24 4.13: "Day 4: 7PM - 8PM"
Written by Anne Cofell
Directed by Rodney Charters
In which Jack and Paul must repel mercenaries hired by McLennen-Forster, while Michelle’s arrival at CTU causes tension when Tony is dissatisfied with his reduced role…
Status Report
After the mess that was the previous episode, the writers begin the long and torturous road to recovery with this installment. Perhaps because the season is essentially starting over, now that the first half of the story has been all but resolved, the pacing feels more like the first few episodes. Unfortunately, that means that one can easily predict where the story is going to go by the end of the hour, with few surprises along the way.
The episode is really split between two centers of conflict: Jack’s standoff against the Evil Defense Contractor and Michelle’s standoff with Tony at CTU. It’s somewhat unnerving to say that the second plot thread was more unpredictable than the first, but it’s entirely true. Certainly it’s easier to forgive a lack of internal logic when dealing with people’s high-strung emotions, so the writers were able to gloss over the more obvious contrivances. But the shootout was problematic for a number of fundamental reasons.
Continuing the truly stupid response by McLennen-Forster employees, who seem hell-bent on placing the company in serious trouble, Conlon and his thugs beat the snot out of Paul in an effort to get whatever he printed out from Marwan’s files. Once again: if the whole point of the EMP bomb was to deflect blame to the terrorists and this exonerate the company, why attack Jack and Paul for uncovering anything? Just plain stupid!
Minutes into her new role at CTU (and looking incredibly hot from every single camera angle), Michelle makes it clear that she passed the “CTU Division Management Course”, previously aced by Mason and Chappelle. In other words, Jack and Paul are immediately rendered secondary to the information they’ve acquired. It sounds harsh, but Michelle is absolutely correct. After all, how many other agents have been killed or maimed over the years, all in the name of national security? Jack is no different, and Paul, well, he’s the living definition of collateral damage.
Tony’s initial response, however, steps over a mighty wide line. For someone who wanted out of the situation at least twice since Jack came calling for help, Tony is awfully annoyed at being given simple tech work under Michelle’s watchful eye. Realistically, what else is she supposed to do? Heller was outside of his authority in giving Tony command in the first place, and there’s the little matter of his recent track record. Michelle may have personal issues with Tony, but she’s also perfectly within her rights from a professional standpoint.
Granted, Audrey has reason to defend Tony, given that he was directly responsible for saving her life, but it’s ludicrous for her to say that her father doesn’t like personal issues to get in the way of the job. For one thing, that’s every executive’s point of view, at least until that executive’s own personal problems become overwhelming. But more recently, Heller has been dealing with personal issues with his son, Audrey and Paul, Driscoll and her daughter, and that pesky kidnapping, where he let his daughter’s life take full priority. Heller is hardly Mr. Objective when it comes to personal matters affecting the job.
Meanwhile, Marwan takes advantage of the chaos (as if he had been counting on it) by ensuring that his Air Force lackey, Anderson, is ready to go. At the rate that things are progressing for the information from McLennen-Forster, it will be at least a few more episodes before Jack and his allies can get a good feel for the next stage of the operation. If Marwan (and the writers) are smart, there should be something else as a distraction before the big finale.
Conlon continues the stupid McLennen-Forster strategy by bringing in a mercenary squad to kill Jack and Paul. Supposedly this is a tactic that still leaves McLennen-Forster with little liability, but this doesn’t make sense. Does anyone really expect McLennen-Forster to be able to take control of the area, kill Jack and anyone with him, and then eliminate all record of their involvement by the time the National Guard steps in? Just the fact that CTU knows the score is enough. The writers need to sell the idea, however, to make the audience buy into the story.
