24 4.11: "Day 4: 5PM - 6PM"
Written by Joel Surnow and Michael Loceff
Directed by Jon Cassar
In which Jack hunts down Marwan as the timetable becomes critical, while Driscoll discovers that her divided attentions might have saved the country, but not someone she loves…
Status Report
Picking up where the last episode left off, with a very uncomfortable marriage intervention hosted by Jack Bauer, the fun and games resume when it’s time to get answers out of Paul Gaines. What follows is something that will likely come back to haunt Jack for the rest of the day, and possibly, many years to come.
Torture is used as a plot device in many situations in the course of a given season of this show, and it reflects a certain gritty reality. In the real world, when terrorists are detained under much less immediate circumstances, there are reports of torture and humiliation by military and intelligence personnel. Jack’s never been afraid to get his hands incredibly dirty in the name of protecting the American people (and often, his own family and loved ones), and when he’s on a deadline, he’s even more likely to step over the line. Taking electrical wires and giving Paul some jitters is nothing compared to shooting a suspect and cutting off his head!
That said, Jack should have made sure that Audrey was out of the room when it happened, because now she’s seen the cold and brutal side of Jack’s personality. Not only that, but Paul’s connection to the terrorists is accidental at best, and that makes it look like Jack was acting more out of personal interests than job-related needs. As mentioned after the previous episode, this could cause serious complications in their relationship.
Marwan, who seems to be the central Middle Eastern figure within the terrorist plot up to this point in the season, arrives at IDS Systems, where a terrorist named Ali has been pleasantly running the override on his work computer without anyone knowing about it. (This makes one wonder what co-workers are really doing when it looks like they’re working, doesn’t it?) Elsewhere in the building, on an abandoned floor, Ali orders his fellow terrorists to take Curtis away and kill him. Curtis, however, pulls a Jack Bauer and kills his captors with his bare hands. If the writers have done anything this season, they’ve reaffirmed the fact that death comes swiftly and without remorse on this show!
To make things worse for Jack, Paul’s connection to the terrorists’ lair turns out to be the man who bought the property from Paul through attorneys. That man was Marwan, using an alias. It’s rather clear at this point that Paul was an unwitting pawn in the terrorists’ game, and what’s worse, he was probably used because of his connection to Heller through Audrey. This, however, puts Jack on the right track, sending him to the building where the override is waiting. As the timetable promised, the resolution to the nuclear threat is coming fast and furious.
Meanwhile, Driscoll seems to be getting her cake and eating it too. Tony is doing a nice enough job of getting some bits and pieces of information out of Dina, but she’s still quite dedicated to her cause, and she doesn’t tell him anything overly useful. Driscoll, on the other hand, gets to watch Tony step very close to the line, getting her the information she needs to undermine Jack if her power erodes too far. While this doesn’t happen in the short term, apparently, understanding that this is her overriding motivation explains the price she pays by the end of the hour.
As if on cue, while Ali and Marwan do everything possible to keep Curtis from contacting CTU, Driscoll is pulled away from the interrogation when Maya (her schizophrenic daughter) starts acting up because Mommy can’t take the time to chat. The doctors are getting concerned, because it’s getting harder to keep the young woman under control. One of the early mistakes that Driscoll made was bringing Maya to CTU, where the doctors aren’t familiar with her condition; that comes back to bite her in a huge way.
Audrey brings up an interesting question, which may or may not become a critical plot point (if the writers remember that it’s still an open question later in the season): why would the terrorists go to all the trouble to get Paul involved, if Paul wasn’t even aware that Audrey and her father would be in Los Angeles? The answer could be very simple: they knew Heller’s son would be there, so the connection to Paul was never intended to intersect with Heller’s presence in Los Angeles. It was either meant to confuse anyone carrying out an investigation or something that connects with a future plot point that hasn’t been revealed yet.
Falling right into Driscoll’s trap, Tony asks for and gets permission to use force and threats to get Dina to talk. Dina holds out until Tony reveals that the pardon for Behrooz could easily been rendered invalid. Perhaps playing on her religious beliefs, he reminds Dina that prison is horrible enough that Behrooz could kill himself in there. Dina finally relents regarding Marwan, and then mentions something very important to the rest of the season: there are other cells out there, and they have plans of their own.
With twenty minutes before the next meltdown, the race is on. Curtis gets his hands on a phone, and he calls to tell Sarah that Marianne is dead. She lets him know that Jack’s on the way, so now everyone is on the same page. Curtis, in possession of an access card, has exactly what Jack needs. Of course, that leaves Paul and Audrey alone while he’s saving the world, but that’s a problem for another day.
