Chris Craft's Articles

Going into this episode, I was pretty sure that Jack would begin the process of wasting a shitload of Chinese dudes.  Yeah, he’s going to face some difficulties, but these fuckers are going down.  He was going to kill everyone for the two years of torture bullshit anyway, and the Audrey-napping put it over the top, right?  But then again, I also was pretty sure that Mirko Cro-Cop would not get his ass totally kicked by a Brazilian dude on Saturday, so who knows what the fuck is going on at this point.  I’m basically trying to expect the unexpected.  Did 24 deliver?  Yes, just like Chinese food is delivered.  This is not a racial slur, Chinese food actually is delivered regularly.  However, if someone feels like a racial slur is involved here, I would totally go on an apology tour, but instead of hanging with Al Sharpton in Queens, I’d be drinking in Hong Kong with Hsu Chi or something.  I’ll even wear an Imus wig if it will help this happen.  You don’t think I’m serious about this?  Then you don’t know me, foo.

Jack’s whole thing is to go after the Chinese guys and get Audrey back, though I’m quite sure these assholes were going down whether they had her or not.  He’s got it covered, all with a block of C4 to blow the whole joint up, but now that Jack’s “gone rogue”, Doyle is on site to fuck it all up.  Audrey gets out of Cheng’s pimp limo (this limo should have been red with a big commie-sickle symbol on the hood, fuck I’d roll in that wag), Jack basically leaves a suicide-phone message with Bill, and all hell breaks loose.  CTU’s C-Team (the first few fifty teams having been killed, bringing the death toll for the day from 12,000 to 13,000 or so) shoots up a few Chinese, countered by a suspiciously-bearded Chinese guy blowing up a CTU chopper, but Cheng escapes really easily using the three-SUV trick from Playing God, which coincidentally also involved Chinese dudes.  They must have had a bootleg of it in advance.  Anyway, Jack gets arrested by Doyle, Cheng is gone, and Audrey is all kinds of fucked-up brain damaged.  Marylin’s stock is on the up.

Washington remains boring.  Powers bullies Lennox into being his bitch, and a black dude from the Department of Justice is demanding that either Karen Hayes or Bill Buchanan take the fall for having Fayed in custody last year and letting his crazy ass go.  Why is Karen so shocked about this?  If you’re delivering pizzas, for example, and your job includes not having the joint burn the fuck down, and the joint burns down, you’re god damn fired.  The good news is that at least for now, Nadia is in charge of CTU, so hopefully she’ll get back into a skirt and rock that sucka all over the premises.  Anyway, the black dude from DoJ better look out, this show kills more black dudes than the Texas judicial system.

The remainder of the show was spent with Powers Boothe demanding anal from his robotic assistant Lisa.  She’s down, but who cares?  Old-people porn has never sold, it never will.   Even old people don’t want to see old people doin’ it, it might as well be in the Constitution. 

Nadia’s minute: Things are looking up for Nadia, as Bill’s firing has put her in charge.  But the best part of the show was the continuing emasculation of Milo.  As Doyle “investigates” the spot where Jack ditched satellite tracking, he determines from about 10 feet of tracks that Jack is heading north on the 305.  Milo stupidly asks, “How did he know that?”, to which Nadia quips, “Because he figured it out.”  Milo basically should have just slammed his balls in a car door at this point for all the good they’re doing him. Christ, if his renewed efforts to hit on Chloe fall flat (likely), what’s he going to do?  Karen Hayes’ white-raisin ass?  Fuck you, Milo.  Later on, Nadia confirms that Doyle’s conclusions are correct.  She’s basically standing in a puddle at this point.

BONUS MORNING AFTER: DRIVE!  Basically it’s Cannonball Run, but with the guy from Firefly in the Burt Reynolds gig.  The white ho from Hustle & Flow is also in it.  This week, everyone gets/figures out a clue (same thing last week) and drives reckless across Georgia. Then again, since half the south is currently blowing a .18 or better, is this really newsworthy?  Whatever.  It’s actually a pretty cool show, though Mercia Monroe does not appear topless.

