411’s 24 Review: S08E08 – 11:00PM – 12:00AM

Posted by John Gale on 02.17.2010

Jack terrorizes the Russian mob in the latest episode of “24.”

All right, let’s get right to the recap.

Jack and jumper cables

Cole reports to Hastings that Jack was taken out of the building via an underground access and that the trail is totally cold. They have no idea where Jack is.

Cole mentions that Renee is pretty distraught, and Hastings said that she should be since she crippled their operation by “murdering” Vladimir. Manslaughter, maybe. Murder? No way. And she was defending herself. I understand that Hastings is upset, but come on. At any rate, Hastings demands that she be brought back to CTU for a debriefing and psychological evaluation.

Next up as the object of Hastings’ ire is Dana, who wasn’t doing her job because she had to “take care of something.” When he asks what was so important, Chloe covers for her. Dana thanks her, but Chloe says that she can thank her by putting aside her distraction and helping to find Jack.

Here’s the video of Sergei’s interrogation of Jack, as well as Jack’s exposure to Russian torture.



Jack is escorted to Sergei’s headquarters with the hood still on his head. Sergei’s men inform him that Vladimir is dead and that the German is claiming that they tried to rip him off, but he didn’t say how he knew about the fuel rods.

Sergei personally questions Jack, who says that he knows about the fuel rods and is willing to pay a whopping sum of $250 million. Sergei asks how he knows about the fuel rods, and Jack says that the people he works for intercepted a message from Farhad Hassan or someone in his camp. Sergei asks who Jack works for, and he says he isn’t at liberty to say.

That was the wrong answer, and Sergei suspects that Jack is a cop. Jack says that he just killed three people and stabbed Vladimir in the eye, so he couldn’t be a cop. Sergei is unimpressed, stating that he once saw the KGB throw an entire family off a building, including two small children. He isn’t sold by Jack’s argument, and he orders him to be tortured.

After this conversation, Josef returns from burying Oleg. Josef gives Oleg’s necklace (that was given to him at confirmation) to Sergei, but he says that Josef should keep it as a memento. Sergei tells Josef about Meier, and he says that he has delayed delivery of the rods. He mentions that he hasn’t told Farhad yet, and that maybe they should deliver the bad news together.

Jack is in trouble, as the Russians tie him to a pipe hanging from the ceiling and wheel in what looks like some kind of generator with jumper cables. The Russian clamps one of the cables to Jack’s ankle, and he applies the other one directly to Jack’s stab wound. Ouch! You have to hand it to the writers. They always find new ways to do the same things. Jumper cables are pretty original.

Meanwhile, Hastings is filling President Taylor in on the situation. He says that they have to hope that Jack can come up with something on his end. Weiss asks what makes Hastings think that Jack is still alive, and Hastings can only manage that he wasn’t killed on the spot. He says that he can’t give Taylor a realistic assessment of their chances of securing the nuclear rods.

Farhad reappears, as he is taking a call from someone who says that General Wasim is very worried about their coup because Hassan has been effective in rounding everyone up. The other guy says that if they don’t get the uranium soon, they will fail, and Farhad says that the rods should be there within the hour.

Sergei and Josef then show up to inform Farhad that delivery of the rods will be delayed until they can ascertain exactly who Meier is and what he’s doing. Sergei promises to break him quickly, but Farhad points out that Sergei also promised to assassinate Hassan, and look how that turned out. He starts to berate Sergei, but Josef puts an end to that by putting a gun to Farhad’s head. Josef and Sergei agree that it’s time for Farhad to go, and Josef volunteers to drive him.

Renee arrives back at CTU, and she asks Hastings what they’re doing to find Jack. He says they’re doing what they can, but their best lead is dead because of her. He’s not amused that she didn’t tell him about her suicide attempt. He assigns Chloe to debrief her and then take her to medical for a psych evaluation.

Chloe tries to make Renee feel better, but she blames herself for whatever is happening to Jack because he was only a part of this operation because of her. Chloe says that they need to focus on her statement first.