With the fate of millions on her department’s shoulders, aware that Edgar will have to instruct someone to manually use the override to prevent the meltdown crisis at each reactor, Driscoll once again finds herself interrupted when dealing with Heller and President Keeler by news of Maya’s worsening condition. The CTU doctors rightfully point out that Maya needs better attention from people qualified for her care. It’s amazing to think that the doctors wouldn’t take such measures and then inform Driscoll once the crisis is averted, rather than place it on her shoulders, but that’s the position that Driscoll put herself in earlier in the season. Driscoll, however, makes it worse by simply putting it off, rather than definitively dealing with it and sending Maya to the right care.
Jack and Curtis quietly slip into IDS Systems, trying to identify Marwan before they are discovered. Ali, however, tips off Marwan, and the jig is up. Marwan fires off a couple of shots into the ceiling, and like good employees running for their lives, everyone else starts screaming and running about with little or no order. This pretty much lets Marwan get out of the room. Jack runs after him, leaving Curtis to deal with the override.
By now, the next meltdown should already be underway, so there’s no time to deal with anything else. Driscoll is contacted about a crisis in the clinic, but clearly, she has to deal with the terrorists first. It’s the right call, but thanks to her earlier lack of decisive thinking, there’s a terrible cost. Edgar saves the day again, despite a short but riveting moment of truth, bringing the current crisis to a relative conclusion.
Once the crisis is averted, Driscoll turns her attention back to Maya. Of course, it’s too late, since the doctors somehow let the crazy girl get her hands on a sharp object long enough to not only slash her wrists but also bleed to death without anyone trying to do anything about it. If the CTU doctors’ incompetence was already apparent when they failed to send Maya to the proper facility, it’s even more apparent when they fail to grab Maya and attempt to save her life once she passed out. It takes a long time to bleed out from wrists, and given the utter lack of blood on the walls and floor, it looks like the doctors spent more time cleaning up the place than dealing with Maya.
Setting aside the unbelievable nature of Maya’s death, thematically, it does make sense. Driscoll spent a lot of her time recently plotting ways to make herself look good and undermining those making the real decisions, and she was directly responsible for letting Marianne into CTU without good reason. She also got in Jack’s way far too much in the earlier episodes of the season. Her hypocritical actions and scheming may not have resulted in problems for Jack and Tony, as she probably intended, but it did have a price tag: she essentially caused her daughter’s death by losing sight of her true priorities: stopping the terrorists and preserving her loved ones.
It’s a rather fine distinction that, hopefully, the writers won’t dismiss. It’s not that Driscoll simply needed to see to the needs of the country over the needs of her family. Even Jack would agree, in the end, that the one overrides the other. While that’s how it ended, the decision didn’t have to come down to that; Driscoll had hours to deal with Maya’s situation correctly. If she could find five minutes to scheme with Sarah in the previous episode, then she had five minutes to see her daughter and arrange for her safe transport to the proper facilities under the crisis was over.
Of course, with the nuclear crisis more or less over, Jack still has to hunt down Marwan. The next episode is the end of the first half of the season, and typically, this is when the “complication” phase of a season arc hits a high note, taking the status quo and tossing it on its ear. If the promos are to be believed, this is certainly true for Driscoll and Tony, a situation that ought to make Michelle’s almost inevitable return to the series that much more interesting. But there’s also reason to believe that Jack’s pursuit of Marwan will reveal another cell with further plans for the day’s events, spinning the season into a new but related direction.
The writers continue to keep up the overall quality of the story arc, despite the lack of advance preparation time, but like the previous episode, the cracks are beginning to show. In particular, while Driscoll’s previous decisions make the plot device thematically viable, Maya’s death requires the CTU doctors to show an amazing degree of incompetence. If this is used as the pretext for Driscoll’s exit, as one might easily assume, then it wasn’t handled as well as it should have been.
Thankfully, most of the other plot threads advance in logical ways. The business personnel working with the terrorists were apparently helping to maintain the front organization needed to hide the use of the override. Why they were doing so is still unknown, and those businessmen could be the common link between various cells and their operations. Curtis, Edgar, and Sarah are far less annoying now that they have settled in as characters, and while Paul is still a pain, his connection to the story is still not entirely clear.
For now, the good continues to outweigh the bad, and the energy level is more than sufficient to keep the tension at an elevated level. Part of that was the timetable of the nuclear threat, however, so the writers need to move quickly into the next phase of the crisis and prevent the plot threads from losing momentum.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode continued to maintain the strong sense of tension that has been the hallmark of the fourth season ever since the initial slump, but the strain is starting to show. Driscoll’s character thread is problematic because the details of the situation weren’t logically conceived. On the other hand, the writers have brought the season to a satisfactory midpoint, providing hope that they can deliver the strongest season since the first.
Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 7/10
Season Average (as of 4.11): 7.6
Directed by Jon Cassar
In which Jack hunts down Marwan as the timetable becomes critical, while Driscoll discovers that her divided attentions might have saved the country, but not someone she loves…
Status Report
Picking up where the last episode left off, with a very uncomfortable marriage intervention hosted by Jack Bauer, the fun and games resume when it’s time to get answers out of Paul Gaines. What follows is something that will likely come back to haunt Jack for the rest of the day, and possibly, many years to come.
Torture is used as a plot device in many situations in the course of a given season of this show, and it reflects a certain gritty reality. In the real world, when terrorists are detained under much less immediate circumstances, there are reports of torture and humiliation by military and intelligence personnel. Jack’s never been afraid to get his hands incredibly dirty in the name of protecting the American people (and often, his own family and loved ones), and when he’s on a deadline, he’s even more likely to step over the line. Taking electrical wires and giving Paul some jitters is nothing compared to shooting a suspect and cutting off his head!
That said, Jack should have made sure that Audrey was out of the room when it happened, because now she’s seen the cold and brutal side of Jack’s personality. Not only that, but Paul’s connection to the terrorists is accidental at best, and that makes it look like Jack was acting more out of personal interests than job-related needs. As mentioned after the previous episode, this could cause serious complications in their relationship.
Marwan, who seems to be the central Middle Eastern figure within the terrorist plot up to this point in the season, arrives at IDS Systems, where a terrorist named Ali has been pleasantly running the override on his work computer without anyone knowing about it. (This makes one wonder what co-workers are really doing when it looks like they’re working, doesn’t it?) Elsewhere in the building, on an abandoned floor, Ali orders his fellow terrorists to take Curtis away and kill him. Curtis, however, pulls a Jack Bauer and kills his captors with his bare hands. If the writers have done anything this season, they’ve reaffirmed the fact that death comes swiftly and without remorse on this show!
To make things worse for Jack, Paul’s connection to the terrorists’ lair turns out to be the man who bought the property from Paul through attorneys. That man was Marwan, using an alias. It’s rather clear at this point that Paul was an unwitting pawn in the terrorists’ game, and what’s worse, he was probably used because of his connection to Heller through Audrey. This, however, puts Jack on the right track, sending him to the building where the override is waiting. As the timetable promised, the resolution to the nuclear threat is coming fast and furious.
Meanwhile, Driscoll seems to be getting her cake and eating it too. Tony is doing a nice enough job of getting some bits and pieces of information out of Dina, but she’s still quite dedicated to her cause, and she doesn’t tell him anything overly useful. Driscoll, on the other hand, gets to watch Tony step very close to the line, getting her the information she needs to undermine Jack if her power erodes too far. While this doesn’t happen in the short term, apparently, understanding that this is her overriding motivation explains the price she pays by the end of the hour.
As if on cue, while Ali and Marwan do everything possible to keep Curtis from contacting CTU, Driscoll is pulled away from the interrogation when Maya (her schizophrenic daughter) starts acting up because Mommy can’t take the time to chat. The doctors are getting concerned, because it’s getting harder to keep the young woman under control. One of the early mistakes that Driscoll made was bringing Maya to CTU, where the doctors aren’t familiar with her condition; that comes back to bite her in a huge way.
Audrey brings up an interesting question, which may or may not become a critical plot point (if the writers remember that it’s still an open question later in the season): why would the terrorists go to all the trouble to get Paul involved, if Paul wasn’t even aware that Audrey and her father would be in Los Angeles? The answer could be very simple: they knew Heller’s son would be there, so the connection to Paul was never intended to intersect with Heller’s presence in Los Angeles. It was either meant to confuse anyone carrying out an investigation or something that connects with a future plot point that hasn’t been revealed yet.
Falling right into Driscoll’s trap, Tony asks for and gets permission to use force and threats to get Dina to talk. Dina holds out until Tony reveals that the pardon for Behrooz could easily been rendered invalid. Perhaps playing on her religious beliefs, he reminds Dina that prison is horrible enough that Behrooz could kill himself in there. Dina finally relents regarding Marwan, and then mentions something very important to the rest of the season: there are other cells out there, and they have plans of their own.
With twenty minutes before the next meltdown, the race is on. Curtis gets his hands on a phone, and he calls to tell Sarah that Marianne is dead. She lets him know that Jack’s on the way, so now everyone is on the same page. Curtis, in possession of an access card, has exactly what Jack needs. Of course, that leaves Paul and Audrey alone while he’s saving the world, but that’s a problem for another day.
