24

This week's show and last week's show moved uncharacteristically slowly for 24. I guess the producers were letting the fact that terrorists had blown up a nuke in a US city sink in. I expect that they have milked it for all that they intend to try and we will get back to the patented Bauer bloodletting next week.

However slow moving does not mean nothing happened at all. The highlights are these:

Jack and Zefrem Cochran (his father) were captured by Jack's brother who ordered their executions. Jack and Zefrem managed to kill their guards and get away. Back at Jack's brother's house the CTU strike team managed to actually do what they were supposed to do and capture Graham alive. Jack tortured him until he admitted that he ordered Pres. Palmer's murder along with the murders of Jack's CTU coworkers. This wasn't the information that Jack was fishing for, but he took it nonetheless.

The amoral arms merchant located an engineer who could arm the Evil Terrorist Mastermind's remaining bombs, but the caveat was that he wouldn't do it willingly. CTU's surveillance satellites intercepted the cell phone conversation between the ETM and the amoral arms merchant and captured the data stream containing the photo and entire life story of the technician. Al Bundy knew a Borg algorithm that would recover the corrupted data (apparently data is hopelessly mangled when it is intercepted - they might want to fix that as it seems to rise above "undocumented feature" and make it into the territory of being a true bug), but found out that his kid brother had been taken to the hospital with severe radiation exposure. Al can't figure out how that could have happened, its not like a nuclear bomb went off a few miles north of the city a couple of hours ago or anything.

Bundy leaves CTU just seconds before the picture of the technician resolves itself and it turns out to be [drum roll] AL BUNDY!

They find this out just in time to narrowly miss stopping Al from being kidnapped by the amoral arms merchant and his skanky gold digger girlfriend.

The peaceful and tolerant Muslims who were being unjustly held in a concentration camp by the evil FBI director found out that the Chairman of CAIR was attempting to help the US government prevent the detonation of four more atomic bombs in US cities. The Muslims who were being unjustly confined in Gitmo North demonstrated how loyal to the United States they were and how they hate terrorism with every fiber of their beings by attempting to beat the Chairman to death. This was only after they let the Chairman into their confidence only after he told them that he had been attempting to contact the Evil Terrorist Mastermind because running an organization like CAIR wasn't doing enough to destroy the USA.

When Anita Hill found out that the peace-loving and tolerant Muslims who had just tried to beat her boyfriend to death for trying to stop the nuclear bombs from murdering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans were not directly part of the terrorist plot she was giddy with glee. Her conscience was clear. She had NOT done anything after all to prevent a terrorist attack.

At the White House Major Mat Mason had blackmailed Julie Myers into handing in her resignation to the president. It seems that CTU had the ETM in custody some months back and had let him go. M3 was going to use this to destroy Col. McQueen's career so she took one for hubby. Freed from her influence M3 prepared his Enabling Act for President Chappell's signature.

He then called his true master and we got to see who is behind the entire thing. The Vice President! We know that the VP is the spider in the center of the web pulling the strings on the whole evil conspiracy, even the nuclear terrorism, because he is played by Powers Booth!

President Chappell surprises everyone (except those of us who know the formula by which the show is written, black politicians are good, white politicians are evil, especially when they are the Vice President) by rejecting the Enabling Act. The VP and M3 try to reason with him by pointing to the still smoldering rubble of the Reichstag, sorry - I mean the nuclear bomb, but he isn't having any of it. As far as he is concerned the Constitution IS a suicide pact and if we must go into that good night we will go quietly!

We can see by the look on Vice President Jim Jones' face that he isn't happy and is already planning another presidential assassination.

Meanwhile back at stately Bauer manor Zefrem asks for a few minutes alone with his boy and the CTU Strike Team allows this. What follows is a bit of dialogue which reveals that Zefrem is really the family mastermind and Graham was just taking the fall to protect daddy. Zef is afraid that sonny-boy can't stand up to what he will face in the real CTU torture chamber so he gives his kid a lethal injection. He calls the CTU guys in and starts threatening to sue.

My predictions for next week are that Jack will have to cap Al Bundy to keep him from arming a nuclear bomb. Chloe will forgive him.

Jack killed one person tonight.