Written by Mitch Cyrus

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Just three episodes left ... one hour the next two weeks and then the final two hour episode on May 18th. And what a season of "24" it has been. The show gets slightly more far fetched each season, but the entertainment value this season has been off the charts. Jack has three hours to beat the illness and kill Tony Almeida. Unless of course, like some in our movies/TV message forum think, Tony isn't really a bad guy and that there is a method to his madness. What does Mitch think? He tells us in his latest "24" recap ... If Jack Bauer would have been a Spartan, the movie would have been called ‘1'.

Recap

Less than 10 minutes after Galvez explodes the abandoned apartment building, we have a boatload of fire trucks there controlling the blaze.  Having just yesterday driven through Washington D.C. on my way back from Vacation, the idea that you could get ANYWHERE in that city within 10 minutes is about as believable as thinking that the Indians starting rotation would lead the league in ERA.

On the opening credits this week, we are teased with the prospect of a Chloe and Aaron Pierce appearance.  One can only hope so.

Jack is getting treatment from Dr. Hottie, who is giving him some medication to stop his vocal cords from spazzing.  We could have used some of that medicine on Saturday when the Browns announced Alex Mack as the first pick, because pretty much everyone at the Winking Lizard had their vocal cords go into spasms.  Come to think of it...we did have medicine for it.  It was called copious amounts of alcohol.

In any case...Jack's finally able to talk enough to tell Renee to put out an APB on Tony.  Two FBI agents are standing outside their SUV listening to it like they were listening to a game when Tony waltzes up and shoots both of them in cold blood.  I can now officially say that Tony has racked up probably a few too many federal agent kills to have any chance of redemption.  And I get the feeling it will be Jack pulling the trigger, just like he did with Henderson (Peter Weller) in season 5.  Yep, former partners of Jack who go bad tend to end up with higher mortality rates than characters in a Victor Hugo novel (see also; Myers, Nina).

Tony shows up at a cheesy hotel usually used by the policemen on "Cops" to catch crack hoes plying their trade (except that on the inside, it's what you'd expect at a smaller room in the Waldorf).  Tony issues the line that has been foolishly uttered by too many men (and sometimes women) who are now corpses; "you don't have to worry about Jack Bauer.  He's not going to be a problem."  Sort of like me saying "that pond's on the left, no chance of me hooking into it" (right before the ball goes to sleep with the fishes). 

It's time for the 30^th "24" Edition of "No Honor Among Thieves".  Galvez gets his money, and Tony gets a phone book.  Tony didn't like his gift, so he decides to return it to Galvez, knocking the gun out of his hand.  Tony then decides to gift wrap Galvez in a plastic shower curtain.  How symmetric is that?  Two hours ago, an FBI agent holds a gun on the unarmed Galvez, who manages to still take him out.  This time?  It's Galvez holding the gun on an unarmed Tony, with Galvez making a trip to the morgue slab.

Wild Tim is at the Oval Office catching President Taylor up on the latest screw-ups...in this case, the almost suicide of JonVoight.  Seems like the Marine guarding him saw him put The Red Pill in his mouth, and managed to get it out before he had totally ingested it.  Should have had an Air Force MP watching him, as he would have been too busy watching sports scores on his iPhone to have noticed if JV was doing a hari-kari disembowelment with a spork (and spare me your emails this time about offending the poor Air Force.  1. Take this as a compliment to the Marines; and 2. I was formerly in the Air Force/ANG...so I'm allowed to make fun of it).

Not that JV living is any big shock to anyone, since they showed him at the previews at the end of last week's episode. The conversation between the President and Wild Tim is interrupted by Jack calling with the Ultimate Mea Culpa, vis-à-vis Tony.  When Allison tells him about the revelation JV gave about the Blue Man Conspiracy Group, Jack comes up with the idea of interrogating him, offering the one thing that he'd do anything for...a role in a Martin Scorsese film.  Sorry, Jon, not going to happen in this lifetime...but I'm sure the artistic genius that is Michael Bay will continue to allow you to make a fool of yourself in his big budget/high volume extravaganzas.  So without that, Jack can only offer him "proof of death"...which would be what the BMCG would need to stop from going after his family.  I have the perfect idea for "proof of death"...get him a gig on "Celebrity Apprentice". (OK, so technically, that's only "Proof of Career Death", but work with me).

