24 4.20: "Day 4: 2AM - 3AM"
Written by Peter Lenkov
Directed by Bryan Spicer
In which evidence leads CTU to a Chinese national holed up at the local consulate, and hard choices that must be made lead to serious consequences, political and personal…
Status Report
During the extended dry patch this season, one key element was missing from each episode, something that had been in place for each episode of the much better “meltdown” arc: a central theme. If it wasn’t exploring the morally relative aspects of counter-terrorism, then it was parallel character exploration. The recent return to a more layered form of storytelling has been far from smooth, and the writers have relied on some plot devices to get the audience back on board. This episode, however, presents the usual plot contrivances with a centralized theme: hard choices and their unintended consequences.
Few of the characters in this episode manage to escape without regrets for choices made. Self-doubt seems to be the order of the day. It starts off right where the theme began in the previous episode: President Logan’s decision to bring in David Palmer rather than make the hard choices himself. This becomes the trigger for a number of unintended consequences. But before any of that happens, the audience gets to have the uncomfortable realization that the President could, at any given time, cede authority and power to a civilian without the public ever knowing about it.
That used to happen a lot more in the past, before the 25th Amendment was added to the Constitution. The wives of sick Presidents would toss out executive orders and run the country without anyone having a clue that it was happening right under their noses. But this is a nation where many, right at this moment, believe that corporate and religious interests are essentially running the show, and so it resonates to have an unsure, conflicted President rubber-stamping the decisions of a “consultant”. No matter how well-regarded Palmer might be, he’s still a President who decided not to run again under unusual circumstances with a personal history that has been publicly questioned on more than one occasion.
Chloe’s information, gathered at the end of the previous episode, leads CTU to Lee Jong, a Chinese national who has been providing Marwan with the necessary expertise to reconfigure a stolen nuclear warhead. Jong, apparently well aware of the need for protection, has already taken up with the local Chinese consulate, which is legally considered Chinese soil. Palmer is left with the task of getting the consul to hand over Jong. The Chinese, however, are less than inclined to sell out one of their own, regardless of the situation.
Chloe reacts to her involvement in the firefight in the previous episode with an odd sense of detachment. Clearly she’s freaked out about the whole thing; what’s funny is how the rest of CTU, including Jack, simply accepts her lack of civility with barely a shrug. It’s easy to forgive someone’s foibles when they are as talented and vital to the mission as Chloe. It also helps that Chloe has more personality than anyone else in the secondary CTU employee pool!
Meanwhile, Jack gets a chance to visit Paul. Jack has had his life saved plenty of times before, but never by a civilian who has every reason to hate his guts and want him dead. Jack was already feeling a bit guilty about torturing Paul right in front of Audrey, only to take Paul into harm’s way hours later, so it’s not surprise that Jack is finding it hard to work out his emotions regarding Paul and his chances of recovery. Audrey hasn’t come right out and explained her feelings to Jack, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Jack has to know that his chances with Audrey are fading fast.
There’s such a sense of discomfort in that scene that it’s easy to tell that something more is going to happen. At that point, though, the writers make it look like Jack is coming to the realization that he’s losing Audrey to Paul, and that he’s finding it impossible to fight Paul over it now. This is especially important, because as the DOD representative, Audrey has quite a bit of power over Jack, and her emotional state regarding Jack could easily become a major source of trouble. After all, Daddy doesn’t like it when personal issues intrude on work.
The relationship between Tony and Michelle, at the same time, seems to be moving in the other direction. Michelle is definitely warming up to the idea of being around Tony again, and Tony has clearly never gotten over Michelle’s decision to leave him. A lot of the viewers have been cheering this character development on, and so it’s good to see them making progress. It’s also the perfect chance for the writers to drop the other shoe, and thankfully, it makes a certain amount of sense. It certainly felt like Tony’s last look at Jen held meaning, and the writers actually manage to make that happen by having Michelle react badly when Jen calls looking for her roomie. Tony is forced to reveal his feelings, and taken in tandem with later developments, it’s heartbreaking to see how his fortunes spiral right back into the gutter.
CTU manages to recover enough information from the recording of Marwan to work out the timetable for the next terrorist attack: within the next two hours. That means that by the end of the next episode, CTU needs to stop the attack or deal with the fallout (literally). It also means that CTU needs to question Jong as soon as possible. With the Chinese neatly keeping Jong in custody at least that long, Palmer is left with the executive decision to either drop the lead or commit an act of international war.
