411’s 24 Review: S08E09 – 12:00AM – 1:00AM
Posted by John Gale on 02.24.2010
Jack reveals his feelings for Renee, Farhad gets in trouble and Cole finally puts an end to the Dana/Kevin plot line in the best episode of the season so far.
Hi, everyone. I think this was the best episode of the season. It even had the best previously on “24” segment of the season. It was very well done, even if they got a freeze frame on Renee that made her look like a complete psychopath. Let’s get to the recap.
Farhad has second thoughts.
Josef pulls up in a giant Mercedes van and parks. While he waits, he gets a call from his father, who has Jack at his side. Sergei tells Josef that the police know that he has the rods. He adds that Jack turned out to be a federal agent, and it’s over.
Jack jumps in to add that Sergei negotiated immunity for Josef, as long as he brings the fuel rods back. Jack says that is the only way Josef can feel safe, but Josef balks because of what his father did to his brother Oleg. Sergei says that he can’t bring Oleg back, and he can’t bear to lose another son. Josef says he’ll be fine, but Sergei says that the government will hunt down and kill him if he doesn’t turn the rods over.
Josef is skeptical that he and his father could get immunity after everything they’ve done, but Jack and Sergei convince him to cooperate. Unfortunately for Josef, Farhad and his men are already there, and they take him out with a sniper rifle.
The best Chloe could do with the trace is to narrow it down to central Queens near Flushing Meadow Park. Hastings orders agents to the area and for Sergei to be brought back to CTU.
Farhad and his men rush down to take possession of the rods. When Josef was killed, his phone stayed connected, which allows CTU to overhear Farhad and one of his men debating about whether to get to the port or formulate a new plan.
Later on, Farhad and his men arrive at a staging area. Farhad says that they need to figure out another way to get the nuclear rods out of the country, but the other guy (Samir) says that it will be almost impossible now that the Americans know that they have the rods.
Samir says that he has recruited men who will unload the rods, which prompts Farhad to ask what the hell is going on. One of the men tells him that they can’t get the rods out of the country, so they should just use them in a radiological bomb (a dirty bomb) against the US.
Farhad incredulously asks if the guy is out of his mind, rightly pointing out that if they attack the US, the retaliation will be swift and brutal. Bombings, an invasion, etc. Samir counters that the peace treaty will in effect accomplish the same thing, as American guns and money will keep Hassan in power as a dictator of a “corrupt Mideast regime.”
Farhad looks awfully uncomfortable as he surveys his options, finally saying that he’ll go along with the new plan. But you know he has to be looking for a way out.
A few minutes later, he asks Samir if they have what they need to construct the bomb. Samir says that explosives are readily available, but they’re having a hard time finding a detonator on such short notice. Farhad offers to help by recruiting a professor in New York City with expertise in electronics. He assures Samir that the professor will do as asked, but he needs to talk to the professor alone. Samir agrees to let Farhad make a call from a nearby office.
As a henchman escorts Farhad to the office, he asks what the target is, given that there are so many potential targets in New York. The henchman is not paying much attention, so he is taken by surprise when Farhad grabs a wrench or some other kind of tool and attacks him with it. Farhad gets away, but the henchman managed to deliver a shot to Farhad’s knee in the process. Samir and his men charge after Farhad, who is limping away as fast as he can.
That’s the second time Farhad has attacked an unsuspecting person to facilitate his own escape. He’s practically turning this into an art form.
Jack and Renee…together at last?
Chloe calls Jack to get his ETA, which is about 15 minutes. Chloe asks if Jack is all right, and he says that he is. He asks about Renee, and Chloe says that she’s still in medical and very worried about him. Jack then asks to be patched through so he can talk to Renee.
Here’s the video of that conversation:
Renee (looking very good, by the way) answers, and Chloe informs her that Jack is safe and wants to talk to her. Renee tells Jack that she’s fine, and he tells her that they lost the fuel rods. He doesn’t know what Hastings is going to do next, but he’s bringing Sergei back to CTU, and then he’s getting out of there.
Jack asks about the debriefing, and Renee says that Chloe handled it, but all she did was write a statement about what happened. Jack stresses the importance of Renee sticking to the self-defense story, but she seems unsure about it.
Renee then moves on to a different topic—what exactly did Jack mean when he said that she “has him” back at Vladimir’s place? Jack says he meant it exactly how it sounded. Renee asks what they're going to do now, and Jack says they’ll figure it out. Renee says ok, and she looks very happy after Jack hangs up.
All right! It’s about time their budding relationship started to go somewhere. Honestly, Jack hasn’t had a love interest that I liked since Kate Warner all the way back in Season 2 (well Claudia from Season 3 was pretty hot). I couldn’t stand Audrey. I’m so glad she’s not around.
