Chris Craft's Articles

Bullshit.  Far too much of this hour was spent with Morris screwing up on the job and having people figure out that he’s resumed drinking.  It’s not clear whether he’s actually missing stuff or not, but Nadia’s nose (not a crazy big nose here or anything, she’s of Mexican descent and playing an Arab, not sure what the nose-norm is, but her nose is fine by me) is sniffing out a problem here.  Chloe defends Morris, and Buchanan keeps him on the job due to an indignant tirade by Morris after he shows up late to a briefing, but Nadia still thinks he’s screwing up.  Morris gets confronted in the shitcan by Chloe and swears he’s only had a couple of beers (this seems an odd defense to a charge of drinking at work), and promptly dumps out the last couple of shots from the 375 he bought earlier.

The whole Morris storyline is bullshit.  First of all, it’s out of whack with the overriding themes of 24.  24's big thing is “working for CTU will dick up your personal life”.   Erin Driscoll couldn’t pay attention to her daughter, so she killed herself.  Almeida was a frickin’ disaster.  Jack had to fake his death and became a heroin addict, not conducive to stable personal relationships, so I hear.  But this whole thing about Morris drinking a lot doesn’t cut it.  Morris has always been a drunk, it’s not some terrorism-related bender.  On the upside, it’s finally an accurate stereotype, especially if he’s Australian.  Props to you, Fox, you insensitive bastards.  As Mitch Hedberg said, alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only disease you can get yelled at for having. 

Back at Palmer’s crib, the milquetoast conspiracy takes action.  Chad Lowe talks big game to Lennox and works the hitman, kind of an Ethan Rom type, into the bunker, which apparently has shit security. Guy probably could have got in with a big thing of balloons.  Anyway, Rom’s main job appears to be to demean Lennox and to fashion a bomb out of a mixture of Russian dressing and Frank’s Red Hot (a flavor explosion?) and hand it off to Chad for the detonation.  This is just dumb.  Rom must be mixing up Chad with his actually capable and murderous brother Rob, who totally 5-iron killed a chick in “Bad Influence” with a quasi-robotic indifference, among other offenses.  All Chad has ever accomplished is getting dumped by a chick who got an Oscar for playing a dude or something.  Anyway, I’m wrong, Chad quibbles but eventually sacks up and pulls the trigger, and the condiment bomb goes off.  Fortunately, I think, the bomb only kills Al-Assad, who warns Palmer and everyone else in time for them to at least duck. Palmer’s hurt, but I don’t think he’s hurt or dead that bad.       

The other storyline is Jack hanging out with Charles Logan, who has grown a beard and is now under house arrest.  Instead of a lo-jack, the feds apparently are forcing him to grow facial hair and dress like a lumberjack.  He’s basically Al Gore, except without gaining 200 pounds and giving a shit about the environment.  Logan has supposedly found Jesus or something and is the only way Jack will ever get information out of the Russian consulate guy, the only guy who knows where Gredenko is. Palmer, who I’m pretty sure could kick anyone’s ass in the show except Jack, is ok with it.

Curiously absent is anyone calling bullshit on Jack’s dad.  Couldn’t Dad have called Logan in the first place in an effort to find and kill Gredenko and maybe avoided a fucking nuclear weapon going off in LA?  Gosh, also, maybe then you wouldn’t have to kill (or half-ass try to kill) most of your family, right?  Dick. 

Continuity error: Morris is wearing a Vegas-club shirt that is pretty much the same shirt he was wearing before he got tortured by Fayed.  Sensitive to all the crap he was getting for basically handing the terrorists the keys to four nukes, Morris would definitely have kept the shirt on that got drilled through when Fayed drilled a hole in his fucking shoulder blade, so if anyone gave him any shit, he’d just be able to turn around and say all what.

Random C-list celebrity whom Mandy could have slept with and/or killed by now: Jim Breuer, who would have gained another thirty pounds or so.
 
Have you thought of about five thousand ways Lennox, assuming he's not some kind of idiot, could have foiled this half-baked plot to kill Wayne Palmer?  One will suffice.  Drop us a line at craftinvegas@gmail.com!

This was pretty much a waste of an episode, truth be told.  The main storyline is Jack hanging out with Marilyn and trying to save Josh (his son, for sure) and find his dad.  Milo holds off Jack’s dad’s goons long enough for Jack to show up and kill everyone but the guy with the beard, who helps them find out where dad is.  Dad is at a hotel chatting with Lil’ Kim, at one point creepily putting a hand on his knee.  I was pretty much expecting him to ask the kid if he liked movies about gladiators.  Jack puts an unlikely bulletproof flak-tanktop on Marilyn and rolls up to the room.  There are some tender moments between Jack and Rena, which probably would have been a lot more tender if Jack hadn’t spent the last two years having his junk electrocuted by the Chinese.  Anyway, Jack gets to the room, only to find that Dad has taken the kid to a roof next door.  Jack goes over and tries to sacrifice himself to save the kid, but Dad pusses out and doesn’t kill Jack.  Instead, he vanishes and leaves Jack a phone number to call: the number of (wait for it!) ex-president Logan!  And he’s got his ex-politician Al Gore beard going!  Whatever.  I regret knowing about wikipedia, which ruined the half-ass surprise.