It all comes down to “plausible deniability”, and as far as Palmer is concerned, Jack is good for that. Never mind the fact that the same logic in the third season didn’t work out very well, and that Jack’s most recent example of a “rogue” operation completely failed to protect those who needed to have deniability. Palmer, a civilian consultant, uses the power of the President (which he shouldn’t really have) to order members of the US intelligence community to abduct a foreign national and thus commit an international incident.
Jack is certainly capable, but it doesn’t help that a number of other CTU employees must also necessarily be involved. Jack compounds the problem by calling Tony (logical, given earlier events) to provide support. Jack asks Tony to ensure that there’s no record of their activity, and Tony doesn’t hesitate. And just like that, Tony is placed in exactly the same kind of position that led to the charges of treason. As soon as Tony takes the first step to work outside Buchanan’s purview, it’s clear that it’s going to undermine whatever progress he’s made to this point.
While Tony provides the support (on a huge screen in the middle of room, which none of the other employees seem to notice), Jack infiltrates the Chinese consulate and abducts Jong. In the process, of course, Jong is shot and badly injured and the Chinese consul is killed by his own guards. All of which, of course, makes a bad political situation worse by several orders of magnitude. Palmer is now tasked with handling the initial stages of a possible war; if Logan was overwhelmed before, he’s certainly looking for a deeper bunker now!
Meanwhile, a couple other developments take place. Chloe, still upset by the fact that she killed someone, opens up to a sympathetic Edgar. Those two win the award for Unlikeliest 23 Couple Ever, but somehow, it’s not as annoying as one would expect. (And I’m still shocked by the fact that Chloe actually looks damn good under those frumpy clothes!) It’s a rare moment of sunshine in a very dark and disturbing episode.
Speaking of disturbing, there’s the fact that Audrey is in the process of thinking of how to let Jack down gently when Paul begins to go into cardiac arrest. Apparently the CTU medical staff is just as bad as they were with Driscoll’s daughter, because they completely miss the signs of internal bleeding. Granted, it’s not the easiest thing to detect, but since it takes them seconds to diagnose the problem, they were obviously aware of the possibility and should have been monitoring him for it.
The stage is thus set for things to go very, very badly at the end of the episode. In the meantime, things are not looking much better for anyone else. Palmer could easily suggest that the terrorists were behind the abduction, but he’s too busy trading outright denials to shift blame. It’s clear that Palmer’s not fooling anybody, and he knows it. Logan, for some odd reason, is happy to continue supporting Palmer, regardless of the circumstances, even when it’s leading to World War III. In fact, there’s no indication that Logan even asks how Jong is taken into custody or the conditions under which he asks for safety.
Buchanan’s anger at Tony is suspect on a number of levels, but it probably won’t matter much in the long run. It’s interesting that Buchanan doesn’t seem to be concerned with the several other CTU personnel physically present at the abduction, or the fact that he had to protect Jack (who was less than a day earlier a target of a manhunt) against the President for acting “on his own”. He’s only taking it out on Tony. The fact is, however, that Tony was following orders from the same authority that Buchanan saw fit to contradict, and more than that, Tony is getting under Michelle’s skin again. Professional and personal issues are a bad combination.
Just as Paul goes into surgery, Jack arrives with Jong, who is dying of internal bleeding himself. Before Jack knows the situation, he wheels Jong into the surgical theatre and demands that the medical staff make Jong the priority. When the doctor refuses, Jack actually pulls a gun on him. This is a bit extreme, and it feels like the writers are trying just a little too hard to generate maximum angst. But Jack has a point: Jong can save millions of lives with the information he can provide.
Jack is definitely not pleased, especially when Audrey starts screaming at him to let the doctors save Paul instead. But it’s hard to defend Audrey’s point of view, and it’s even harder to imagine that Buchanan or Michelle would leave Jack to be the one making that call. As chaotic as the situation is, especially when Paul himself goes into arrest again, Audrey should have been removed from the room.
Had Buchanan or Michelle been there, it would have prevented the situation that the writers are clearly trying to force: Audrey’s ability to place the blame for Paul’s death on Jack. Not only does Jack have no chance of ever regaining Audrey’s respect, he’s also going to be dealing with her father, his boss, who can easily dispense with an employee rather than alienate a daughter. It doesn’t matter that Heller is likely to agree with Jack’s interpretation, given the fact that Jack is essentially working under executive order to get the information from Jong, no matter the cost.