Kevin won’t go away—hard to believe.

Dana calls Kevin, who is hanging out at a strip club in Jersey City. He tells her to come on down, but she’s more concerned about the hospitalized police officer. She tells him to put her key in her mailbox and get out of her life, like he promised. And to the surprise of absolutely no one other than Dana, he says that isn’t going to happen.

He tries to explain why he can’t leave her alone, and finally Nick comes over and says much more forcefully that they’ll tell her boss and fiancé about her past if she doesn’t continue to help them steal money.

After Nick hangs up on her, Arlo asks Dana who she was talking to. When he mentions the name Kevin, she demands to know if he’s spying on her. Um, Dana, I don’t think you’re in a position to call anyone else out. She denies that she’s cheating on Cole, but Arlo says that she needs to tell Cole what’s going on, or he will.

Later on, she pulls Cole aside to talk to him. He wonders if she is going to call off the engagement, but she says that’s not it. She says that she hasn’t been totally forthcoming about her past, and he says he doesn’t care about her past. Before she can tell him what’s going on, Cole is called away to talk to Hastings. She says that she knows what she has to do.

Eventually, Cole and Hastings notice that Dana is absent, and Arlo says that she left 15 minutes earlier to “fix a faulty relay at their 17th Street station.” Cole asks why she didn’t just have maintenance do it, and Arlo says that she had to manually reboot the firmware herself…or at least that’s what she said.

Later, Cole asks Arlo what he was implying earlier about Dana, and Arlo shows photos of Dana meeting with Kevin. After Hastings assigns Cole to deploy to the truck with the nuclear rods, Cole asks Arlo to trace Dana’s location via her cell phone. Cole calls Dana, but she sends him to voicemail, and he leaves a message stating how urgent it is that she call him back.

But Dana already told him that she knows what she needs to do now, and apparently that entails murdering Kevin and Nick. She’s watching from across the strip club, and she has a very small gun in her purse. I’m guessing that isn’t CTU issue.

The nuclear rods…aren’t here.

Jack is still being tortured, as the Russian rips his bandage off and applies pressure directly to his stab wound. He then goes back to work with the jumper cables. Finally, Jack appears to pass out. The Russian goes to get something to wake Jack up, but he was just playing possum. When the Russian returns, Jack uses his feet to push the jumper cable into the Russian’s chest. The electricity incapacitates him, giving Jack some time to get out of there. He shimmies his way over to the end of the pipe and tries to break it off.

Here’s the video of Jack being Jack after he gets free from his bonds.



Awhile later, Jack is still working on the pipe when the Russian starts to wake up. Jack finally breaks it, and the Russian gets up and goes for a knife. Jack flips him over, breaks his arm and then gets the Russian’s head in a leg lock. Uh oh. That’s one of Jack’s signature moves. I can’t recall anyone over getting out of one of Jack’s leg locks with his neck not broken. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happens.

The key mistake that the Russians made here was to only have one man watching Jack. That’s just a recipe for disaster, no matter how helpless he appears.

Jack quickly frees his hands with the knife, grabs the Russian’s gun and goes for the Russian’s cell phone. Unfortunately, it’s not working. Jack then overhears Sergei instructing his men, and he kills the power to the building.

Sergei immediately knows that Meier must have done something, so he sends his men to investigate. One guy is assigned to check the fuse box, and that’s exactly what Jack is waiting for. He drops out of the sky and quickly dispatches the bad guy. He then grabs the dead guy’s cell phone and calls Chloe. He instructs her to trace the call and leaves the phone on a shelf.

Jack then goes down the hall and up some stairs. He shoots two of the Russians, but has to flee in the face of Sergei’s shotgun blasts. Jack hides under a table and pushes it on top of Sergei, which allows Jack to take him into custody.

After the police arrive, they patch up Jack’s shoulder (apparently, Sergei got him with that first shotgun blast). Jack reads up a little on Sergei and then goes to talk to him. Sergei says that he knew Jack was a cop and should have trusted his instinct by killing him on the spot.