Meanwhile, back at the brunker, Lennox sort of looks like he’s going along with the assassination of Palmer, but he’s not, and apparently not slick enough to get past Chad Lowe, who whips him brusquely with a flashlight or something.  A gayer fight has never taken place on American television. Looks like the plot is to put an exploding Blackberry in a podium and blow up Palmer at his press conference.  The only other news here is that the guy playing Al-Assad kind of looks like the guy that played John Connor in Terminator 3.

The last story going on is that Morris drinks a lot.  He’s mopey because he caved after getting holes drilled in him by Fayed and will probably be responsible for millions of deaths, and also he feels like a fag compared to Milo, who has shaved his chest and gotten shot by Dad’s goons.  To compensate, Morris skips out of work and shotguns an ass-pocket of whiskey at a Circle K. Back on the job, everyone finds out he’s an alcoholic, something which likely would have been a good thing to know before they gave him the highest security clearance possible ever. 

Nadia’s minute: Looks like they’re only giving Marisol Nichols about a minute per hour to work it, but she filled it up pretty well this time.  Basically, Nadia rocked the skirt over to Morris to call out the no macho, changing her hairstyle to a possibly Buchanan-tossed muss in the process.  Buchanan wisely avoided contact with Nadia, obviously trying to cool himself off in preparation for the arrival of utterly spiceless and certainly bone-dry Karen Fucking Hayes. 

Continuity error: While Morris was at the Circle K, he did not drop five bucks on the California lottery.  It is impossible to hit a Circle K in California without doing so.

Ethnic stereotype fuckup: Gredenko, a Russian over the age of eight, has not been shown drinking bottom-shelf vodka out of a coffee mug.  No.

Today is the longest day in Morris O’Brian’s life.  And he used to be married to Chloe, so there ya go. 

The early afternoon opens with traffic conditions remaining relatively calm in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, and McCarthy and Nikki Ziering trying to take Morris to Fayed.  They are rapidly found and followed by Jack in a helicopter, but they lose him under the I-10 interchange.  McCarthy feels pretty smart about this, plus the fact that he gets Fayed to agree to pay him $7 million, but feels a lot stupider when Nikki blows his haggis all over the driver’s-side door with his own gun. 

However, Nikki, for her part, actually is stupider than McCarthy.  Her plan is to drop off Morris and for Fayed to just let her go.  Nikki, come on, everyone who works for Fayed winds up exploded or shot.  When Morris refuses to arm the nukes, he gets the shit whacked out of him for awhile, and eventually caves when Fayed drills through his fucking shoulder blade with a drill and shoots Nikki dead.  While CTU closes in, Morris makes a device for Fayed to arm the nukes. 

In the final analysis, is Morris an idiot, a puss, or both?  I’m not bashing him for giving in after getting a hole drilled in him, that ain’t right.  But lookit, they need you to arm nuclear weapons, they’re obviously not going to kill you.  So where’s the escape attempt when all you have to deal with is Nikki Z?  24 wouldn’t show the part where Nikki uncuffs Morris from the little coat hanger thing, takes him out of the car, and forces him into Fayed’s shitty apartment building.  Why not?  Because he could have just run down the street screaming and saved millions of lives.  You suck, Morris. Chloe was right to bitch-slap you.

Luckily, Jack does not suck. After craftily pulling a fire alarm and shooting everyone in Fayed’s apartment but Morris in the face with a shotgun, he finds out that Fayed is gone and a nuclear weapon is about to go off in the breakfast nook.  Chloe tells him how to disarm it, so that’s two bombs down, three to go.  Be on the lookout for a bald, pissed-off looking Greek guy with three suitcases, most likely talking on a cell-phone.
               
Still not quite sure what Buchanan’s job is.  He basically answers the phone, asks Jack and Chloe to take care of everything, and hangs out with Nadia.  It’s pretty cush.

Back at the executive basement, fascism suffered a setback over lunch when President Palmer refused to arrest all the Muslims, which further alienates an obviously drunk Powers Boothe, still in full-on Sin City mode as a rather brusque and surly Vice President.  The move also leaves Frodo Hitler and Bilbo Mussolini to kvetch about how everything has gone to shit.  Chad Lowe, taking orders from another white guy in a suit, tries to get Lennox on board with killing Palmer, and they eventually meet in an electrical closet or something.   I assume that if they got caught, their cover would have been that they were doin’ it.  Anyway, Lennox plays along, but he’s obviously tape-recording the whole thing.  So who knows.  Meanwhile, Palmer is trying to get Al-Assad to tell all the Muslims to turn in Fayed, and Al-Assad tells Palmer to be paranoid of everyone. 