Well, unless the Cubans kidnap Jack’s dog or something in the next couple of hours, the rest of the day will be Jack vs. the Chinese.  As we found out last week, the Chinese have Audrey, and they want to trade her straight up for a piece of circuitry from one of the suitcase nukes that would allow the Chinese to screw with Russia by having access to all their military systems (as everyone on the show notes, the Russians would be none too pleased about this).  Chloe tries to help Jack, but gets busted by Morris and has to fess up to Buchanan, who foils Jack’s halfass plan to steal the thing.  Jack plays the trump card of calling Palmer, who owes Jack his ass and gives Jack’s plan – which involves giving the Chinese the component, getting Audrey back, and then killing the Chinese and/or exploding himself along with Cheng Zhi and the thing – the go-ahead.  I don’t care that Audrey has always looked a little like a young John Elway to me, the Chinese just went too far this time.  When Jack finally gives Cheng the hard goodbye, it’s going to make Fayed’s strangulation-by-chain-thing death look like a hug from Jennifer Love Hewitt on Christmas morning by comparison.  And not some bullshit surfboard-leaning-against-the-wall hug either.  I lost track of what I was talking about.  Anyway, Doyle tries to give Jack crap about putting Audrey ahead of national security, but I think you can guess how far he got with that bullshit.  Doyle and some other CTU guys take off with Jack to make the swap/kill the Chinese.

Back in Washington, we get yet another dose of presidential power struggle.  Palmer puts the black back in blackmail, using Lennox’s tape of Powers and his assistant Lisa to force him to resign as Vice President.  After another creepy exchange with Lisa, who apparently hasn’t changed facial expressions since she got controlled by the aliens in “Invasion”, Powers writes up his resignation and probably has a few shots off-camera. 

Of course, before he can hand it over, Palmer holds a press conference to tell everyone to chill, but he fails to keep his pimp hand strong and collapses to the floor from a cerebral hemorrhage.  Palmer is definitely done for the day this time, you don’t walk away from shit like that after a strong cup of coffee.  So now it’s President Boothe, and his first act in office is to screw Jack.  The rescue mission is off, get him back to CTU, etc.  The funniest parts of the show are Buchanan telling his staff what’s up, them responding that Jack’s going to tell him to go to hell, and Buchanan saying, “I know.”  It’s good stuff.

Truth be told, Buchanan is in a weird spot.  He’s been around, so he knows that when you’re head of CTU, you'd better think hard about any decision to stand in Jack’s way.  Fight Jack, give him a bunch of crap, be a dick, etc., and you might wind up getting your head blown off by a dumpster like Chapelle.  Assist Jack and stay on his good side, like Tony Almeida did, and you might get some quality time with Michelle Dessler.  (Ok, sure, Dessler's a bad example given her past with Bill, but you get it.)  Think it through, Bill.

Bill walks the line here like a pro.  Technically following orders by ordering Doyle to bring Jack back, the order to “disarm Jack before he knows what's up” was an absolute joke that would never work under any circumstances whatsoever.  Doyle barely gets off the phone with Buchanan before Jack holds a gun to his face and abandons him by a fence off the side of the highway with no phone.  Jack will be going through with the mission alone, which is probably a better idea anyway.

Nadia’s minute: Not much going on for Nadia this week, but it was pretty funny that when Doyle called in, Milo had to take the call and hand the phone over to Nadia.  This is what you’ve been reduced to, Milo.  You think you had an in with Nadia just because you loaned her your computer password?  Nope, sorry, you’re just the office computer guy now.  When she sees you, she sees Edgar Stiles with a shitty beard, get used to it.
   

Ethnic stereotype update: Having Cheng Zhi take the reins as the main villain is bad news for Jack, primarily because he’s being played by Tzi Ma, who is pretty outspoken in his disapproval of prevailing Asian stereotypes in American television and film.  So, if you’re expecting him to play some sort of dumbshit like Fayed (“Maybe I should have just nuked downtown LA in the first place...”) or Gredenko (“Here’s the plan – first, chop my arm off... I will then bleed to death...”), it ain’t happening.  On the other hand, Tzi Ma’s efforts here are ironic, since his role as a complete asshole who will kidnap and torture people for whatever reason he feels like presents an even worse depiction of Asians than we had before.  Nice going, Ma.  Way to set back your people to the lowest point they’ve been at since Wo Fatt put Jack Lord in a sensory deprivation tank on Hawaii Five-O.

This is the fucking 24 episode we’ve been waiting for!  More ass gets kicked this hour than the whole season so far  (and part of last season) put together.  If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading now.  I’m totally fucking serious, find somebody with DVR or TiVo and do whatever it takes to watch this hour.  I don’t care if you have to have sex you’re going to regret for the rest of your life in order to see it.  Seriously, I don’t. 