In a move almost certainly designed to highlight the “patriotic” and “non-terrorist” side of the Arab-American community (in quotes because it’s still a kind of stereotype), Jack and Paul end up hiding out for their Alamo-esque last stand in a sporting goods store. The owners, Arab-Americans, decide to stay and help Jack and Paul because they are tired of being smeared with the reputation that the terrorists have engendered for all Arab-Americans. It’s a nice sentiment, but the writers could have been a lot more subtle in getting the message across to the audience. A PSA in the middle of the scene would have been less ham-handed.
In an inevitable moment, Audrey finally gets to sit down with her father and discuss her reaction to Paul’s torture. This is an important scene for a number of reasons. For one, it represents the weakness in the writing of late, because this consequence was a foregone conclusion. But more importantly, in tandem with Audrey’s later scene with Tony, it represents the first step towards an exit strategy for Jack. If Heller doesn’t like personal issues getting in the way of the job, then he’s likely to kick Jack to the curb if Audrey splits with him, and that leaves Jack that much closer to resuming his CTU work.
In a scene that gives Michelle a chance to establish herself as a strong and competent leader (thus contrasting even further with Driscoll and her poor leadership), Sarah tries to push Michelle into giving her everything that Driscoll promised. Michelle promptly calls Security and has Sarah escorted out of the building. If the audience didn’t love Michelle before, she certainly wins a few hearts in that moment!
Of course, that leaves Michelle in a bind. Curtis needs people with experience, and Sarah was a good worker, even if she was an idiot in every other sense. Completely forgetting all the issues he had with him in the previous episode (and thus wiping out a potential plot thread), Curtis points out that Tony knows his business and could be an asset. Michelle is forced to take that into account, and because the writers had her overreact earlier in the episode, she’s forced to eat crow now. (Had she remained in character earlier, however, this conflict would have seemed even more contrived.)
Speaking of contrived, Tony then takes the opportunity and abuses it by getting in Michelle’s face when she makes a conservative decision. Tony is completely right, which is, again, a writing tactic. It’s meant to make Tony look better than Michelle, and frankly, it’s unnecessary. Tony could have easily made the same argument without the confrontational attitude, and it might have even given Michelle pause. By getting in her face, he practically ensured that she wouldn’t listen.
This is just the beginning of a somewhat tedious back-and-forth that is designed to waste time, keeping the resolution of Jack’s standoff to the final act of the hour. Audrey points out everything that Tony has done right to Michelle, which shouldn’t factor into his current role at all, and Michelle actually makes a point to half-apologize to Tony to smooth things over. Tony responds by being a jerk and completely missing the point of Michelle’s gesture. At which point someone really ought to take both of them into the room and charge up the paddles for a little CTU shock treatment.
Ultimately, of course, Tony is proven right, and because Michelle kept the CTU forces on the perimeter of the EMP zone, Jack is forced to stage a defense with limited resources for a good 5-7 minutes. That doesn’t sound like a very long time, but given how many mercenaries there are and the number of rounds per second their weapons can deliver, it’s a freakin’ eternity. Michelle knows that, and she has to know that the whole mess is going to look very bad to Heller and Division, especially if the evidence gets away.
After a steady retreat (in which one of the shop owners survives when a bullet is reflected by a clip on his jacket, and bullets cause sparks on sweatshirts), it all comes down to Conlon tracking down Jack and Paul in the back room. CTU agents manage to gun down Conlon, but when his fingers move, it’s rather obvious what’s going to happen. It takes a second to remember that Audrey was ready to hold Jack responsible if anything happened to Paul, and how Audrey was beginning to see Jack in a negative light.
Even after being proven right, Tony has enough sense to see that he was being a jerk with Michelle and all but forcing her to react with a different strategy. But he goes a bit too far into the melodramatic when he offers to leave, especially knowing the current situation. Michelle, on the other hand, knows better than to let him leave, even if it would make things easier on her. There an odd mother/child dynamic there, which could get interesting or incredibly creepy, if Tony doesn’t get his act together.
