24: Say Goodbye to the Bad Guys

It’s kind of hard to get attached to any of this season’s bad guys when they keep dropping like flies.

The latest episode, for example, opened with last week’s cliffhanger — Josef Bazhaev had stolen the nuclear rods to hurt his father and was going to sell them to Farhad Hassan. Yet Josef had already been taken out by Farhad’s men before the opening credits had finished popping up on our screens.

That left Farhad as this season’s main bad guy — for about 10 minutes! We were shortly introduced to Marcos and Samir who claimed they couldn’t get the nuclear rods out of New York City and had decided to use them on U.S. soil. (Duh! You can’t have any sort of nuclear materials in a major city on “24” and NOT use them.)

Farhad couldn’t stomach this (I suppose he likes having the THREAT of nuclear weapons and isn’t too keen on actually using them) and double crossed his new friends. The episode ended with him hiding while he awaited rescue from CTU, led by Jack (which wasn’t able to trace his mobile phone for reasons that remain unclear to me).

The reason Jack is leading the CTU extraction of Farhad is because he’s sweet on Renee.

More specifically, Renee had been set up to take the fall for the failure of the Undercover Vlad mission. Rob Weiss, the president’s chief of staff, strong-armed CTU Head Brian Hastings into allowing that Renee be interrogated by Kristen Smith, a tough interrogator from Justice.

Because Jack is both physically awesome and mentally brilliant, he immediately realized what was happening, barged into the interrogation after dispatching of a hapless security guard and menaced Kristen for browbeating Renee. (“How dare you?”) You see, Renee had asked Jack for clarification on what he meant when he said that Renee “had him” during her moment of greatest despair. Jack said, “I meant it the way it sounded.” (Swoon?) In the end, Jack decided to lead the Farhad extraction, in exchange for Renee’s freedom. Hastings agreed to the deal because Agt. Owen (the guy who was going to lead the operation in Agt. Cole Ortiz’s absence) looked like he was about 15 years old. (I think I could actually smell that guy pooping his pants.)

Ok, where do I start?

I don’t understand why anybody (Renee, Hastings) has to be set up to take the fall for a mission that is ongoing. I mean, things definitely looked bad when Farhad got his hands on the nuclear rods (that sounded a bit dirty), but CTU was still working leads and the focus on shifting blame felt weirdly pessimistic. I also don’t see why it’s unacceptable for a woman to stab a man 15 times after that man has put his hands on her. (But that could just be me.)

Still, the most offensive part of this storyline is the idea of Jack and Renee as a couple. Don’t get me wrong, Jack is hot and Renee is hot, so I can see it working on that level. The problem I have is the unnecessary fascination with having two TV characters pair up for no other reason than one’s a guy and the other’s a girl. (See: “House”, “Bones”, “NCIS” or any other shot with a male and female lead.) It would’ve been downright refreshing (and more plausible) for these two to just remain friends. Now, I’m afraid we’re all going to have to groan through this show’s attempts to dramatize a romance.

I mean, look at what the writers have done with Dana and Cole.

Dana followed Kevin and Nick (not Jonas) to a VAN down by the RIVER and, um, sat in her car for 30 minutes. You can probably say that she was waiting for the women to leave, but if she was going to murder Kevin and Nick in cold blood, why not bump off a couple of anonymous hookers? (It would make the crime seem even more random!)

Instead, Dana sat in her car long enough to allow Cole to arrive (thanks to meddling Arlo’s help) and stop her. She confessed (over a commercial break) everything about her past, leading Freddie Prinze Jr. to unleash his inner badass. He told Kevin and Nick they could either go to jail (along with Dana) or skip town. (Hey, when Freddie Prinze Jr. tells you to skip town, you damn well better do it!)

Except that Nick has apparently seen the “Scooby Doo” films and wasn’t too intimidated by Cole. He stabbed Kevin and was about to take a shot at Dana and Cole. Kevin (in a heroic death) cried out a warning, allowing Cole to dispatch of Nick, and leading Dana to cradle her fallen (and now sorta heroic) ex as he died.

Now that the Kevin/Nick threat is out of Dana’s life she (and we) can hopefully move on to considerably less ridiculous storylines — once they’re done dumping those bodies in the river.

So what’d you think of this episode? Now that we’ve moved on to new bad guys, have we heard the last of Sergei Bazhaev? (It’d be kind of a shame because Jurgen Prochnow kind of acted his ass off in his brief scene in the beginning.) Do you think Rob Weiss is a White House mole? (I don’t think he’s a double agent – I just think he’s a dick.) Finally, why didn’t Hastings seem even MORE bothered that his head of field ops and lead analyst were gone during a crucial moment in the mission? (I bet he’s going to cock his head extra slanted at Cole and Dana when they get back – he might even throw his Bluetooth earpiece at them!)