24: A Bury Good Episode

Just when I thought I knew exactly where the show was going, Emerson orders Jack and Tony to bury the body.

We’ll get to the terrific final scene in a bit, but first let’s talk about the rest of last night’s episode, which felt like the show was settling into this season’s storyline following last week’s two-night, four-hour marathon extravaganza.

The hour (as always) picked up right where we left off with Jack and Tony working undercover with Emerson’s group as they attempted to break into former Prime Minister Matobo’s panic room to kidnap the man (and his wife) and deliver him to Col. Dubaku.

Meanwhile, Special Agt. Moss continued to be totally undermined and mostly ignored as junior-Bauer badass Agt. Renee Walker (pictured, right) insisted on going after Jack and Tony alone and even turned off her cell phone after admitting to Moss that she tortured the sniper in the hospital. I’m just a newspaper reporter and even I’m a little scared of turning off my phone in case my bosses need me for something. So you KNOW Walker was still seriously steamed about being “betrayed” by Jack.

For extra fun, a representative from the Attorney General’s office showed up at FBI headquarters to grill Moss and techie Janis about Walker’s torturing of the sniper. Eventually, this led to the one cool moment Moss has had all season when he finally stood up to the smarmy douche from the Attorney General’s office who insisted on questioning Janis, despite the fact that Janis was busy working on trying to save Walker’s life. I was happy to see Moss finally stand up for himself and finally show that he’s something even resembling a real leader and not just the stereotypical butthead/authority figure that never listens to Jack and always ends up being wrong. It was almost as good as the quick moment when he bumped into a random female worker and yelled at her. I liked that random (or is it?) funny moment.

I feel that was necessary because the scenes in the FBI office have been missing a little something. Yes, we know that someone there (most likely someone we’ve already met) is working for the bad guys, but other than that, there hasn’t been that much going on that we haven’t already seen on this show to hold our interest. Janis is still mostly Chloe-lite, and her mildly antagonistic relationship with fellow techie Sean has been done before. Meanwhile, we learned last night that, despite his obvious devotion to his wife, Sean is having an affair with his colleague Erica.

I now feel like Erica is the FBI mole. I know I guessed Janis last week, but she really seems WAY too genuinely soft and squeamish to be up to no good. Sean is another obvious candidate, but the guy is already cheating on his wife. How many secrets can they give this guy? I’m going with Erica because she’s still mostly a mystery, but has been introduced, so her being the mole wouldn’t be totally out of left field. (If you’re keeping score at home, in just five episodes I’ve guessed that Walker, Janis and, now, Erica are the mole — if I keep guessing, I’m bound to be right, no?)

As things continue to develop in the FBI office, we only got a quick peek at the White House this week, but it was a strong scene. I liked watching President Taylor assert herself, not give in to Dubaku’s demands, and order the invasion of Sangala. This firmly puts her in the “David Palmer Do the Right Thing” camp. Unfortunately, shortly after her announcement she learned of Matobo’s kidnapping, which is a problem considering a big part of the invasion involved installing Matobo as Prime Minister once the U.S. dispatched of General Juma’s forces. That’s just bad timing. I’m still looking forward to the time when Cherry Jones is asked to do more than fret and yell about not letting innocent Sangalans die. (Relax, prez! It’s not even a real country.)

She’s not having nearly as hard a time as her husband. After getting hard proof that his son was murdered the first gentleman enlisted the help of his (not-so) trusty Secret Service Agent Brian, who claimed he had a friend that could decode the data. Unfortunately, it turned out that Brian (after looking so sinister at the end of last week) brought Henry to his son’s girlfriend’s apartment and slipped a paralytic drug into his drink. The plan is now to bring Samantha to her apartment, kill her, make it look like Henry did it, and then make it look like Henry killed himself (because faux-suicide runs in the family).

Once again, this storyline only has my mild interest (I just don’t care about ANY of these people), but things finally look like they’re picking up next week so we’ll see how it goes then.

Or maybe everything else is being dwarfed by how good this season’s central storyline is. As mentioned before (and as Tony kept helpfully reminding Jack), they HAD to find a way to get Matobo. Since there was no way in, Jack deduced a way to smoke out Matobo and his wife by concocting a very unpleasant gas. I question why anyone would go to the trouble of building such an elaborate safe room only to have it be easily accessible by some random vent, but I’m no engineer so let’s move on.

The plan worked after Matobo’s wife wasn’t quite ready to die in such an unpleasant matter for her husband’s cause. I can’t blame her for wanting to live, but she’s probably going to regret that decision tomorrow. Emerson’s team also picked up Agt. Walker, who’d arrived without backup, and brought her into the van after Jack convinced Emerson to keep her alive so they could find out what she knew.

Renee proceeded to call Jack a son of a bitch about 18 times before Emerson checked with his guy Nichols, who checked with his person in the FBI and confirmed that Walker didn’t know anything else about their evil plans and was expendable.

When Jack took Walker out to that construction site, we knew he’d have some sort of trick up his sleeve, but the way the shot to the neck was executed was still thrilling. Putting the piece of plastic over her body to make it look good was a creepy touch. However, things jumped up a notch when Emerson asked Jack and Tony to bury her. This made me think Emerson is on to Jack and Tony’s game, who kept oh-so-subtly undermining his plans at various points last night. If Emerson is as good as he’s supposed to be, he should’ve sees what Jack and Tony are doing by now. (And judging by next week’s preview, it looks like he has.)

As Jack and Tony shoveled dirt onto Renee’s terrified body (saving the face for last), I kept waiting for Jack and Tony to devise some sort of ingenious way to keep her alive. However, when the silent clock (usually signifying an important character’s death on “24”) counted up to 1 p.m., I figured she was a goner.

Except that it wasn’t quite a silent clock. In fact, the last thing we heard was Renee breathing, which makes me think she’s alive after all. I’m guessing the conspicuously-absent-from-this-episode Bill and Chloe are somewhere nearby ready to dig her up (they DID have a tracking device on Tony before).

So what’d you think of this episode? With the president’s deadline up, do you think Taylor will withdraw the troops from Sangala? If Janis knows about Moss’ crush on Renee, she knows about the thing between Sean and Erica, right? Finally, do you think Agt. Walker is dead?