Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Hour 6 (11-12 p.m.): Fun with Animals

I felt like I was watching a National Geographic special during this episode.


First, we saw Tom Lennox fiercely protecting his environment…

…by getting his Deputy Chief of Staff Reed Pollack…


…to threaten Karen Hayes (who recommended the blissfully novel idea of considering the ramifications of one’s actions before making a final decision)…


…by backing her into a corner over past actions concerning her husband Bill Buchanan…


…She then promptly resigned as Assistant for National Security Affairs/National Security Advisor to still-tentative, wet-behind-the-ears King of the Jungle President Wayne Palmer…


…who once hid from President Charles Logan, the OLD king of the jungle…


…by dressing up like a lioness.


Of course, no one can match the genius, bravery, and eloquence of the true King of the Jungle, David Palmer, may he rest in peace.


Back at the CTU watering hole...


...am I the only one getting the vibe that smooth-talking slippery snake Milo Pressman...


...seeks a love connection with the lovely, yet murkily not-quite-sure-she-can-be-trusted agent Nadia Yassir?



Watch out, Nadia! Milo may indeed be a cold-hearted snake (in the words of the ever-effervescent Paula Abdul)!


In the meantime, Chloe and Morris continue playing their weird little mindgames, like the old ex-married couple they are.


At least we know who to hate in this episode:

Graem (who deserves an a$$-whoopin' just for sporting a red afro at any point in time)...


…and the surely closeted couple, Tom Lennox and his evil sidekick, Reed Pollack, the ex-Mr. Hilary Swank. They’ve taken a$$ity to new level, haven’t they?


Not sure what to make of this, but in spite of the ongoing national crisis, Tom and Reed find a few minutes to relax on the White House lawn:


Troubling, to say the least.

Overall, I have to say I'm left with a lot of questions...


...that I hope will be answered by the end of the season.

This episode did seem quite transitional, giving us background information and a little peak into life with the Bauers.


Next week:

The scarily awesome actor Powers Boothe shows up, looking none the worse for wear since his days as evil preacher from hell, Jim Jones.


And, nothing says family picnic like putting Dad and Bro in a shallow grave.


Kinda ruins Thanksgiving AND Christmas.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Hour 5 (10-11 a.m.): Like All Families, the Bauers Are Effed Up Real Bad

Okay, apparently the theme of this season is “WHAT THE…?!”


We were so stunned, I had to lie down. For a week. In Puerto Vallarta.


Last week, Count Jackula was forced to shoot his good friend Curtis. We all know Curtis would have been a professional to the very end and would have NEVER gone off the deep end like that.


But he did. That was a stretch for me. I don’t buy it, and never will. So there.


May Curtis Manning rest in peace.



Nice of the feds to put him under some palm trees, at least.


Now, this week, not only is the guy who was the a$$hole doctor from ER and who sported a red afro in the movie Fame, JACK'S BROTHER, then ...



...come to find out on the previews for next eppy that Jack’s dad is none other than James Cromwell, that farmer from Babe!


Sure, I can buy the fact that terrorists got their hands on five suit nukes and accidentally blew one up in Valencia, California (now named by AAA as "Suit Nuke Assembly Capital of the World").


(Don’t you know it’s gotta SUCK to be a Valencian ANYTHING! On top of everything else, WE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT RADIOACTIVE ORANGES!)


And yes, I can believe that Kimberly Bauer ended up being chased by cougars, getting nearly kidnapped by Matt Dillon’s brother, and dating guys who tend to lose their limbs.



I CANNOT, however, buy the fact that Jack’s OTHER brother is a TALKING PIG!


I'm sure things get tense around Easter, what with all that ham-eating, which I've never really understood, considering Jesus was Jewish. HALLELUJAH! JESUS IS RISEN! PASS THE HAM?!


We'll save that discussion for another blog, I guess.

What about Buchanan’s refusal to shake Assad’s hand? SNAP! I mean, what should Assad expect? For Buchanan, that basically amounts to something like Osama bin Laden showing up at Quantico and asking to share tabouli recipes with the Bush twins.


That hug-fest wouldn't happen in the real world, but who ever said 24 was about the real world?

At our house, when it was revealed that Jack’s brother is the Evil Graham Cracker AND his dad is Babe’s farmer, we just sat there stunned. Needless to say there was more stuttering and sputtering at the Tyberspace house than a Sylvester the Cat cartoon.


And who is that Sam guy? Jack’s “Uncle Sam”? Mr. Bauer's “longtime companion,” perhaps?


Here Mr. Bauer and "Uncle Sam" eat out "platonically" together. Yeah, right.

And then there’s Marilyn, whom some of you may recognize as the other girlfriend from Ed.


Some sort of bad vibe going on there, for sure. Sing with me: “Marilyn and Jack, sittin’ in a tree, B-U-M-ping uhhh-guh-leeze!” Nothing ruins Christmas like your brother bustin' moves on the wife.
Here Jack plies Marilyn with a hard beverage. Empathize with her as she struggles to fend him off.

Let’s clear up Bubba's name real quick. Of course, we all recognized Jack's brother as the mysterious leader of the Bluetooth power broker conspirators from Day 5 who were controlling President Logan, hence the sputtering and screams at our house. All last season, I thought his name was “Graham,” as in Graham Cracker.


