24 4.23: "Day 4: 5AM - 6AM"

Written by Sam Montgomery
Directed by Jon Cassar

In which Mandy holds Tony hostage, holding off CTU as she uses Michelle to get her way, while time runs out to stop the nuclear warhead from striking its target…


Status Report

One of the greatest weaknesses of the middle stretch of episodes was its lack of narrative depth. Events were strung together by the barest of threads and character turns were largely dependent on plot contrivances. While that is increasingly the “24” staple, thanks to rather poor management of the writing staff (the producers are the writers, which is often a bad idea), it’s really a question of whether the series is an average action thriller or something more original and intriguing.

What this series often lacks is a sense of consequence. How many times has Jack run counter to the law, only to be given some degree of pardon or absolution in the end? For Jack and his allies, the ends justify the means, and when the writers acknowledge this, the series gains a depth of perspective. On the other hand, when the series champions such thought in a pseudo-conservative puffing of the chest, it comes across as dishonest.

The conceit of playing out a story over a 24-hour period is that extreme situations rarely deliver an immediate fallout. It takes time for choices to yield unintended results. At least, that’s true until one makes a mistake involving a person or organization with enough influence to deliver consequences at a vastly accelerated rate. In this episode, there is a mixture of past choices and consequences and immediate cost, and as with many of the recent episodes, this exploration gives the episode that aforementioned depth.

Michelle is understandably panicked about Tony’s fate, which is not promising, to say the least. If Mandy is anything (beyond intensely attractive, and that sweet but deadly voice!), she’s a cold and brutal assassin. Tony is only useful as a potential bargaining chip, and it doesn’t take her long to discover the rather public information regarding Tony and Michelle. With the deadline approaching, Mandy needs to get away, and Tony’s aid to Saunders in the third season provides the roadmap.

Meanwhile, the nuclear missile proves more or less impossible to detect, which means that it could hit any city in the United States. There is one slight logical flaw to this; once a certain amount of time has passed, the cities within a certain radius of the launch site would no longer be a likely target, since the missile was ostensibly fired in a specific direction. Granted, it makes sense that the general population would panic, and thus riots would break out around the country, but in terms of identifying a target and search grid, it would become increasingly possible to eliminate likely strike zones.

Pointing out Tony’s previous crime also leads to a slight plotting error. It makes perfect sense that Mandy would try to use Michelle and her relationship to Tony as leverage; it doesn’t make sense that Michelle’s cell phone number would be public information. Why wouldn’t CTU issue specific cell phones to their high-level employees with unlisted numbers, specifically to avoid the fact that people are constantly bypassing security by using personal cell phones? (This is only a slight error because personal cell phones have already been used this season, thus establishing that CTU still hasn’t taken precautions!)

In a nice twist, Michelle can’t make the same choice that Tony made. She tells Buchanan about Mandy’s call and helps CTU with the preparations necessary to maintain the ruse that she is, in fact, cooperating. Of course, none of them suspect, given the emotionally charged situation, that Mandy knows very well that Michelle didn’t approve of Tony’s actions. That would have been clear from the same source of information that Mandy used to uncover the connection and circumstance in the first place. So it makes perfect sense that Mandy would use that to her advantage. This is proven out when Mandy immediately goes into seduction mode (having taken on a role to gain the confidence of her neighbors) and takes a couple next door hostage.

President Logan goes back into schizophrenic mode when the Chinese consulate begins ramping up their efforts to identify Jack as the lead agent in the raid a few episodes earlier. The writers have had some issues with Logan’s characterization once his lack of confidence became annoying. After giving David all the power in the previous episode, he’s back to threatening Palmer with dire consequences, tossing out comments about failure. It’s possible that this is all part of a bigger picture, but for now, Logan is looking more than a little unstable.

Of course, Logan has reason to be worried, since the Chinese are apparently better at committing illegal acts on foreign soil than CTU agents. Cheng is just a little too good at getting his hands on Agent Bern, especially since one would expect that the CTU agents originally charged with his protection should have been aware of the potential for trouble. It was way too easy for Bern to be taken into Chinese custody.

Mandy (while looking ultra-fetching in her mini and boots) twists the knife in Michelle’s gut a little bit more, adding to Michelle’s inner turmoil and thus making her threats easy to believe. While CTU isn’t focusing on Tony’s rescue, they are focusing on the idea that Mandy is planning to use Tony as a viable hostage. It’s the picture that this methodology forms in the CTU mindset that Mandy has been trained to anticipate.

Sure enough, it’s only Jack that gets the vague impression that something is wrong when Mandy apparently walks in plain sight with Tony in tow. For one thing, it’s a lot more obvious a ruse than the writers let the characters admit. But Mandy is counting on emotions and anxiety to rule the moment, and that’s exactly what happens. When that car goes up, Michelle’s reaction is heartfelt and real. But while her reaction makes sense, it’s not quite so sensible for everyone else to take events at face value.