FakeTricia (now a redhead since she's ditching the wig...making her the doppelganger to Renee), shows up at Tony's fleabag hotel, and is only slight irked at seeing Galvez's body.  Tony tells her that they shouldn't turn the canister over, but should instead use it to kill lots and lots of people and topple the government...I guess Tony's just getting in touch with his inner Timothy McVeigh now.  My only question is that if Tony thought it was such a great idea to use the bioweopon to kill thousands of people...why did he not just allow himself to be detected by StarkRavingWood, which would have allowed them to launch the missiles?  Same results, right?

Forgive me...here I am using LOGIC again. 

OK...who kidnapped the First Slut and replaced her with a Good Olivia?  Seems this Olivia is now no longer the conniving little shrew willing to screw herself to the top, but instead is acting as the Righteous Crusader, highly pissed that Mommy is about to cut a deal to put the man who killed her brother into the Witness Protection program.  She couldn't convince the President that it was a bad idea, but she was so good at upsetting her mother that she made her cry, which counts for something, I guess (then again, that's a talent any girl over the age of 13 possesses).

FakeTricia is conducting a teleconference with the entire Blue Man Conspiracy Group...all of whom are up and about at 3:20 AM...setting the stage for the climax of this year's season as they attempt one last humongous terrorist attack.  Of course, all of them are obviously rich and powerful people, none of whom seem to know the other members.  Kind of like an internet bulletin board, isn't it?  Although I would have enjoyed it more had most of them be a bunch of geeks living in their parents' basements.

As for FakeTricia, nothing makes her hornier than a unanimous vote to commit mass murder.  God, I hope they at least draped a blanket over Galvez's body before going at it.  Man, that would be about an eleven-point-eleven on the Creepy Meter.

Jack gets the Interview with the Vampire...and quite frankly, it's not how I would have liked to have seen it go down.  I wanted the really big confrontation, and instead, JV puts up about as much of a fight as the Pistons did in the series against the Cavaliers (come to think of it, he's about as old as most of the Pistons' starters).  However, the fact that JV tells Jack that he respects him and thinks of him as "a hero" is viewed by Jack as if he were just called "a magnificent football prospect" by Dwight Clark.  Jack recognizes the slam, and gets his Indignation Level up to a Joe Scarborough.

With the breadcrumbs of information JV gave Jack, he was able to figure out Everything; the attack, the use of terrorists for assigning the blame, and the winning numbers for tonight's PowerBall.  An awestruck President Taylor gives him the keys to the country, and in his first command as Chief-MuthaSporker-In-Charge, Jack requests that all CTU servers be broken out of mothballs and brought back online.  And we know what that means, don't we?

Chloe!!...Chloe!!...Chloe!!!

By the way...notice how at the hotel where Chloe was staying, Chloe was sharing the bed with little Soon-to-be-in-permanent-therapy Prescott, while Morris was sleeping on the pull-out sofa?  I told you hours ago that cooperating with the FBI and cracking Chloe's encryption would not end up well for the snotty Brit.  She does warm somewhat back up when asking him to take the boy and run for the hills to get away from any potential biological attack.  And by "warm", I mean about the temperature of the last few slices of last night's pizza that had been sitting on the counter all night...but that's pretty much smoking for Chloe.

OK...credit goes to Janis for a good line (finally).  After telling Renee that it would be impossible to do the type of data mining they need to do to search for the group or individuals the BMCG plans to use for the Blame Game, Renee tells her that they'll be reactivating the CTU servers.  "So what does that make us?  CTU-Lite?"  Heh.  Yes, it does...and that makes YOU Chloe-lightweight...and a very mediocre copy as well.

Oh, and as an IT professional with many years of experience...I must say that this is the first time I've ever seen two full racks of servers put into a server room in the matter of ten minutes.  No problem...don't worry about routers, firewalls, switches, or anything else...just plug and play!  And to think that it takes me three days and numerous bribes to our infrastructure department just to get ONE server placed in a rack an brought online.  I guess I see where I rate.

Janis also gets put in her place by Renee as she seems to think she's back on Real Time with Bill Maher, and that people actually want to hear her viewpoints on morality, the Constitution, or the location of her latest skanky tattoo. 