According to the official 24 website, his actual name is Graem, which is one of those ridiculous names rich people give their kids, like Geoff, Madeleine, Canadienne, Paris, Budapest, Reginald, Paraphernalia, Lickety, or Chiffarobe. However, Jack refers to him as “Gray,” as in “Your hair was a red afro when you were in Fame, but you went gray, so now you are bald. By the way, yes, I boinked Marilyn in the coat closet during Dad's retirement party. I mean, c'mon! Look at me and then look at you...”


"...can ya blame her?"

Was it me, or do the brothers have a slight disdain for each other? Maybe I missed something, but things were slightly tense between the two boys, perhaps the slightest suggestion of a Cain and Abel thing.

True, I could have read too much into the bone-crushing slug to Gray's face or the sudden attempt to suffocate him. I've found that nothing says “brotherly love” like a plastic bag over the head!


That plastic-bag scene reminded me of my last Thanksgiving, but that’s for another blog, too.

Next week: Chad Lowe (who will spend the first 30 minutes telling HIS side of the story)…


…and some nice, down-home brotherly BOOBY ELECTROCUTIN'!


...and hopefully in the same scene together! WOO HOO!

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Hours 3-4 (8-10 a.m.): Oh, no, you did NOT just do that!

What in the HELL just happened?!


The ba$tard producers of "24" (one of whom is Kiefer Sutherland himself, I believe) killed off Curtis Manning, one of my most favorite cast members OF ALL TIME! God bless Curtis Manning! And kudos to the actor who played him, Roger R. Cross.

How could they do that? Okay, I realize that killing off favorite characters is a way to get us to keep tuning in to see the bad guys get massacred in the end, but, for the love of Pete...


...why have him die at Jackula's hand? If the character had to die, it would've been MUCH more satisfactory to have Curtis die in the line of duty (though, technically this is, indeed, how he died). The viewers' ire would've been stoked, and our blood would be boiling all the same to see the bad guys get what they deserved. And what's with the cockamamie bad-blood back story? If the actor wants off the show, give the character a dire injury (like a bruised kidney or a savage paper cut or a severely misplaced pencil) and have him recuperate in the fully-staffed basement medical clinic/coffee bar off-camera. Geez. I'm pi$$ed.


Speaking of pi$$ing, Milo and Morris continue to have a pi$$ing contest at work, trying to alpha-dog it over Chloe. Apparently, Chloe and Milo have, shall we say, a "cinematic" past? Hmm. Mousy little Chloe has more of a social life than any of us realized:


YOWZA! Leopard skin!

Speaking of Milo and Morris, ONCE AGAIN we're reminded of CTU's oh-so-competent hiring practices. Last season, Brandy Buckwillie, the hobbit...


...this year, Morris, the British a$$...


Morris should've been fired a long time ago, just for being an A$$. Chloe deserves to be fired for bungling the Fayed interception thingy in the first hour, not to mention the fact that, after coming out of her shell and mowing down that guy a few seasons back, she started boinking all the male employees. Milo should be fired for boinking Chloe and filming it. And of course, fire Buchanan and Karen Hayes...JUST FOR BUMPIN' UGLIES!


Egad. Shall we place bets that, for another season, a MOLE is discovered spiking CTU's water fountains with incompetency juice?


FOR GOD'S SAKE, BACKGROUND CHECKS! SOMEBODY!

Meanwhile, back at Guatanamo, oops, I mean Palmdale, Numair, the Evil Terrorist/Computer Whiz/Nuclear Bomb-builder escapes. Easily. Way too easily. We learn that Fayed's plan all along was to get Numair released. Numair, by the way, sounds like an air-conditioning unit: "Honey, we need the A/C replaced. Did you call Sears?" "Nope. Numair's having a sale on their 10,000 BTU model. I'm calling them now!"


Ray, the Husband (and father of Scott, former adopted son of Jack from "Will & Grace") reveals that he'll go to any lengths to protect his family, including (HORRORS!) walking into an auto parts store...

...where he kills the owner for not carrying spark plugs for a '91 Hyundai Accent. For not controlling his anger, Ray the Husband gets pulverized by a nuclear bomb. That's what he gets for driving a Hyundai. Good times.

At least Just Jack's adopted son from "Will & Grace" doesn't buy the farm, although Ahmed does. Speaking of Ahmed, I thought for a few seconds that he was an older Bahrooz, who, the last we heard, had been spirited off by terrorists during Day 4.


My guess is he got brainwashed by the terrorists and is now an assassin known internationally as The Shovel.


You can't see the shovel, but it's there, about to whack an innocent bystander, thus all people with any skin darker than alabaster white should be kept in interment camps until we all forget they're there.

Anyhoo, back to the episode at hand, Jackula, O HAPPY DAY, then has to kill Curtis Manning because of that out-of-the-blue, wacky bad-blood back story. Where in the heck did that come from?! Has Curtis ever NOT been top-notch? NO! Has he ever been a rogue agent? NO! Has he always supported Jack through thick, thin and that guy from The Mummy? YES! Hasn't he always been a proper a$$-kickin' superhero? YES!


Curtis will be sorely missed. I'd like to think he, Tony, and Michelle are all up in heaven just relaxing at a nice little heavenly cocktail party.


And then the suit nuke goes off, to everyone's dismay. That's gotta suck.




Exact same thing happened when I tried to use WD-40 to light my charcoal briquettes. Ruined the weenies-on-sticks I was trying to fix.


Next week: though we THOUGHT the mysterious Arabic phrase meant "five visitors" referring to five suit nukes, Chloe does a quick online translation of the Arabic phrase and realizes that part of it was missing. It actually means..."five visitors FROM PUERTO RICO"!


A REUNION TOUR! O, THE HUMANITY!