Meanwhile, Paul completes the job of becoming an unlikely hero when he takes Conlon’s bullet to save Jack’s life. He takes a gut shot, which certainly explains why he’s ready to knell over right there on the floor, and even gets out some melodramatic last words. Jack is a good guy, so he wants to save Paul’s life, but he’s got to know that his relationship with Audrey is pretty much over in that instant.
The episode ends on a high note, at least, when part of Marwan’s plan is revealed. Anderson’s role as an Air Force officer will apparently give him access to President Keeler. While assassination attempts have become somewhat cliché for this series over the past four seasons, this is a rather intelligent strategy. Marwan is using multiple levels of distraction and expectation to disrupt efforts to stop his plan from moving forward, and if this plot thread is any indication, Anderson is likely to get himself on Air Force One and in perfect position to kill Keeler. It’s going to be interesting to see CTU work this plot out, especially if Marwan’s allies continue to throw distractions into the mix.
Like the early episodes of the season, this installment is guilty of marking time. The plot doesn’t really move forward very much, as if the writers are trying to give themselves another few days to work out something more substantial. It’s great to see Michelle again, for instance, but there’s little more to her character right now than her past relationship with Tony. There’s no sense of her progress since leaving Tony, which might have gone a long way towards explaining her point of view.
The other drawback is that nothing happened in this episode that couldn’t have been predicted. Beyond Marwan’s plans (which given the Air Force connection, could have been speculated), everything was already on the table. In fact, certain conflicts that the writers set the stage for never actually came to fruition. Sure, that’s unexpected, but it’s also sloppy. The point of the series is that things follow a certain logical if frenetic progression. When the pacing becomes glacial and the logic inconsistent, it takes something away from the whole.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode was another disappointment. The writers seem to be marking time, letting the plot threads plod along while they work out what’s going to happen in the rest of the season. Along the way, logic flies out the window, characters act like children, and somewhere along the way, a PSA on tolerance was forced into the mix. There are signs that the story could pick up soon; this is necessary if the writers ever want to regain what they’ve squandered.
Writing: 0/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 1/4
Final Rating: 5/10
Season Average (as of 4.13): 7.1
Directed by Rodney Charters
In which Jack and Paul must repel mercenaries hired by McLennen-Forster, while Michelle’s arrival at CTU causes tension when Tony is dissatisfied with his reduced role…
Status Report
After the mess that was the previous episode, the writers begin the long and torturous road to recovery with this installment. Perhaps because the season is essentially starting over, now that the first half of the story has been all but resolved, the pacing feels more like the first few episodes. Unfortunately, that means that one can easily predict where the story is going to go by the end of the hour, with few surprises along the way.
The episode is really split between two centers of conflict: Jack’s standoff against the Evil Defense Contractor and Michelle’s standoff with Tony at CTU. It’s somewhat unnerving to say that the second plot thread was more unpredictable than the first, but it’s entirely true. Certainly it’s easier to forgive a lack of internal logic when dealing with people’s high-strung emotions, so the writers were able to gloss over the more obvious contrivances. But the shootout was problematic for a number of fundamental reasons.
Continuing the truly stupid response by McLennen-Forster employees, who seem hell-bent on placing the company in serious trouble, Conlon and his thugs beat the snot out of Paul in an effort to get whatever he printed out from Marwan’s files. Once again: if the whole point of the EMP bomb was to deflect blame to the terrorists and this exonerate the company, why attack Jack and Paul for uncovering anything? Just plain stupid!
Minutes into her new role at CTU (and looking incredibly hot from every single camera angle), Michelle makes it clear that she passed the “CTU Division Management Course”, previously aced by Mason and Chappelle. In other words, Jack and Paul are immediately rendered secondary to the information they’ve acquired. It sounds harsh, but Michelle is absolutely correct. After all, how many other agents have been killed or maimed over the years, all in the name of national security? Jack is no different, and Paul, well, he’s the living definition of collateral damage.