Leaving this scene before my head explodes, we get a quick back story of Jibraan, the guy who they are going to frame as a wacky terrorist.  Seems he takes care of his teenaged brother, and might do something else...but we've seen all of this before, and we know he's either going to be dead soon, or more than likely, will end up helping out Jack (and THEN being killed).  In any case, my I-Don't-Give-A-Shitometer is nearing the Red Line when it comes to what may or may not happen to the Patsy Brothers.

Now for something that puts it far into the red; we have Olivia wasting some time whining to Aaron about JV's "Get Out of Jail Alive" Card...and when Aaron makes the mistake of asking "anything I can do?" Olivia responds with "Other than kill Jonas Hodges?".  Aaron gives her the "why do I always get the psycho bitches?" look, while Olivia's Inner Weasel kicks back into high gear, and she calls up fellow political operative, who is tired, gay, and totally without morals (I guess the common thread here is that sleaze has no bias to race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation).  Seems that her fellow political pit bull friend Martin "knows people"...and by that, I mean more of the Sopranos type people as opposed to the Village People (my weekly groan inducing Cheap Shot).  I wonder who Olivia might want killed?  So it looks like having a hitman bumping of JV is going to be the subplot for the last four hours...which guarantees it to be just as boring as the subplot for the FIRST four hours; the First Old Man's investigation into the circumstances of his son's "suicide".

Yawn.

OK...highlight of the night...Chloe is back in the building, and Janis is bitching to her about the servers.  When Chloe talks about what it would take to get them to work, Janis snarks, "well, maybe you want to take over"

"Only if you want it to work right".  WHAM, with the Right Hand!

Janis is STILL whining, and I'm personally wondering if it wasn't an unscripted moment when Janeane Garafalo did enough drugs to think that is was all real, and she decided to act like the former host of an Air America show that no one listened to with all of her complaints about the "evil government agency".   Jack speaks up for an entire nation by going positively, 100% Ape Shit on her.  I mean, his Indignation Level is now at a full Sean Hannity on Election Night.  Wow...that might have just been the best moment of the season...we'll even forgive him for saying "President Palmer" instead of President Taylor.  I kind of look at it as a "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" moment.

Don't stop him...he's on a roll.

As it was, the show should have ended it right there...but we get 30 more seconds of the kidnapping of the Patsy Brothers.  Bleh.

Final Thoughts

Three weeks and we're done ... Final two hour episode on May 18.  And I'll take this opportunity to announce that on Tuesday, May 19, I'll be hosting a show on BlogTalkRadio to discuss the season.  I hope to have several other writers from TheClevelandFan joining me, as well as taking calls from any of you maniacs who have been reading this column throughout the year.  More details will be coming next week, and you can keep track of the upcoming shows on the website.

In the interest of The Fairness Doctrine, can we get Chuck Norris to play one of the Blue Man Conspiracy Group, so that he can go off on some Rant about Texas seceding from the Union?  And then maybe we can get Pamela Anderson playing someone bitching about Animal Rights, and then Andy Dick playing someone bitching about Alien Rights (I'm not talking Mexicans here...I'm talking weird people from other planets).

Sick Jack is getting a bit old.  They really need to get him through this by the START of the two-hour finale.  Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the Healing of Jack Bauer will be the last 30 minute semi-epilogue of this season, after the Blowing Away of Tony Almeida.

Bauer Body Count

25.  (Mitch opens his mouth to say something, and then just sadly shakes his head and turns away).

Odds of Survival

Off the Island: Galvez.  And I thought having sex in front of the family dog was a bit disturbing.

Tony (100:1) -   Tony has just went too far off the reservation.  Hopefully he's have a better farewell speech than Henderson had.

FakeTricia (75:1) - She's trying real hard to be a nasty woman in the vein of Nina Myers or Mandy.  I know Mandy.  Mandy is a friend of mine.  You, FakeTricia....are no Mandy.

Jon Voight (50:1) - And anyone is supposed to CARE whether or not Olivia gets away with this plot to kill him?

BMCG Exec Will Patton (25:1) - Sadly disappointed to find out that he's not taking marching orders from Phillip Bauer.  Too boring to live.

Jiraan Patsy (20:1) - I'm trying to give a damn...and failing miserably.

Janis (10:1) -  Derek Anderson is more likable.

Little Brother Patsy (5:1) - Giving A Damn Mechanism still not functioning, Captain!

GrIgor Seaton (4:1) - On the Milk Carton as a Permanent Member.  Hopefully a cow kicks his brains in.

Jack (1: ∞ +1)