The asskicking begins in the bunker, where President Palmer launches a nuke at the generic Muslim nation and coolly waits for them to call and beg to not be incinerated.  When the phone rings, well guess what, the Arabs just arrested General Habib, Fayed’s boss, and have started interrogating him.  Palmer lets them dangle for a moment before aborting the nuke about a minute from impact.  As if Lennox isn’t blown away enough at the balls on this guy, Palmer drops another bomb on him: the nuke wasn’t even armed, it was a bluff.  Face it Lennox, he’s hot cuz he’s fly, you ain’t cuz you not. 

Back in LA, Jack and Doyle interrogate Fayed in a broom closet with the old “bad cop - bad cop” routine, but it’s going nowhere.  Fayed plays pretty tough, taunting Jack with lines like, “Are you having fun yet?”, but Jack actually gets a concerned look out of Fayed when he recommends going back to CTU to break out the pharmaceutical kit and quips, “Now we’re gonna have some fun.”  During transport back to CTU, however, a Brink’s truck comes out of nowhere and knocks the Jackmobile on its side, and Muslims come out firing.  Jack and Doyle try to get Fayed out, and take down a couple of shooters, but both get shot down and Fayed gets rescued, with the Brink’s speeding off into the night... or so it would appear!  The whole thing was a ruse to get Fayed to take them to the nukes, as Jack was pretty sure Fayed would never break.  Jack and Doyle get up and pursue Fayed’s new “friends”, yet another CTU team in disguise.  Icing on the cake is that Nadia displays an ounce of concern for Doyle getting nicked up, which sends Milo into such a bitchy tizzy that he coughs up some of his extra chromosomes.  Basically, we’re being set up for Day 7 with Nadia in charge of CTU and Doyle heading up field ops.  Yes, we all miss Curtis Manning.

Anyway, the problem with CTU’s chicanery here is that Fayed’s evil, not stupid, and he won’t rendezvous with the nukes until he gets (1) a loaded gun (dude, never hand a terrorist a loaded gun, give him the one with the blanks, everyone with a TV knows that) and (2) a phone call from Habib.  Apparently as a result of Palmer’s subtle idea to threaten to kill his family (welcome back, Wayne), Habib calls Fayed and tells him to go to the nukes, and it looks like Fayed is buying it.  However, Nadia, in a rare display of doing something at work besides being hit on, catches that Habib mentioned another guy who’s been dead for a couple years as if he’s alive, and thinks it’s a tipoff.  Jack gets word of this to the team driving Fayed around, but it’s too late.  Fayed kills them all, plus a garbageman, and escapes for real in the trash truck.  Jack, however, caught up with Fayed just in time to hide under the truck and hitch a ride Cape Fear-style.

As Fayed arrives at Allah’s warehouse, the remaining terrorists get started on what should realistically have been their plan in the first place, blowing the shit out of downtown LA.  Jack, having none of it, breaks one dude’s neck and has just enough bullets to kill every terrorist in the joint except Fayed, so they bust it up hand-to-hand.  After smacking Fayed with a bigass wrench and getting stomped on a couple of times, Jack finally gets a hold of one of those big chains that are always randomly hanging around in places like this, wraps it around Fayed’s neck and hands, and hits the “choke Muslim to death” button on the control thing – but only after whispering to Fayed, “Say hello to your brother.”  Doyle sums it all up as he shows up and looks over the carnage, including Fayed’s dead ass: “Damn, Jack.”  Again, a perfect death from a great show at its best.

In the aftermath, Jack gets a call routed through CTU... from Audrey, who is alive and in the hands of the Chinese asshole that used to torture Jack, Cheng Zhi!  The Chinese look like they want to trade Audrey for something, and all kinds of shit is hitting many fans at once.  In some ways, this season has just begun.

Proposed Kimeo: Kim, drunk and disorderly in a Cabo jail cell, ruins any potential “Caged Heat” scenario by noisily demanding her cell phone, a fish taco, to speak the embassy, American Idol results, etc., so thoroughly annoying the local constabulary that they call a cab to pick her up and dump her off at the airport just so they don’t have to deal with her bullshit.  They definitely could have stuck this in instead of Palmer and Lennox hugging it out.

Keepin’ it real continues to go wrong for President Palmer, as Powers Boothe calls in the cabinet to relieve him of his job.  After about a minute of deliberations, the cabinet (consisting of 13 old white dudes and one black chick with a blowout – dog, you gotta get more brothers on the cabinet, what were you thinking?) ends up in a tie, so Palmer’s safe... until Boothe reminds everyone that Karen Hayes resigned, so she can’t vote, leaving Palmer in the minority.  While Karen stomps around so brusquely that little puffs of dust fly out of her orifices, Lennox recommends that they leave this mess up to the Supreme Court.  Out of respect for his awesome work in Dragonslayer, the cabinet concurs, and this boring shit comes to a stop for a couple of minutes.
       