Meanwhile, Hastings gets a call from Weiss, who is not happy about how their operation turned out. Fortunately for Hastings, Weiss doesn’t want to pin the blame on him because he was Weiss’ hand-picked director of CTU. If Hastings goes down, it won’t reflect well on Weiss.
Hastings asks what Weiss has in mind, and he says they should make Renee the scapegoat. Hastings is obviously uncomfortable with this, as he correctly points out that Vladimir was a psychopath, and she was defending herself. Weiss counters that she stabbed him 15 times. Hastings says that Renee put her life on the line for them, and she didn’t have to, but Weiss is unmoved. Hastings reluctantly agrees to go along with the plan.
Well, there’s always at least one resident sleaze ball in every “24” administration, whether it’s Sherry Palmer, Walt Cummings or Olivia Taylor, and Weiss appears to be the slime bag this time. Things never turn out well for these guys, and Weiss will be no different.
I’ll say this as well—there is no way Ethan would allow something like this to happen, let alone issue the order himself. He’s much too honorable, unlike that classless punk Weiss.
The lawyer from the Justice Department arrives, and Hastings asks if she thinks the evidence shows that Renee was guilty of murder. She says that Weiss “warned” her that Hastings might have issues with what she’s doing, and he says that he does indeed have issues with hanging a brave woman out to dry.
The lawyer says that there are discrepancies between Renee’s statement and the forensic evidence, and she requests that Hastings restrict video surveillance of the interview while also recording it in case of legal proceedings.
Chloe gives Renee her statement, and then Hastings and the lawyer interrupt. Chloe is sent away, and she wants to know what’s going on. Hastings tells her to just do her job.
Hastings listens in to the lawyer asking Renee about what happened. The lawyer asks Renee about her previous history with Vladimir, and how she fought off his rape attempt. The lawyer then asks why she didn’t fight him off this time, and Renee says that she couldn’t. She just grabbed the knife and stabbed him in self defense.
The lawyer asks how she could stab him in “self defense” 15 times, and then she tries to coax a confession out of Renee. She continues to manipulate Renee, saying that she thinks Renee used an important operation to seek revenge on Vladimir.
This woman is officially an idiot. If Renee really wanted to kill Vladimir, she could have easily tracked him down and done so whenever she wanted. She didn’t need a government operation to facilitate her revenge. And even if she did needs the operation to find Vladimir (which she didn’t), she could have just walked in and killed Vladimir right on the spot. Instead, she slept with him (which just had to kill her, considering how repulsive she found him) to keep the operation alive. But this was just about revenge. Makes perfect sense. Idiot.
Oh, and did the Sixth Amendment just disappear this season? Where is Renee’s lawyer? Since when is it ok for a hostile Justice Department investigator to try to trick a federal agent into a false confession by manipulating her? That would hold up in court? I think not.
Just as Renee looks like she might crack under the pressure, Jack gets back to CTU. He orders that Sergei be taken into holding, and Chloe tells him about the lawyer from the Justice Department who showed up to talk to Renee. It takes Jack approximately two seconds to figure out what is going on, and he rushes off to stop it.
Jack quickly uses the guard to gain access to the room with his handprint, and then he knocks the guard out. Jack tells Renee that she’s being set up and not to say another word. Renee says it’s too late (whatever that means), and the lawyer tells Jack to get out of there. He pushes the lawyer up against the wall and berates her for her cowardly attempt to pin the blame on Renee.
He opens the door to take Renee away, and the guard is back on his feet with his gun pointed at Jack. Unfazed, Jack tells the guard that he better put his weapon down, or he’s going to get hurt. The guard reluctantly backs off.
All right, this is going to be great. I always love when Jack has to break someone out of a government building, like when he had to get Tony out of FBI headquarters at the beginning of Season 7. Surely, he and Renee are going to make a great esc—wait, what? Another guard hits Jack from behind with a Taser. Damn. I can’t emphasize enough how bummed out I was by this when it happened. I really felt like we were robbed of a great sequence. But it turned out all right. More on that later.
Actually, my roommate and I were talking about how Jack approached this with much less thought than he normally would. His plan, apparently, was to just walk in (without a weapon, no less), grab Renee and walk right out. And then they would just be on the run for the rest of their lives or he would call President Taylor or something. Even for him, that’s an overconfident plan. He obviously has very strong feelings for Renee (I think they’re in love with each other at this point, even though they haven't actually said that), so he was just acting on emotion instead of logic.
A little later, Jack is escorted into Hastings’ office. Hastings orders the handcuffs taken off and directs Jack to sit down. Jack says that he’ll stand, and he proceeds to berate Hastings for throwing Renee under the bus. He’s not buying any of Hastings’ spin either.
