Archive for Bad Stuff
Hour eleven had its share of “WTF” moments, but it also delivered some fine dark drama, a few gripping scenes, and a crazy shot of a guy blowing up right in front of Jack Bauer’s face.
Renee sat this one out, and Dana’s frustrating B-plot ate up a good chunk of the hour, but I still had a blast with this episode of ‘24′. Spoilers after the jump.
Et tu, Tarin?
Most of you probably saw this one coming, but I was actually a little surprised to learn that Tarin was the mastermind behind all the evil IRK craziness. The switch rang pretty false. Tarin has been subtly played up as a good guy all season. He seemed noble and personally committed to protecting Hassan and his family. Revealing him to be a terrorist leader felt like a cheap move. I’m interested to hear what you guys thought about this development. Did you suspect Tarin from the start? Does this switch make sense to you?
So Tarin’s a traitor. Fine, I’ll accept it. Like I’ve said before, you either go with ‘24′ or you don’t. At least this means we’ll get to see the talented T.J. Ramini play a bad guy and do all kinds of bad stuff as the season progresses. Something tells me he’ll make a great baddie. I think it’s the eyes.
The oxygen chamber plot was edge of your seat stuff, at times anyway. It’s good to see that ‘24′ can still deliver some truly tense moments. It’s also good to see that Grandpa Jack hasn’t turned into a complete softie. He threatened to expose Marcos’ mom to radiation poisoning if he didn’t give himself up. I thought the threat was believable enough. Mare Winningham and Rami Malek (Marcos) did a fine job with their scenes together. Unlike Tarin’s Mr. Hyde move, Marcos decision to give himself up seemed pretty believable. But this thread still ended in tragedy, with the IRK blowing Marcos up and CTU delivering the bad news about Tarin to Hassan.
So I guess Hassan has every reason to be paranoid now. His brother tried to have him killed, he was right about Tarin, and the President is ready to bomb his country. He needs comfort from is wife more than ever now. Good thing she’s back with him, for the moment at least. I’m almost certain that one member of this family won’t make it through the season alive. Despite the chilling preview for next week, something tells me mommy might end up biting it.
Dana and Cole got off pretty light, considering they were missing for almost two hours during an emergency situation. Dana got demoted, putting Chloe in charge (yay!), and Cole was dropped right back into the field, just like he never left. But Dana’s dark past isn’t through haunting her just yet. Kevin’s parole officer – or is he? – is ready to complicate her life even further. This storyline is still a snoozer for me, but it’s nice to see Stephen Root working again, and it looks like he’s having fun with this character. Here’s hoping he makes this B-plot worth watching.
Watch ‘2:00AM – 3:00AM’ Episode here
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I’m going to whine a lot about this episode, so that’s just a little warning to anyone absolutely loving this season of ‘24.’ But first, let’s talk about the great scene where Renee goes ballistic, stabs Vladimir, then accidentally stabs Jack. Then Jack takes the knife out and hurls it at the other guy coming in the door. Awesome!
Ok, now for the bad stuff. For one thing, I thought we were going to get to see Renee kick some major butt this season. So far, she’s just a wimpy female with a big fat vengeance chip on her shoulder who still gets knocked around by the bad guys (excepting that awesome scene noted above). Come on, Renee! I want a female Jack Bauer, not some sniveling sap!
The WTF aspects of ‘24′ these days are just too WTF to ignore. Why don’t we take them one by one:
WTF #1. I know Jack is a badass who can take any sort of torture and spring back to life, but that was no small knife wound he got in his mid-section. Yet he’s able to bandage himself, jump back up, talk some sense into Renee, and give himself over to the bad guys so the deal isn’t all for naught. I know it’s ‘24,’ but … I don’t think so.
WTF #2. I mentioned last week that it seemed unrealistic that Dana would be able to secure access codes for a warehouse that’s housing a LOT of stuff, as we saw in this episode, in such a short time. Not to mention the fact that she’s working for the FBI, so wouldn’t they have done a teensy bit better background check on her? And given that there IS so much stuff in the warehouse, doesn’t it seem like they’d have someone on permanent security duty there, rather than just a cop wandering through every now and then to check on things? Or at the very least, someone monitoring the security cameras 24/7?
WTF #3. Let’s stick with the warehouse, since it’s so craptastically WTF. Did Dana really think the guys wouldn’t take more than just the $120K? They’re clearly lacking in judgment, given their history, so she’d have to be a numbskull to think they wouldn’t be stuffing multiple duffel bags with whatever they could get their hands on.
WTF #4. And are the guys so stupid that they wouldn’t think to wear gloves? Their fingerprints are all over that place! It’s like they’re hooligans robbing a drugstore or something.
WTF #5. Did Bazhaev really say he wanted Oleg buried “out back”? I didn’t run the DVR back, so you can tell me if I’ve got that right. Seriously, it’s like he’s burying his pet goldfish in the backyard or something. Not only that, but to tell Josef that his goal with the nuclear deal is to leave him and his family with a wealthy inheritance and respect? Really? How about get a good job and open a 401K? That works, too.
WTF #6. Why, oh why must the Russians always be the bad guys? Are there no good Russians in the world? Just once, I’d like to see somebody switch it up and make the Russians the good guys.
WTF #7. The President’s peace treaty. Eh, just WTF. I don’t even know what to say about this because the storyline is so nothing. Back in the good old days of ‘24,’ all the storylines had equal value, and each thing hinged together beautifully like a big house of cards ready to topple over. Not so this season.
WTF #8. Hassan’s idea to have Jamot’s family “detained.” Who are we kidding? There’s going to be torture involved. So this guy who seemingly has been an upright person so far suddenly has a change of heart and goes all rogue and evil?
Watch ‘10:00PM – 11:00PM’ Episode Online
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