That doesn’t change the fact that Jack personally tries to save Paul’s life by every means available (even if he stops the fake CPR rather quickly). He keeps going after Curtis stops. He’s clearly stricken by the fact that he was involved in a decision that cost Paul his life. But morally, what else could he have done? It was a choice between saving two lives, and one of those lives meant saving millions more. Is Audrey going to consider the cost that her demand would have exacted?
Some elements of the final act are rather contrived, but given the fact that this is about hard choices and their consequences, it fits the theme perfectly. Jack makes a choice that will likely destroy his personal life and throw his future into chaos yet again, but as always, that choice is directly related to his desire to protect his country. He gets to learn, all over again, the lesson that he tried to teach Chase in the third season: personal relationships only get in the way.
Tony didn’t hesitate when it came to helping Jack serve the President (at least, the President’s proxy), even though he had to know that it could come back to haunt him. He might have been able to overcome Michelle’s problems with Jen; he’s going to have a much harder time defending himself against Buchanan’s accusations, especially if he can’t cite an official order in that defense.
All of these choices provide the writers with a number of interesting options for the remainder of the season. Tony is once again in the position where he could consider a grand gesture of bravery rather attractive, thus in jeopardy. Jack will probably find his personal life in the gutter again, and his position at DOD gone; the question is whether or not he’ll be allowed back at CTU, given his history. The rest of the characters could go in any direction; so far, only Chloe is safe, based on the fact that she’s slated to be a regular in a potential fifth season. Even Palmer may not get out of this intact. The stakes are suddenly a lot more personal, and while getting there felt a bit contrived, by keeping to a theme, the writers made things seem far more logical in the end.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode continued the incremental improvement from the extended slump in the middle of the season. In fact, this episode actually manages to develop a theme: hard choices and their devastating consequences. The final act is a bit contrived, but as over-the-top as it is, it is the logical dramatic culmination of the episode’s events. It’s going to be hard for the characters to emerge unscathed when all is said and done.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Season Average (as of 4.20): 6.8
Directed by Bryan Spicer
In which evidence leads CTU to a Chinese national holed up at the local consulate, and hard choices that must be made lead to serious consequences, political and personal…
Status Report
During the extended dry patch this season, one key element was missing from each episode, something that had been in place for each episode of the much better “meltdown” arc: a central theme. If it wasn’t exploring the morally relative aspects of counter-terrorism, then it was parallel character exploration. The recent return to a more layered form of storytelling has been far from smooth, and the writers have relied on some plot devices to get the audience back on board. This episode, however, presents the usual plot contrivances with a centralized theme: hard choices and their unintended consequences.
Few of the characters in this episode manage to escape without regrets for choices made. Self-doubt seems to be the order of the day. It starts off right where the theme began in the previous episode: President Logan’s decision to bring in David Palmer rather than make the hard choices himself. This becomes the trigger for a number of unintended consequences. But before any of that happens, the audience gets to have the uncomfortable realization that the President could, at any given time, cede authority and power to a civilian without the public ever knowing about it.
That used to happen a lot more in the past, before the 25th Amendment was added to the Constitution. The wives of sick Presidents would toss out executive orders and run the country without anyone having a clue that it was happening right under their noses. But this is a nation where many, right at this moment, believe that corporate and religious interests are essentially running the show, and so it resonates to have an unsure, conflicted President rubber-stamping the decisions of a “consultant”. No matter how well-regarded Palmer might be, he’s still a President who decided not to run again under unusual circumstances with a personal history that has been publicly questioned on more than one occasion.
Chloe’s information, gathered at the end of the previous episode, leads CTU to Lee Jong, a Chinese national who has been providing Marwan with the necessary expertise to reconfigure a stolen nuclear warhead. Jong, apparently well aware of the need for protection, has already taken up with the local Chinese consulate, which is legally considered Chinese soil. Palmer is left with the task of getting the consul to hand over Jong. The Chinese, however, are less than inclined to sell out one of their own, regardless of the situation.