Tony’s initial response, however, steps over a mighty wide line. For someone who wanted out of the situation at least twice since Jack came calling for help, Tony is awfully annoyed at being given simple tech work under Michelle’s watchful eye. Realistically, what else is she supposed to do? Heller was outside of his authority in giving Tony command in the first place, and there’s the little matter of his recent track record. Michelle may have personal issues with Tony, but she’s also perfectly within her rights from a professional standpoint.
Granted, Audrey has reason to defend Tony, given that he was directly responsible for saving her life, but it’s ludicrous for her to say that her father doesn’t like personal issues to get in the way of the job. For one thing, that’s every executive’s point of view, at least until that executive’s own personal problems become overwhelming. But more recently, Heller has been dealing with personal issues with his son, Audrey and Paul, Driscoll and her daughter, and that pesky kidnapping, where he let his daughter’s life take full priority. Heller is hardly Mr. Objective when it comes to personal matters affecting the job.
Meanwhile, Marwan takes advantage of the chaos (as if he had been counting on it) by ensuring that his Air Force lackey, Anderson, is ready to go. At the rate that things are progressing for the information from McLennen-Forster, it will be at least a few more episodes before Jack and his allies can get a good feel for the next stage of the operation. If Marwan (and the writers) are smart, there should be something else as a distraction before the big finale.
Conlon continues the stupid McLennen-Forster strategy by bringing in a mercenary squad to kill Jack and Paul. Supposedly this is a tactic that still leaves McLennen-Forster with little liability, but this doesn’t make sense. Does anyone really expect McLennen-Forster to be able to take control of the area, kill Jack and anyone with him, and then eliminate all record of their involvement by the time the National Guard steps in? Just the fact that CTU knows the score is enough. The writers need to sell the idea, however, to make the audience buy into the story.
In a move almost certainly designed to highlight the “patriotic” and “non-terrorist” side of the Arab-American community (in quotes because it’s still a kind of stereotype), Jack and Paul end up hiding out for their Alamo-esque last stand in a sporting goods store. The owners, Arab-Americans, decide to stay and help Jack and Paul because they are tired of being smeared with the reputation that the terrorists have engendered for all Arab-Americans. It’s a nice sentiment, but the writers could have been a lot more subtle in getting the message across to the audience. A PSA in the middle of the scene would have been less ham-handed.
In an inevitable moment, Audrey finally gets to sit down with her father and discuss her reaction to Paul’s torture. This is an important scene for a number of reasons. For one, it represents the weakness in the writing of late, because this consequence was a foregone conclusion. But more importantly, in tandem with Audrey’s later scene with Tony, it represents the first step towards an exit strategy for Jack. If Heller doesn’t like personal issues getting in the way of the job, then he’s likely to kick Jack to the curb if Audrey splits with him, and that leaves Jack that much closer to resuming his CTU work.
In a scene that gives Michelle a chance to establish herself as a strong and competent leader (thus contrasting even further with Driscoll and her poor leadership), Sarah tries to push Michelle into giving her everything that Driscoll promised. Michelle promptly calls Security and has Sarah escorted out of the building. If the audience didn’t love Michelle before, she certainly wins a few hearts in that moment!
Of course, that leaves Michelle in a bind. Curtis needs people with experience, and Sarah was a good worker, even if she was an idiot in every other sense. Completely forgetting all the issues he had with him in the previous episode (and thus wiping out a potential plot thread), Curtis points out that Tony knows his business and could be an asset. Michelle is forced to take that into account, and because the writers had her overreact earlier in the episode, she’s forced to eat crow now. (Had she remained in character earlier, however, this conflict would have seemed even more contrived.)
Speaking of contrived, Tony then takes the opportunity and abuses it by getting in Michelle’s face when she makes a conservative decision. Tony is completely right, which is, again, a writing tactic. It’s meant to make Tony look better than Michelle, and frankly, it’s unnecessary. Tony could have easily made the same argument without the confrontational attitude, and it might have even given Michelle pause. By getting in her face, he practically ensured that she wouldn’t listen.
