24: Surprise, Surprise

Well I didn’t see that one coming.

I didn’t see that other one coming either.

Despite the fact that this proves I’m extremely gullible, I think the lion’s share of the credit should still go to the “24” writers for successfully pulling off not one, but two neat twists in the same hour — for now. In a few paragraphs I’ll talk about why one of the twists was probably unnecessary, while the other has seemingly backed the writers into a corner.

The hour picked up with Jack waiting for the Center for Disease Control people to determine if he was infected. We’ve seen many Jacks this season — Awesome Jack, Mournful Jack, Simple Jack (ok, maybe not the last one) — but I don’t believe we’d (ever) seen Defeated Jack. Watching the CDC people in their biohazard suits hose down a nude Bauer (something for the ladies) and ask for spinal fluid samples (ouch!), and then watching Jack sadly ride in the CDC truck waiting for his results while wearing those impossibly white scrubs, made him seem more isolated than he already usually is.

Turns out the bio weapon Starkwood had been testing in Sangala causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, featuring nasty symptoms like paralysis and dementia. When the oddly-fetching CDC lady broke the quarantine to hand him his results, things were looking up. Unfortunately, it turns out that Jack IS infected, but the disease he’s carrying is not contagious.

While Jack stoically dealt with the news (although I liked the way Kiefer Sutherland let a little fear and sadness creep into his performance), Renee was a mess. Larry informed her about Jack’s condition and Renee was devastated by the news, even shedding a few tears as she attempted to keep herself together. Moss also apologized for not believing her or Jack, but at this point, Renee was CLEARLY not listening anymore. I get that Renee and Jack worked closely through some intense experiences throughout this day, but I never really got that there was love there. Maybe it’s just me. In fact, it’s probably just me because the show has obviously been going in that direction for a while. (It’s likely the reason Moss would always get so irrationally jealous of Jack — because Renee was “in love” with him and he could see it.)

More importantly, I’m curious to see where the writers are going with this. As I mentioned last week, it’s doubtful they’ll kill Bauer off, but the show made a point of saying there was no cure for Jack’s disease and that he should be dead within a day or two. On “Nip/Tuck” this season, the show flirted with killing its main character with a disease before pulling the old “your test results got switched” routine. I just hope the “24” writers have something more creative than, “By the way, Starkwood DID develop a secret antidote to the disease.”)

The more I think about it, the more likely that seems given that Renee and Jack were pretty much the only people left behind when the FBI tried to take over Starkwood and will almost certainly be called into action. The scene where Moss told Jack he couldn’t go was funny (“I always knew eventually we’d agree on something”) and sad (the notion that Jack is no longer considered one of the best men because of his disease. (Of course, at this point I imagined Jack getting dementia in the middle of a firefight, forgetting whose side he was on and shooting Moss by accident.)

The reason Moss and Co. need rescuing is, primarily, my boy Greg Seaton. For weeks, the show has been establishing that Jonas Hodges’ right-hand man had doubts about the operation, but it turns out the show’s been playing us the entire time almost as well as Seaton played Tony.

Tony, if you recall, had been captured by Starkwood baddie Stokes and was being interrogated forcefully. Hodges correctly surmised that Tony wouldn’t talk and (after another amusing/sinister scene — the type Jon Voight has mastered on “24” this year) ordered Stokes to kill him. Enter Seaton, who capped Stokes and told Tony that Hodges had gone too far and needed to be stopped. He got Tony to arrange contact with the FBI and set up an immunity deal with the president in exchange for telling the feds where the bio weapon was located.

The president had come off an unsuccessful attempt to convince the joint chiefs that they should invade Starkwood (can’t blame them for not wanting a mini-war on U.S. soil) and quickly authorized the pardon. President Taylor is so busy with this Starkwood thing that she doesn’t even realize how much power Acting Chief of Staff Olivia now has and how she’s been wielding it (like the Jedi-mind trick she used to get Aaron to come out of retirement).

Anyway, Seaton led Tony and the team of feds to a warehouse with two guards (who were easily taken care off). Unfortunately, the warehouse was empty (pictured, left) and Seaton suddenly pretended like Tony had forced him to say what he had said. Thank God the new, enlightened (but still Two Steps Behind) Larry Moss believed Tony. Still, as he ordered a search of Starkwood, a very-much-alive Stokes re-appeared and ordered Moss and his men to throw down their weapons.

Did I mention that this entire sequence was incredibly tense? At least it was for me, since I was expecting at least Moss to get killed, now that his character has been redeemed and proven NOT to be a complete tool. When Stokes and his men pulled up, I thought we were going to get a repeat of the shower room scene in “The Rock.” (P.S. I love “The Rock.”)

Still, why did Seaton need to dupe Tony at all? If Hodges/Stokes simply killed Tony, the FBI wouldn’t have been spurred into action the way they were due to Seaton’s intel. At best, they’d be going in blind, having no idea where the bio weapon was. The president would probably still be trying to convince the joint chiefs to invade Starkwood at all. Of course, Hodges probably didn’t know the president’s hands were tied (or that an air strike was out of the question) and felt like he had to do something to buy himself some time.

Also, while I totally get that the scene with Seaton and Hodges arguing in front of Tony was meant to lead Tony to believe that Seaton was disloyal, what was the point of having Seaton act squeamish about the bio weapon in previous weeks? Obviously it was to set us (the audience) up for the trick this week, but it still doesn’t make sense storyline-wise. Seaton shows real hesitance over the bio weapon the last three weeks (for just us in the audience to see) and then is revealed to be a totally evil mastermind this week. I’m just not a fan of sacrificing sound storytelling just to fool the audience. (If I’m going to be fooled, I’d like it to be more organically.)

Then again, I was just happy to see my boy Seaton (Rory Cochrane) gets some extended screen time. (I should’ve known he’d never betray his boyfriend Hodges — you know those two TOTALLY have a Mr. Burns/Smithers thing going.) I wouldn’t say the twist was “too clever by half” because I still kinda dug it, so I’ll just say it was “too clever by quarter.”

So what’d you think of this episode? Would you have figured Jack as a boxers guy or did you think he rolled with briefs? Are you buying that Renee is apparently in love with Jack? How cool is it that you can apparently sign a pardon online now? Is Janeane Garofalo’s Janis of ANY use at this point? Finally, how long until Super Secret Service Agent Aaron becomes a fly in Olivia’s increasingly devious ointment? (Ok, that sounded grosser than I intended.)