Chloe reacts to her involvement in the firefight in the previous episode with an odd sense of detachment. Clearly she’s freaked out about the whole thing; what’s funny is how the rest of CTU, including Jack, simply accepts her lack of civility with barely a shrug. It’s easy to forgive someone’s foibles when they are as talented and vital to the mission as Chloe. It also helps that Chloe has more personality than anyone else in the secondary CTU employee pool!
Meanwhile, Jack gets a chance to visit Paul. Jack has had his life saved plenty of times before, but never by a civilian who has every reason to hate his guts and want him dead. Jack was already feeling a bit guilty about torturing Paul right in front of Audrey, only to take Paul into harm’s way hours later, so it’s not surprise that Jack is finding it hard to work out his emotions regarding Paul and his chances of recovery. Audrey hasn’t come right out and explained her feelings to Jack, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Jack has to know that his chances with Audrey are fading fast.
There’s such a sense of discomfort in that scene that it’s easy to tell that something more is going to happen. At that point, though, the writers make it look like Jack is coming to the realization that he’s losing Audrey to Paul, and that he’s finding it impossible to fight Paul over it now. This is especially important, because as the DOD representative, Audrey has quite a bit of power over Jack, and her emotional state regarding Jack could easily become a major source of trouble. After all, Daddy doesn’t like it when personal issues intrude on work.
The relationship between Tony and Michelle, at the same time, seems to be moving in the other direction. Michelle is definitely warming up to the idea of being around Tony again, and Tony has clearly never gotten over Michelle’s decision to leave him. A lot of the viewers have been cheering this character development on, and so it’s good to see them making progress. It’s also the perfect chance for the writers to drop the other shoe, and thankfully, it makes a certain amount of sense. It certainly felt like Tony’s last look at Jen held meaning, and the writers actually manage to make that happen by having Michelle react badly when Jen calls looking for her roomie. Tony is forced to reveal his feelings, and taken in tandem with later developments, it’s heartbreaking to see how his fortunes spiral right back into the gutter.
CTU manages to recover enough information from the recording of Marwan to work out the timetable for the next terrorist attack: within the next two hours. That means that by the end of the next episode, CTU needs to stop the attack or deal with the fallout (literally). It also means that CTU needs to question Jong as soon as possible. With the Chinese neatly keeping Jong in custody at least that long, Palmer is left with the executive decision to either drop the lead or commit an act of international war.
It all comes down to “plausible deniability”, and as far as Palmer is concerned, Jack is good for that. Never mind the fact that the same logic in the third season didn’t work out very well, and that Jack’s most recent example of a “rogue” operation completely failed to protect those who needed to have deniability. Palmer, a civilian consultant, uses the power of the President (which he shouldn’t really have) to order members of the US intelligence community to abduct a foreign national and thus commit an international incident.
Jack is certainly capable, but it doesn’t help that a number of other CTU employees must also necessarily be involved. Jack compounds the problem by calling Tony (logical, given earlier events) to provide support. Jack asks Tony to ensure that there’s no record of their activity, and Tony doesn’t hesitate. And just like that, Tony is placed in exactly the same kind of position that led to the charges of treason. As soon as Tony takes the first step to work outside Buchanan’s purview, it’s clear that it’s going to undermine whatever progress he’s made to this point.
While Tony provides the support (on a huge screen in the middle of room, which none of the other employees seem to notice), Jack infiltrates the Chinese consulate and abducts Jong. In the process, of course, Jong is shot and badly injured and the Chinese consul is killed by his own guards. All of which, of course, makes a bad political situation worse by several orders of magnitude. Palmer is now tasked with handling the initial stages of a possible war; if Logan was overwhelmed before, he’s certainly looking for a deeper bunker now!
Meanwhile, a couple other developments take place. Chloe, still upset by the fact that she killed someone, opens up to a sympathetic Edgar. Those two win the award for Unlikeliest 23 Couple Ever, but somehow, it’s not as annoying as one would expect. (And I’m still shocked by the fact that Chloe actually looks damn good under those frumpy clothes!) It’s a rare moment of sunshine in a very dark and disturbing episode.
Speaking of disturbing, there’s the fact that Audrey is in the process of thinking of how to let Jack down gently when Paul begins to go into cardiac arrest. Apparently the CTU medical staff is just as bad as they were with Driscoll’s daughter, because they completely miss the signs of internal bleeding. Granted, it’s not the easiest thing to detect, but since it takes them seconds to diagnose the problem, they were obviously aware of the possibility and should have been monitoring him for it.