Jack says that he won’t let Hastings get away with this, as he’ll call the White House first. Hastings says that this came directly from Weiss at the White House. Jack sarcastically says that maybe Hastings didn’t understand—he’ll be calling President Taylor herself. Hastings says that Jack will have a hard time with that because Taylor takes murder seriously enough that she prosecuted her own daughter.
The point is well taken, except that what Renee did was not murder, something even Hastings acknowledges. After Vladimir discovered that she was just using him, he started to assault her. Who knows what he would have done? Maybe he was just getting started and would have raped and killed her (well, Jack would have put a stop to that, but still). She had to defend herself, and she did by stabbing him in the eye with a knife.
At that point, it’s over. As soon as she plunged that knife in his eye, he’s dead. End of story. Now, it was probably unnecessary to stab him in the chest and stomach an additional 14 times. I’m not a lawyer. Maybe it is a crime to keep stabbing someone that you just killed in self defense, but it definitely isn’t murder. And I have a hard time believing that Taylor could be persuaded by Weiss that Jack and Renee are lying about what happened.
Hastings again orders Jack to sit down, and he complies. Chloe then interrupts, saying that Farhad is on the line. She puts him through, and Farhad informs Hastings that people are chasing him, and they have the nuclear rods. Hastings says that he thought Farhad had the rods, but Farhad says the men turned against him and have their own plan—an attack on New York.
Farhad says that he’ll tell Hastings everything he knows as soon as he gets out of there. He says he’s near a boat warehouse, and he’s injured. Hastings tells him to keep the line open, and help is on the way.
Hastings tells Chloe to pinpoint Farhad’s location and get Cole on the line. She says that Cole never came back because he’s “following up a lead.” Hastings says that someone named Owen will lead the operation instead, and even Chloe (who has only been at CTU: New York for a month) has reservations about this. Clearly, Owen may not be ready for prime time.
Hastings then orders Jack to get out of the building, and Jack says he’s fine with that.
One of the men chasing Farhad gets a call from Samir, who says that they’re moving the rods to another location because they don’t know who Farhad may have contacted. He orders the man to find Farhad.
Meanwhile, Arlo has narrowed Farhad’s location to a six-acre warehouse complex in Forest Hills in Queens. Drones and the police on are their way, but it’s going to take some time.
Owen then shows up, and Hastings tells him that he’ll be in command because Cole is absent. Hastings asks Owen to talk him through the operation, and Owen nervously explains that two teams are going to locate and secure the rods, while another team will locate and evacuate Farhad from the area.
Here’s the video of an important conversation between Jack and Hastings:
Owen adds that this is a standard urban search and rescue—in and out. Jack overhears this and says that there’s nothing standard about it. He then heads for the exit, but Hastings calls him back. He asks what Jack has to say, and Jack says the people with the rods know they have a big security problem, and the rods will probably be long gone by the time CTU gets there.
At that point, Jack says that only one team will be handling Farhad, and if they run into resistance, they’ll start shooting at men with higher intelligence value than Farhad himself. Hastings says that Owen knows the priority is to take all hostiles alive, but Jack says that is the most difficult assignment to execute while under fire.
Hastings says that Owen has his full confidence, and Jack sarcastically says that if that was true, he wouldn’t be talking to Jack. Hastings asks if Jack is offering to bring Farhad in, and Jack says yes, provided the criminal investigation against Renee is dropped.
Jack says he knows that Hastings doesn’t want to prosecute Renee, and Hastings says that he hears what Jack’s saying, but he can’t help on this one. He starts to walk away, and Jack stops him by saying that he knows what it’s like for Hastings because he’s sat in the same chair.
Jack says that there are a lot of demands, many of them unreasonable, on a CTU director, but the people that last and matter are the ones who know when to say no. Hastings says that he can’t say no to the White House, and Jack says that Hastings has more power than he thinks, especially with a nuclear weapon in play.
Hastings thinks for a second, and then he says that if they do this, it can’t just be for one rescue operation. There’s to be no more of this in-and-out business. If Jack wants Hastings’ support with Renee, he has to be fully engaged until it’s all over. Jack says it’s a deal.
I continue to like Hastings. Not only does he have strong reservations about what Weiss is doing to Renee (he just feels helpless to stop it), but he recognizes that Jack is a valuable asset. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the government officials on this show. He shows both of those things in the deal he negotiated.
As I said earlier, I was disappointed that Jack was so spectacularly unsuccessful in his attempt to break Renee out of CTU. But I think it will be better this way. Instead of just busting Renee out and staying on the run, everything he does for the rest of the season will be for her. Jack obviously has a great love for his country, and he’s always willing to help stop terrorists, but his love for Renee will provide extra motivation.
Actually, the tagline for one of the promo’s for this week’s episode was, “Before Jack Bauer can save his country, he’ll have to save her.” Actually, it looks like it’s the other way around.
