was it because we saw a man brutally hitting a woman. Think about that for a few seconds while we get some more details about the episode.
Let’s just jump right in to the Jack plot which was far-and-away the best part of this episode. Jack enters Vlad’s pad and hands over his gun. Not sure why. But a gunless Jack had to witness Vlad playing with his Freckles emotions—playing a little grab-ass, bossing her around, and just trying to get a rise out of Jack. Jack decides to take Vlad’s drink and calm down for a bit*. But Vladamir’s calls aren’t going to well. In fact, he‘s not finding anyone who has the rods. (Or did he...)

*Side Note: I’m not sure the police would be happy to see Kiefer Sutherland pounding a large shot of vodka on the show considering his recent past. I’m pretty sure this violates some sort of probation.

When Vlad exhausts his entire list, he tells Freckles that it’s over. Freckles wants to him to call again, to try one more time, that she needs this. She also wants him to pull out the Yellow Pages and search in the back under the letter "R" for “Russian’s With Nuclear Rods”. Since advertising in the Yellow Pages is probably just as safe if you’re a criminal these days as talking on the phone with the whole Patriot Act and all. Oh wait, no one’s tapping the phones or monitoring these phone calls. Of course not. The Liberals win again!

Well Freckles gets Vlad a little too worked up, especially when she tells him she had no intention of coming back for him, just the deal, and he slaps her. Then he punches her. And she picks up a knife and stabs him in the eye. And the heart. And probably the gonads. And a few other body parts. Then Jack comes in and she stabs him too. Vladimir’s #2 comes in and it looks like the jig is up but Jack pulls a move from the end of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" and takes the knife out of himself and throws it right into the guy’s throat. That was a knife throw that John Locke would have been proud of. Speaking of LOST's John Locke, Freckles deep dive into Jack’s stomach is nothing more than a flesh wound. The Island must heal Jack too. Jack and Freckles share a nice moment where Jack tells Freckles that “you have me” and they look like they’re about to kiss when…

…more Russians! Maybe I should have named the blog Nyet instead of NYaT. This time Jack decides to really get Freckles out and get captured so CTU can track him (so much for Freckles having Jack). But, oh snap, they went in via the sewer system! Because, of course, they have the sewer system around this guy’s place mapped out. Jack’s off to get into another sticky situation and these lines were uttered “Where is he?” “We don’t know.” Isn’t that the premise of 24?

The other premise of 24? There’s not enough time! And that’s what happens when greedy crooks* try to get too greedy and take too much evidence in Really. Bad. Sideplot. Seriously Denny? Didn’t you learn about lies getting out of hand when you were a child? You have the perfect situation to set this guy up to get busted by the cops. You can even tell the cops that they’re both armed and dangerous and to shoot on sight. Who would know the better? Instead, they have to beat up a cop to get out of their sticky situation and of course are such big rebels that they drink alcohol while driving away from the scene!

*Side Note: I know that Bluetooth is really cheap nowadays, but why does some guy who just got out of jail have a nice headset? The guy can’t even buy a new shirt. But yet he has (AND knows how to work) Bluetooth? On 24 it used to just be sophisticated criminals like Jack’s brother who employed the technology. Now EVERYONE uses it. Even dumb criminals. Maybe they should do a commercial for Bluetooth: so easy, even stupid criminals who haven't seen the light of day in seven years can figure it out.

Hassan’s sideplot* is interesting and boring at the same time. I wish they had left him a little bit more ambiguous for a while to show the pros and cons to his person. But now he’s just become another Fake Islamic Country caricature. Not that I don’t believe this is how guys like that act—I do. But the fact that a few hours ago he was a kind soul trying to end Middle East violence and now he’s a brutal dictator again in five easy steps is sort of quick for me. Now he’s just totally paranoid, thinking people close to him are out to get him [wait, what’s that I hear in my earpiece? Someone close to him tried to kill him? His brother? Oh, right]. The victims of this are some guys wife and children and Tarrin, Hassan's conscientious security guard. Tarrin and Hassan's daughter also seem to be doing the nasty which makes it more controversial when he has her locked up. The best part of this all is that the "Republican Guard" of Fake Islamistan is called "Security Services" which makes me believe Hassan's real problem is that he has rent-a-cops running his nation.

*Side Note: The best line in the Hassan sideplot comes from President Taylor when she tells someone from the UK about the nukes in "strict confidence". Yeah, right. I'm sure he's not going to tell anyone. She might as well have made it her Facebook status message.

The last plot is The Baron who wants his son buried--and he wants it done now. He says to the priest: "You just make it right. Where I end up, I don't care. This boy belongs with the Angels." Of course, he means that after losing Vlad Guerrero, he wants the LA Angels of Anaheim to replace the guy with a Russian-sounding first name with his Russian son. Maybe not. But maybe.

So now that Freckles blew up on Vladamir, what do we have to look forward to? More Jack torturing! Woohoo! How is he going to get out of this one? We don't know. But I'm guessing that's what the next few episodes are going to be about. The problem is that I can't say I'm all that excited. The tick, tick, tick of 24 every Monday night used get my blood racing for an hour, but now I feel like the reason I get up for it each week is more about the nostalgic feelings of what 24 was rather than what 24 is currently. I'm hoping the rest of sweeps changes my feelings about that.

Season grade so far: B-. I was overly ambitious last week bumping it up to a B. There was one scene that I liked in this episode. Otherwise, this season is still pretty blah. I'm holding out hope for the rest of Sweeps, but I'm not going to give it a higher grade until it earns it.

Best line of the week: “No biggie...unsecured nuclear materials” – Arlo The Horndog. Why is it Arlo that seems to be the only one who knows what's up and tells Denny how it is? He's even telling Chloe how it is. If he wasn't such a Human Resources nightmare, he would be a great employee. Well, since 24 doesn't care about sexual harassment, he's a great 24 employee!

Best moment of the week: Jack's knife throw. Jack took a knife out of his stomach and threw it from the floor directly into the throat of a guy on the other side of the room. I don't care how improbable this was or how quick he recovered by putting a bandaid on it because it was amazing. Probably the best moment of the season so far.

Ari's body count: 25 total. 3 more Russians down, two at the hands of Jack, one at the cold, dark hands of Freckles. All three were quality kills as well. Well worth it.

Thouhts? Comments? Feel differently about how the season is going? Let me know below!