24 6.9: "Day 6: 2PM - 3PM"

Written by Adam Fierro
Directed by Brad Turner

In which more details emerge regarding those behind the terrorist attacks, which prompts Phillip to take direct measures to cover his tracks, while the conspiracy against Wayne continues…

Status Report

As the episode begins, Fayed has escaped another CTU dragnet with the three remaining suitcase nukes and the device required to activate them for detonation. As expected, Fayed is working with others to maximize the extent of the damage caused by the remaining devices. This ally is revealed as Grenenko, the man who was working with Graem and Phillip to get the nukes on United States soil in the first place. Whatever sloppiness might have plagued the previous few episodes, the beginning of this installment provides some potential for something more cohesive.

That said, it seems hard to believe that Phillip Bauer wouldn’t be under some measure of surveillance, given the connections between the Bauer company and the terrorist activity. While Phillip does a rather thorough job of manipulating Jack, there’s little reason why the rest of CTU would adopt a hands-off policy. And one would think that CTU would know to intercept calls from cell phones out of their own building by now!

In a surprising move, the writers finally bring back Jack’s lack of confidence in his abilities. Instead of questioning the circumstances of Graem’s death, he considers the possibility of his own complicity and offers himself up to the consequences. Contrast this to Jack during the third season, when he was clearly in the wrong with his heroin addiction and felt that those consequences were an unnecessary impediment to his operational duty. While the previous episodes themselves don’t quite bear out Jack’s reaction in this installment, it’s nice to see that the writers didn’t drop that layer of the arc completely.

While Wayne tries to work with Assad on a compromise statement, he faces growing opposition from his own vice president and other members of the government. It’s nice that the writers addressed the question of why Wayne would choose someone with such a divergent point of view, but it still doesn’t make sense that Wayne would fail to vet his allies. Wouldn’t he have learned from the experiences and death of his brother?

As mentioned in the review for the previous episode, the actions of those supporting strict national security measures undermine the virtues of that side of the argument. From the perspective of the plot, however, this is actually a fairly logical move. This provides a ready connection between Phillip Bauer’s allies in industry and government and those seeking to take control. More stringent national security and a climate of fear play into the hands of Phillip’s commercial enterprise.

This would represent an interesting evolution of the plot arc from the fifth season. Coming in the wake of President Logan’s debacle, how would the controlling interests respond? Perhaps they would try to find another candidate who might be persuaded to implement their agenda, someone with popular support but a lack of experience. This would explain why the terrorist attacks began precisely at the beginning of Wayne’s term in office, and why plans were already in place to eliminate him if he failed to give in to the demand for strict national security. And it would be sensible that Phillip’s company, if implicated in the events of the fifth season, would also be responsible for those contingencies as well.

This also explains why the writers would introduce Graem’s wife as someone Jack has loved and the possibility that Josh is Jack’s son. These characters would be easy pawns for Phillip to use against Jack, should Jack get too close to the truth. That plot progression begins in this episode, and without much subtlety. For all the plot possibilities introduced by the various threads currently in play, it seems a bit too obvious for Phillip to reveal his true colors to Marilyn in such a heavy-handed fashion. How did Phillip remain in the clear for so long, if his methods were so obvious?

As noted previously, the overwhelming thrust of this season appears to be an exploration of why Jack is who he is. It’s not just about the process of restoring his confidence in himself after his time in China; it’s also about revealing the origins of his sense of duty in the first place. One would assume that the intention is to put Jack in a position to face the same emotional challenges in the present that influenced him in the past. Hence the clumsy dialogue about how Jack’s issues with his father and his company led him to the military and intelligence work, and how Marilyn was also a part of that.

If that is the intention of the writers, then they should be given credit. This is the culmination of plot threads that began, essentially, in the fourth season. Perhaps this is the influence of writers such as David Fury and Manny Coto, who are known for their ability to identify long-term plot potentials. The trick would be avoiding the temptation to attribute everything in the past decade of Jack’s life to Phillip’s manipulations. A more reasonable approach would be to suggest, in a relatively broad sense, that Jack’s rise and success within the intelligence community eventually placed him at odds with his father’s interests in a more direct fashion, thus precipitating the past few seasons worth of intrigue (at least the elements that now appear to be connected by a common source).

It’s an impressive concept, and one that the producers and writers should be congratulated for, if that was their endgame. Yet certain concerns remain. If that was the guiding plan for the past couple of seasons, then one cannot help but note that the execution of that broad design was less than perfect. In fact, one must inevitably remember that the writers are often making things up as they go along. So perhaps this is an example of a writing staff managing to overcome the limitations of their own flawed process. Whatever the case, the success of these concepts will depend greatly on how the endgame, pre-planned or cobbled together, is ultimately achieved.

Final Analysis

Overall, this episode takes a number of plot elements from the first third of the season and suggests a common thread. While all of the pieces are beginning to fit together into an impressive whole, there are still some fundamental flaws in the execution of that design. That said, if the writers manage to capitalize on the framework they have set in place, the season could be ready for a major swing in the right direction.

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

Final Rating: 8/10

(Season Average: 7.2)