Jack says Sergei can add that to his list of regrets, but he’s in luck because Jack can get Sergei’s prison sentence reduced if he cooperates. Jack says that the offer also applies to his two sons, Josef and Oleg, and Sergei says that Oleg is dead. He explains that Oleg got exposed to the radiation, so he shot him. He laments that he murdered his own son for nothing. He says that he’ll tell Jack where the rods are, but he wants full immunity for both he and Josef. Jack says he doesn’t think that’s possible, but Sergei won’t cooperate otherwise.

Jack calls Chloe, and he asks to be patched in to a briefing between Hastings and President Taylor. Jack tells her that Sergei will cooperate in exchange for full immunity for he and his son. Weiss makes a crack about how they should also throw a parade down Broadway, but come on. Immunity is nothing for this show. There hasn’t even been a terrorist attack yet.

Taylor asks if there is no other way to get the information in time, and Jack says that Sergei served 12 years in a Russian labor camp, so there’s no way that they’ll break him in time. She asks for Hastings’ input, and he says that he’ll defer to Jack’s judgment. She says that with the peace agreement threatening to fall apart, she needs the deal to get done, and she asks to speak directly to Sergei.

As Cole flies via helicopter to the truck with the rods, Hastings instructs him to take care of the guards at the scene. After they get on the ground, they open the truck. The two guards are already dead, and the nuclear rods are missing. They also discover Oleg’s necklace hanging on the wall of the truck, though they don’t know what it means yet.

Hastings calls Jack to tell him that the nuclear rods aren’t there. Sergei says that the rods were in the truck, and he had two men guarding them. Hastings says that both men were shot dead, and they also found the necklace. Sergei realizes that Josef has betrayed him.

Speaking of Josef, he calls Farhad to inform him that he has possession of the rods. He says that he’ll be there momentarily, so Farhad needs to have the money ready.

Well, I figured that Josef would betray his father, but I thought he would try to do a deal with Jack (I don’t think he knows that Jack is a Fed) because he was offering more. But I guess he figured Farhad was a sure thing.

Oh yeah...Hassan is still here too.

Hassan makes his only appearance of the episode when one of his aides says that his daughter (who looks exceedingly pissed) is demanding to see him and refuses to leave. She wants to know why Tarin has been arrested. She says that it doesn’t make sense because Tarin would have been killed if the assassination attempt was successful, but Hassan counters, “The world is full of men willing to die for their cause.” Well, that’s true.

He says he can appreciate her friendship with Tarin, and she informs him that they’re actually in love and have been for a year. Hassan demands to know why she was dating Tarin behind his back, and she fires back with, “You say that to me after driving mother away with your infidelity.” Ouch. That’s a knockout blow. Hassan tells her to stop dating Tarin immediately and then says he has to get back to his work.

Awhile later, Kayla tries to see Tarin, and Nabil stops her. She eventually convinces Nabil to let her see Tarin, but not until later (i.e. the next episode).

BEGIN DISCUSSION OF NEXT WEEK’S PROMO



Well, it sure looks like Josef may be in some trouble. And Dana clearly plans to “take care of” Kevin and Nick. Best of all, it’s always fun when Jack has to break someone (in this case, Renee) out of a government building. Getting Tony out of FBI headquarters last season was a good example of this.

I can't say that it's too surprising that Weiss may be a little sleazy with his plan to blame everything on Renee. Yeah, because it's Renee's fault. They wouldn't have gotten close to recovering the nuclear rods without her help. They wouldn't even have any idea where to look without her. I do like how Jack warns one of the CTU security guards to put his gun down or else he's going to get hurt. Jack is not messing around.

END DISCUSSION OF NEXT WEEK’S PROMO

All right, everyone. See you back next week.

The 411: Yet another solid episode that had a little more action than the previous several did. It’s always fun to see Jack get out of a precarious situation and subsequently take out terrorists in a variety of ways (the classic leg lock neck break, dropping from the ceiling, etc.). However, I’m still waiting for the first great episode of the season.

Final Score:  8.5   [ Very Good ]