It does, however, make sense that the White House would need to shift gears from prevention to containment. It’s actually a little late for that, especially since it would have been easy to justify based on the attacks that had already taken place. Did it really take this long for Palmer to consider that the country needs to be ready to impose martial law? Nuclear meltdowns and presidential assassinations aren’t enough? (At least it gives Logan a chance to be nutty again.)

Michelle is left with the consequences of her decision. On the one hand, her decision to follow protocol and the law apparently led to the death of the man she loves. On the other, she would have betrayed everything she believes in for just the chance of his survival. The writers use the established momentum running against Tony as a way to shape the audience’s reactions to Michelle’s choice. It’s hard not to sympathize with her, because who hasn’t been dreading the possibility of Tony’s final exit?

Jack starts to use his brain as time runs out, but oddly enough, the thing that clues him in to Mandy’s deception is far more complicated than it needs to be. Before getting to the point where he notices the lack of ambient noise from the rain, he might have noticed that the sound of the car door closing was utterly absent from the otherwise pitch-perfect cell phone call. Considering how many times he ran that part of the video over and over, it’s insane that he didn’t mention it.

For that matter, Mandy is a professional, as Jack notes, so how could Tony use something so basic as a trail of blood to get CTU’s attention? Mandy was looking right at the ground on more than one occasion, and yet somehow managed to miss the bright red blood completely! Leaving aside that the rain was supposed to be hard enough to hear on a cell phone, thus hard enough to disperse fresh blood rather quickly, it’s a plot convenience that mars an otherwise strong episode.

Give Tony credit: he still manages to put up a fight after being mildly tortured. It actually says more about the professional abilities at Mandy’s disposal that she rather methodically takes him down and then resumes the steady escape without hesitation. Indeed, she’s wonderfully impassive when Jack is ready to let Tony die to get his hands on her; since she was clearly ready to kill Tony anyway, calling Jack’s bluff was the logical next step. Curtis shows some great timing, because if another second had ticked by, Tony would have been a dead man.

Tony’s survival is so unlikely, after all the build-up this season, that one is immediately concerned when Michelle proves a little hard to find. Suddenly there was the feeling that Michelle would do something intensely stupid in reaction to her part in Tony’s apparent death. Thankfully, she didn’t eat her gun or, worse, overdose on meds and then get the call that Tony was alive. Michelle looks damned happy, but thankfully, the audience isn’t off the hook yet, because with one episode to go, there’s still a lot of time for heroics.

Jack’s confrontation with Mandy speaks to his desperation. He knows enough about Mandy to realize that she’s a stone killer with a storied past; she might as well be Nina’s younger, more evil sister. Handing her full immunity for acts past and present is one hell of a free pass, and she knows it. And since she’s aware that the missile is coming for Los Angeles (what a shock), trying to get her cake and eat it too represents some quick thinking.

The final scene makes it clear, however, that the producers weren’t kidding when they said that the season would end in a very different way than expected. For all that Jack and CTU are closer to a resolution to this incredibly bad day, the Chinese are getting everything they need to deliver an unexpected blow. In retrospect, the writers were setting the stage for the fifth season, and if the producers are to be believed, the final episode is designed to be the springboard for future events. That means, in essence, that the Chinese witch hunt for Jack Bauer is more than just another subplot, and that the writers are actually planning very far ahead.

As far as this episode goes, however, it’s a stronger hour if only because the hostage situation, and everything that it represents, unearths emotions that have been relatively well hidden to this point. Michelle is on the verge of a complete breakdown, Jack is driven by a mixture of guilt and hope, and Palmer is forced to deal with the fact that his decisions have had seriously bad consequences, made worse by the presence of a very unstable First Executive.

The past three seasons have added more and more denouement to the story. The first season ended abruptly, the second season ended with a false cliffhanger, and the third season ended with Jack ready to lose it. As the stakes increase, so does the wear and tear on Jack’s life. With that final scene, the writers seem to promise that the same will be true this season. Since this is the kind of series were suffering by the main characters is in much demand, Jack’s life looks to be forever altered (and perhaps very confined) yet again.


Final Analysis

Overall, this episode continues to deliver consequences to the characters for their decisions, as the seeds for the finale (and apparently the fifth season) are laid out in unrelenting detail. The mind games are fun to watch, and the long build towards a character death is revealed as a clever ruse, used to push the other characters to their limits. Some minor nits remained, but the season looks to end on a higher note than one would have expected, not so long ago.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 8/10

Season Average (as of 4.23): 6.9