At CTU, Milo has given up on the arm-sling entirely so he can more effectively sexually harass Nadia.  This scene is mercifully cut short just before I jam a fork in my right eye by Ricky calling Nadia up to the office, where he sort of apologizes for slapping her around earlier (always an awkward conversation) and gets her to help him find out if Milo was responsible for the Russian hack earlier by not using the right security parameters.  Nadia finds out that Ricky’s right as usual, but Ricky blows her mind by helping cover up Milo’s mistake, keeping him out of jail and employed.  By way of explanation, Ricky quotes the Quran, which he’s apparently read (along with the Bible and some other made-up book) in an effort to find some “answers”, as if cruising around shooting and torturing people has left him spiritually conflicted or something.  The only possible reason Ricky would try to recast himself as a philosophical badass (like a poor man’s Swayze from Roadhouse) is to sleep with Nadia, and it’s a plan so crazy it just might work.

The big deal, of course, is Jack using Gredenko to find Fayed.  Gredenko calls Fayed, who insults him a few times before telling him to get his drunk Russian ass to the somehow abandoned Santa Monica pier in ten minutes.  Jack gets Gredenko there, puts a wire on him and implants his arm with a tracking device.  Gredenko hooks up with Fayed, loses the wire, and tells Fayed he’s got a plan for them both to get out alive.  So you know the plan’s going to be pretty good right?  That sneaky Russian....  Oh, whoops, no, the plan sucks all kinds of dick.  Part one was apparently for Fayed to chop Gredenko’s fucking arm off with an axe (at least anesthesia was unnecessary, given that Gredenko at this point is rolling on about thirty drinks and a tranq dart to the neck), and then have the whole crew run outside into a gunfight.  As Fayed’s crew gets shot by Jack, Gredenko and Fayed hit a crowded bar, where Gredenko – who has left part of a coat sleeve and a massive blood trail behind him – tells the locals that Fayed is the terrorist.  Fayed tries to shoot Gredenko (does this guy dodge bullets in all his films?), shoots a guy at the bar instead, and proceeds to get his ass kicked (Welcome to the O.C., bitch!) until Jack busts in and arrests him. Meanwhile, Gredenko has fled to the beach under the pier, where he collapses into the surf and probably dies.  If you missed it, you’re pretty pissed off, because the whole sequence was fucking outstanding.

Back in Washington, Veep Boothe is pretty sure he’s going to lose in the Supreme Court thing, but his “assistant” offers to commit perjury to help him out, and he’s cool with it.  A few seconds later, Lennox busts in and tells him that he got the whole thing on tape (seriously, if you’re a writer, that’s your job, and all you can come up with is the old “haha I got you on tape” trick, just kill yourself now), so he’d better drop this whole 25th amendment bullshit. His balls firmly in the tiny grasp of Lennox, Boothe complies, and Palmer remains president... just long enough to get a couple more adrenalin shots, suffer a schizophrenic break and decide to go ahead with the nuking of the Middle East!  Whatever.  Next week, Palmer yells at the Middle East president guy and collapses, Fayed escapes and Jack gets shot in the chest. 

Continuity error: At the Santa Monica pier, Gredenko did not pass by a douchebag in sunglasses on a cell phone, nor was he almost accidentally whacked in the face by a Mexican guy with a fishing pole.  It also would have been more convincing if he was eating a hot dog on a stick or something.

Contest winner announced: Although quite a few people sent in some nice insults for Milo, for the most part fitting a pattern that could easily be crafted into an Insult Generating Robot just for Milo (80s boy-band reference plus vague ethnic slur plus sex act that ends with Milo having shit on his face), there were a few strays (does Milo really look like Tony Kukoc?) as well as a few pro-Milo posts.  Overall, a good showing, but the winning ticket was held by Bears Fan Guy from Indiana (actual name unknown, and even his sig is a bit off-color, albeit hilarious).  BFG’s insult, which involved an 80s boy-band reference, a vague ethnic slur, and Milo involved in a sex act that ends with him having shit on his face, wins him a sweet Jack Bauer lighter from eBay.  Congrats, and thanks to everyone who participated.  You’re all winners, ish.