At CTU, the trail goes cold until Marilyn tells Jack about Graham meeting with some Russians, which is huge because Milo found out that “Boris the Blade” Gredenko, the Russian general who brought the nukes over, is crazy and more involved than previously believed.   I like Marilyn because she’s kept in shape, she’s actually quite helpful, and she isn’t particularly bothered by the idea of Jack murdering her husband.  Graham had quite a slide down the drain, no?  Last season he was telling the President over the phone to blow his brains out, and he was going to do it.  Today, he’s just another dork who gets pissed on all day by his wife, eventually dying by lethal injection in his own game room.  Whatever.  Anyway, Marilyn is off to help Jack find Boris’ house, but Jack’s dad diverts her to a different house by threatening to kill Lil’ Kim.  When Jack and his team bust into the house, it explodes, killing most of the crew (not Jack).  Milo and Marilyn flee the scene, pursued by Jack’s dad’s goons.  Props to Milo for some kickass driving.

Proposed Kimeo: When Nikki Ziering shoots McCarthy, a stray shot could have ricocheted, smashing a goldfish bowl being carried by a surprised Kim, who may or may not have been wearing board shorts.

Most awesome moment we didn’t get to see: When Jack’s 85-year old, 7-foot dad checked into an LA motel with Marilyn’s twelve-year old son, we did not get to see the horrified, creeped-out expressions on the faces of everyone in the hotel reception area.

The worst day ever for modern black America continues from noon to 1:00. President Palmer is starting to regret his decision to fill his staff with hobbit nazis, Curtis Manning remains dead, and Matrix guy has had his ass beat down by a group of Arabs with internet access. But the main story is Jack’s war against his own jacked-up family. Let’s recap, shall we?

The hour kicks off with Graham exhorting his hired goofs to kill Jack and to “make sure everything goes according to plan”, but he has apparently forgotten that Jack isn’t an invalid. The stupid master plan was to ask Jack to jump into a pit that would at some later time be filled with concrete. Jack, not being retarded, foils the plan and kicks ass. Dad helps somewhat, but then suspiciously kills a goon that Jack had subdued. Jack then locks down Graham at his house, busts in, and starts interrogating Graham. Graham takes a shitload of pain intravenously, and gives up that he was behind the deaths of David Palmer, Almeida, and Dessler. Jack’s about to kill him for this, but the soothing 90-year old face of his 7-foot dad somehow stays his hand.  Later, before Graham can get taken to CTU, Jack’s dad kisses Graham’s weird bald head and kills him with an overdose of pain stuff. So Jack’s dad is behind all this shit, maybe, whatever.

Regardless, Graham basically was too stupid to live. I can’t believe this guy pulled off the assassination of David Palmer. Dog, chief, if you’re in the game with big money, why you fuckin’ it up with budget tactics? Think it, if you had unlimited funds, would you assign the death of Jack “American James Bond” Bauer to two trigger-shy flunkies? No, because you’re not an idiot. I realize that Cro-Cop might not be available as a bodyguard due to his parliamentary duties, but anyone savvy would do better than this. Whatever, goodbye, Nerdy McLamesauce (name stolen from Big Fig, thank you).

Meanwhile, in the worst storyline of the show, Matrix guy gets a Nelly-bandaid on his face and regrets selling out the Muslim gang at Fullerton Community College detention center. The ham-fisted lesson is going to be that if you put all the Muslims in jail for whatever, even the non-crazy Muslims will hate you worse. Hate backfires! Take that, every voting American with an IQ under 40!

On the flip, McCarthy reveals that his ho’s name is Rita, and that he has found a guy to fix Fayed’s nukes. Shit is, they are going to use Morris O’ Brian, Chloe’s ex, unwilling though he may be. I’m legally required here to give props to Jenko, who inexplicably called this during the season opener. Here’s how the props went in live action:

      Me: You’re like a Korean Einstein with tits.
       Jenko: You’re welcome.

The preview indicated that Jack will kill people next week. Again, this cannot be called a spoiler. The only thing that's "spoiled" is our chances of seeing Kim rockin' board shorts and getting Kimnapped. 

Best upper-middle class euphemism/metaphor for boning: When Jack tells Graham’s wife Marylin that Graham is involved in all kinds of terrorist shit, Marylin says, “He hasn’t confided in me in years.” Is that what the kids are calling it these days? Insert your own Graham/ skeet-skeet-skeet joke here.

This week’s “NO SHIT” moment: In a call to Jack, Buchanan breaks out his analysis of the situation as follows: “As it stands, McCarthy is our only link to Fayed. We need to find Fayed before he can arm the nukes.” Thus, Jack knows that he needs to find McCarthy and/or Fayed. You could handle Buchanan’s job.

Question of the Week: President Palmer says that he was “elected” in the first few minutes of the show. However, he was not Vice President or anything like that as of 20 months ago. Is this mathematically/constitutionally possible? Maybe!  Give your explanation below or at craftinvegas@gmail.com!