Some spoilers coming:
24 returned last night with the sound of snipers shooting at some former colleague of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). Bauer is shown in good health after that risky experimental cure for deadly bio-toxin administered at the end of last season. Perhaps having a Muslim cleric issue the last rights is what saved him. Except Jack isn’t sporting a Shukr or a Kufi. That’s forgotten. He’s busy playing with his grand-daughter and planning to go with his daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), back to L.A. in retirement. But the ghost of Godfather III enters the mix. Just when he thought he was out…
The story is set in New York, which is a nice change of scenery after 7 seasons in Los Angeles. His daughter and his son-in-law are in New York and left their kid with Jack while they go shopping. Suddenly, the grand-daughter whips out a blow gun and knocks out Jack with a dart. You see, she’s a double agent and…oops. I spoiled the season for you. Never mind. Forget I said anything.
Anyway, it seems some moderate Muslim leader named Omar Hassan (Anil Kapoor) from some unnamed country is cutting a treaty with US President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones). Naturally, some mysterious villains are out to stop the deal at all cosyts. They’re trying to kill Bauer’s buddy, CTU Agent Torres (Benito Martinez formerly of The Shield) who has info on the hit. Torres makes it to Bauer’s place, seriously wounded, to tell him an assassination’s going to happen. But he won’t give all the details. He needs to talk to someone in CTU. Bauer contacts Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) his former partner, who is now working for the NY branch of CTU. And asks to speak to her boss.
24-style hilarity ensues. They can’t just get in a car and drive over there. They have to send a helicopter and the nearest place it can land is five blocks away. So Jack and agent Torres have to hoof it over there while he bleeds all over the place. But of course, the bad guys are monitoring the police bands and they soon catch wind of Bauer’s movements and give chase. There is a final twist which I left out in case you want to see the episode.
It was fun enough, but here’s a couple problems I had with it. Chloe, who has been shown in previous seasons as being the world’s greatest hacker, smarter than anyone else working for the government, is shown here as being too slow in catching up to the rest of her co-workers and is in danger of being fired. Right.
President Taylor is back, who was incredibly unrealistic last season for her stupid decisions. Wait, I take that back. She’s more realistic than WPE Obama*. But obviously, she was cast before they knew the primary results last year. They were expecting a President Hillary to match their female president. Big oops! So now they’re stuck with this actress to remind them of their lack of ESP. She’s rather lackluster, but the good news is Charles Logan is scheduled to come back this year for a string of episodes. Hopefully they won’t waste his talents this time, unlike his last appearance on the show.
Of course, we’re sure to see double CTU agents and other tropes of the series. Let’s hope it doesn’t lapse into more apologist BS like last season. The villains appear to be Muslim terrorists, but I’m sure they will be working for right-wing bad guys later. The clock is ticking.
* WPE – Worst President Ever
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