The stage is thus set for things to go very, very badly at the end of the episode. In the meantime, things are not looking much better for anyone else. Palmer could easily suggest that the terrorists were behind the abduction, but he’s too busy trading outright denials to shift blame. It’s clear that Palmer’s not fooling anybody, and he knows it. Logan, for some odd reason, is happy to continue supporting Palmer, regardless of the circumstances, even when it’s leading to World War III. In fact, there’s no indication that Logan even asks how Jong is taken into custody or the conditions under which he asks for safety.
Buchanan’s anger at Tony is suspect on a number of levels, but it probably won’t matter much in the long run. It’s interesting that Buchanan doesn’t seem to be concerned with the several other CTU personnel physically present at the abduction, or the fact that he had to protect Jack (who was less than a day earlier a target of a manhunt) against the President for acting “on his own”. He’s only taking it out on Tony. The fact is, however, that Tony was following orders from the same authority that Buchanan saw fit to contradict, and more than that, Tony is getting under Michelle’s skin again. Professional and personal issues are a bad combination.
Just as Paul goes into surgery, Jack arrives with Jong, who is dying of internal bleeding himself. Before Jack knows the situation, he wheels Jong into the surgical theatre and demands that the medical staff make Jong the priority. When the doctor refuses, Jack actually pulls a gun on him. This is a bit extreme, and it feels like the writers are trying just a little too hard to generate maximum angst. But Jack has a point: Jong can save millions of lives with the information he can provide.
Jack is definitely not pleased, especially when Audrey starts screaming at him to let the doctors save Paul instead. But it’s hard to defend Audrey’s point of view, and it’s even harder to imagine that Buchanan or Michelle would leave Jack to be the one making that call. As chaotic as the situation is, especially when Paul himself goes into arrest again, Audrey should have been removed from the room.
Had Buchanan or Michelle been there, it would have prevented the situation that the writers are clearly trying to force: Audrey’s ability to place the blame for Paul’s death on Jack. Not only does Jack have no chance of ever regaining Audrey’s respect, he’s also going to be dealing with her father, his boss, who can easily dispense with an employee rather than alienate a daughter. It doesn’t matter that Heller is likely to agree with Jack’s interpretation, given the fact that Jack is essentially working under executive order to get the information from Jong, no matter the cost.
That doesn’t change the fact that Jack personally tries to save Paul’s life by every means available (even if he stops the fake CPR rather quickly). He keeps going after Curtis stops. He’s clearly stricken by the fact that he was involved in a decision that cost Paul his life. But morally, what else could he have done? It was a choice between saving two lives, and one of those lives meant saving millions more. Is Audrey going to consider the cost that her demand would have exacted?
Some elements of the final act are rather contrived, but given the fact that this is about hard choices and their consequences, it fits the theme perfectly. Jack makes a choice that will likely destroy his personal life and throw his future into chaos yet again, but as always, that choice is directly related to his desire to protect his country. He gets to learn, all over again, the lesson that he tried to teach Chase in the third season: personal relationships only get in the way.
Tony didn’t hesitate when it came to helping Jack serve the President (at least, the President’s proxy), even though he had to know that it could come back to haunt him. He might have been able to overcome Michelle’s problems with Jen; he’s going to have a much harder time defending himself against Buchanan’s accusations, especially if he can’t cite an official order in that defense.
All of these choices provide the writers with a number of interesting options for the remainder of the season. Tony is once again in the position where he could consider a grand gesture of bravery rather attractive, thus in jeopardy. Jack will probably find his personal life in the gutter again, and his position at DOD gone; the question is whether or not he’ll be allowed back at CTU, given his history. The rest of the characters could go in any direction; so far, only Chloe is safe, based on the fact that she’s slated to be a regular in a potential fifth season. Even Palmer may not get out of this intact. The stakes are suddenly a lot more personal, and while getting there felt a bit contrived, by keeping to a theme, the writers made things seem far more logical in the end.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode continued the incremental improvement from the extended slump in the middle of the season. In fact, this episode actually manages to develop a theme: hard choices and their devastating consequences. The final act is a bit contrived, but as over-the-top as it is, it is the logical dramatic culmination of the episode’s events. It’s going to be hard for the characters to emerge unscathed when all is said and done.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Season Average (as of 4.20): 6.8
posted by John Keegan | 18:17
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home