With the fate of millions on her department’s shoulders, aware that Edgar will have to instruct someone to manually use the override to prevent the meltdown crisis at each reactor, Driscoll once again finds herself interrupted when dealing with Heller and President Keeler by news of Maya’s worsening condition. The CTU doctors rightfully point out that Maya needs better attention from people qualified for her care. It’s amazing to think that the doctors wouldn’t take such measures and then inform Driscoll once the crisis is averted, rather than place it on her shoulders, but that’s the position that Driscoll put herself in earlier in the season. Driscoll, however, makes it worse by simply putting it off, rather than definitively dealing with it and sending Maya to the right care.
Jack and Curtis quietly slip into IDS Systems, trying to identify Marwan before they are discovered. Ali, however, tips off Marwan, and the jig is up. Marwan fires off a couple of shots into the ceiling, and like good employees running for their lives, everyone else starts screaming and running about with little or no order. This pretty much lets Marwan get out of the room. Jack runs after him, leaving Curtis to deal with the override.
By now, the next meltdown should already be underway, so there’s no time to deal with anything else. Driscoll is contacted about a crisis in the clinic, but clearly, she has to deal with the terrorists first. It’s the right call, but thanks to her earlier lack of decisive thinking, there’s a terrible cost. Edgar saves the day again, despite a short but riveting moment of truth, bringing the current crisis to a relative conclusion.
Once the crisis is averted, Driscoll turns her attention back to Maya. Of course, it’s too late, since the doctors somehow let the crazy girl get her hands on a sharp object long enough to not only slash her wrists but also bleed to death without anyone trying to do anything about it. If the CTU doctors’ incompetence was already apparent when they failed to send Maya to the proper facility, it’s even more apparent when they fail to grab Maya and attempt to save her life once she passed out. It takes a long time to bleed out from wrists, and given the utter lack of blood on the walls and floor, it looks like the doctors spent more time cleaning up the place than dealing with Maya.
Setting aside the unbelievable nature of Maya’s death, thematically, it does make sense. Driscoll spent a lot of her time recently plotting ways to make herself look good and undermining those making the real decisions, and she was directly responsible for letting Marianne into CTU without good reason. She also got in Jack’s way far too much in the earlier episodes of the season. Her hypocritical actions and scheming may not have resulted in problems for Jack and Tony, as she probably intended, but it did have a price tag: she essentially caused her daughter’s death by losing sight of her true priorities: stopping the terrorists and preserving her loved ones.
It’s a rather fine distinction that, hopefully, the writers won’t dismiss. It’s not that Driscoll simply needed to see to the needs of the country over the needs of her family. Even Jack would agree, in the end, that the one overrides the other. While that’s how it ended, the decision didn’t have to come down to that; Driscoll had hours to deal with Maya’s situation correctly. If she could find five minutes to scheme with Sarah in the previous episode, then she had five minutes to see her daughter and arrange for her safe transport to the proper facilities under the crisis was over.
Of course, with the nuclear crisis more or less over, Jack still has to hunt down Marwan. The next episode is the end of the first half of the season, and typically, this is when the “complication” phase of a season arc hits a high note, taking the status quo and tossing it on its ear. If the promos are to be believed, this is certainly true for Driscoll and Tony, a situation that ought to make Michelle’s almost inevitable return to the series that much more interesting. But there’s also reason to believe that Jack’s pursuit of Marwan will reveal another cell with further plans for the day’s events, spinning the season into a new but related direction.
The writers continue to keep up the overall quality of the story arc, despite the lack of advance preparation time, but like the previous episode, the cracks are beginning to show. In particular, while Driscoll’s previous decisions make the plot device thematically viable, Maya’s death requires the CTU doctors to show an amazing degree of incompetence. If this is used as the pretext for Driscoll’s exit, as one might easily assume, then it wasn’t handled as well as it should have been.
Thankfully, most of the other plot threads advance in logical ways. The business personnel working with the terrorists were apparently helping to maintain the front organization needed to hide the use of the override. Why they were doing so is still unknown, and those businessmen could be the common link between various cells and their operations. Curtis, Edgar, and Sarah are far less annoying now that they have settled in as characters, and while Paul is still a pain, his connection to the story is still not entirely clear.
For now, the good continues to outweigh the bad, and the energy level is more than sufficient to keep the tension at an elevated level. Part of that was the timetable of the nuclear threat, however, so the writers need to move quickly into the next phase of the crisis and prevent the plot threads from losing momentum.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode continued to maintain the strong sense of tension that has been the hallmark of the fourth season ever since the initial slump, but the strain is starting to show. Driscoll’s character thread is problematic because the details of the situation weren’t logically conceived. On the other hand, the writers have brought the season to a satisfactory midpoint, providing hope that they can deliver the strongest season since the first.
Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 7/10
Season Average (as of 4.11): 7.6
posted by John Keegan | 18:48
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