Dana and Kevin…it’s finally over (I think).
Cole gets a call from Arlo, who says that he’s located Dana. He sends her GPS coordinates to Cole’s phone, and Cole says that he’s sending everyone back to CTU, but he’ll be out checking up on Dana. Cole then gets in a car and takes off.
Dana has followed Kevin to a wooded area, and she pulls out a gun. She even equips a silencer, so it’s obvious that she has only one thing in mind.
Back at CTU, Hastings asks Arlo if Dana is back yet. Arlo says that she isn’t, and when he asks if Hastings needs her for something, he says (quite annoyed), “Do I need her for something? Yes, Arlo. She’s my chief data analyst. I need her to do her job.”
Later on, two strippers get out of the van that Kevin and Nick are in. Over Kevin’s objections, they say they’re leaving because Nick is a “total freak show.” Um, what were they doing with those losers anyway? Wouldn’t they have balked at being driven into the woods in a Stone Age van? I guess Kevin and Nick had a bunch of cash, but still.
Dana then grabs her gun and prepares to go commit a double murder, but Cole shows up before she can do anything. He says that he’s taking her back to CTU, and they can deal with their personal issues after they’ve secured the nuclear materials. She says that she can’t leave, so he demands that she tell him exactly what is going on.
She starts by telling him her real name, and she finishes with the recent drug money heist. Cole can’t believe that she actually committed a robbery. She asks what he would do in her situation, and he says he wouldn’t have done that. She says that Kevin promised to never bother her again if she helped him, and Cole sarcastically “guesses” that he didn’t keep his end of the bargain.
Cole then asks what she’s holding, and she reveals the gun. He says that she was going to murder them in cold blood, and she says that she was wrong, but she was scared. She says that she thought she was doing it for her relationship with Cole, and he asks if she’s out of her mind. She says she loves him, and he tells her not to say another word.
Here’s the video of that conversation and Cole’s solution to Dana’s problem:
He gets out of the car and heads toward the van with the gun in hand. He points the gun at Kevin and Nick. He tells them that they’ve got two choices. First, they can go back to jail for grand larceny and aggravated assault. Kevin says that if he goes back to jail, then Dana is going too. Cole says that if that’s what it takes, fine.
The second choice they have is for Cole to let them walk with the money. The catch is that they have to get out of New York and never come back or he’ll kill them himself. Kevin says that it’s a deal, and Cole warns them to never let him see either of them again. He then shuts the door.
Nick fishes a pistol out of a suitcase and grabs a knife for good measure. Kevin asks what he’s doing, and Nick says that he’s going to kill Cole so that they can stay in business with Dana. Oh, yeah. Great plan. As if murdering a federal agent is going to go unnoticed. Also, the only reason Dana was helping them was to protect her secret from Cole and Hastings. Cole already knows, and Hastings will too if Cole shows up dead. She’d never help them again in a million years.
Kevin tries to talk Nick out of it, but his “friend” stabs him in the stomach instead. Nick then starts to follow Cole, and just as he’s pulling his gun, Kevin manages to yell out a warning. Nick gets off a few shots, but Cole quickly dispatches him with a shotgun blast. Dana and Cole rush to Kevin’s side, and it’s unclear if he’ll live or die as the episode ends.
And thus ends (I think—there may be some mopping up) the Dana and Kevin plot line, and not a moment too soon. The payoff was actually pretty good, but I think that had a lot more to do with Cole’s involvement than anything else. Furthermore, they had building up for this over eight episodes. Eight! That’s a full third of the season. Good payoff or not, it just wasn’t worth dealing with this interminable plot line for such a long time. Oh well. At least it’s over.
BEGIN DISCUSSION OF NEXT WEEK’S PROMO
Well, it looks like Kevin didn’t make it. Jack will explain to Renee that he wants to be with her after this is all over. Apparently, Tarin (remember him?) will be looking to make an escape, and President Taylor will warn President Hassan (remember them?) that she will be forced to retaliate if the terrorist attack succeeds. We’ll get an appearance from Secretary of Homeland Security Tim Woods, who we haven’t seen much of this season. And Jack will lead a daring attempt to rescue Farhad. All in all, it looks pretty good. Also, this is unrelated to next week’s episode, but the music running underneath the promo was pretty catchy.
END DISCUSSION OF NEXT WEEK’S PROMO
All right, everyone. See you back here next week.
The 411: Without question, this was the best episode of the season to date. Jack and Renee's relationship started to get somewhere, with Jack telling her where he stands and proving it by negotiating a deal with Hastings that will invariably risk Jack’s life to save her from Weiss and the Justice Department. And even though it was mostly a waste of time this season, Cole did bring a nice end to the Dana/Kevin plot line. The season is finally starting to pick up steam, and hopefully it will continue next week.