This is just the beginning of a somewhat tedious back-and-forth that is designed to waste time, keeping the resolution of Jack’s standoff to the final act of the hour. Audrey points out everything that Tony has done right to Michelle, which shouldn’t factor into his current role at all, and Michelle actually makes a point to half-apologize to Tony to smooth things over. Tony responds by being a jerk and completely missing the point of Michelle’s gesture. At which point someone really ought to take both of them into the room and charge up the paddles for a little CTU shock treatment.
Ultimately, of course, Tony is proven right, and because Michelle kept the CTU forces on the perimeter of the EMP zone, Jack is forced to stage a defense with limited resources for a good 5-7 minutes. That doesn’t sound like a very long time, but given how many mercenaries there are and the number of rounds per second their weapons can deliver, it’s a freakin’ eternity. Michelle knows that, and she has to know that the whole mess is going to look very bad to Heller and Division, especially if the evidence gets away.
After a steady retreat (in which one of the shop owners survives when a bullet is reflected by a clip on his jacket, and bullets cause sparks on sweatshirts), it all comes down to Conlon tracking down Jack and Paul in the back room. CTU agents manage to gun down Conlon, but when his fingers move, it’s rather obvious what’s going to happen. It takes a second to remember that Audrey was ready to hold Jack responsible if anything happened to Paul, and how Audrey was beginning to see Jack in a negative light.
Even after being proven right, Tony has enough sense to see that he was being a jerk with Michelle and all but forcing her to react with a different strategy. But he goes a bit too far into the melodramatic when he offers to leave, especially knowing the current situation. Michelle, on the other hand, knows better than to let him leave, even if it would make things easier on her. There an odd mother/child dynamic there, which could get interesting or incredibly creepy, if Tony doesn’t get his act together.
Meanwhile, Paul completes the job of becoming an unlikely hero when he takes Conlon’s bullet to save Jack’s life. He takes a gut shot, which certainly explains why he’s ready to knell over right there on the floor, and even gets out some melodramatic last words. Jack is a good guy, so he wants to save Paul’s life, but he’s got to know that his relationship with Audrey is pretty much over in that instant.
The episode ends on a high note, at least, when part of Marwan’s plan is revealed. Anderson’s role as an Air Force officer will apparently give him access to President Keeler. While assassination attempts have become somewhat cliché for this series over the past four seasons, this is a rather intelligent strategy. Marwan is using multiple levels of distraction and expectation to disrupt efforts to stop his plan from moving forward, and if this plot thread is any indication, Anderson is likely to get himself on Air Force One and in perfect position to kill Keeler. It’s going to be interesting to see CTU work this plot out, especially if Marwan’s allies continue to throw distractions into the mix.
Like the early episodes of the season, this installment is guilty of marking time. The plot doesn’t really move forward very much, as if the writers are trying to give themselves another few days to work out something more substantial. It’s great to see Michelle again, for instance, but there’s little more to her character right now than her past relationship with Tony. There’s no sense of her progress since leaving Tony, which might have gone a long way towards explaining her point of view.
The other drawback is that nothing happened in this episode that couldn’t have been predicted. Beyond Marwan’s plans (which given the Air Force connection, could have been speculated), everything was already on the table. In fact, certain conflicts that the writers set the stage for never actually came to fruition. Sure, that’s unexpected, but it’s also sloppy. The point of the series is that things follow a certain logical if frenetic progression. When the pacing becomes glacial and the logic inconsistent, it takes something away from the whole.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode was another disappointment. The writers seem to be marking time, letting the plot threads plod along while they work out what’s going to happen in the rest of the season. Along the way, logic flies out the window, characters act like children, and somewhere along the way, a PSA on tolerance was forced into the mix. There are signs that the story could pick up soon; this is necessary if the writers ever want to regain what they’ve squandered.
Writing: 0/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 1/4
Final Rating: 5/10
Season Average (as of 4.13): 7.1
posted by John Keegan | 15:08
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