The Hours: 24 Season 7 ' TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!

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The Hours: 24 Season 7 ' TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!

POSTED: Monday, May 4, 2009, 3:39 PM

Filed Under: TV 24

3 a.m.-4 a.m.

Tony's newfound evil nature gives him metahuman powers.

Featuring: Tony's terrible bathroom cleaning habits and the hardest-working lips in show business.

Previously, Jack sussed out Tony's evilness in record time, but was unable to collar him when one of Jack's megabioweapon-induced seizures kicked in and Tony said 'Yoink!' and swiped Jack's meds. This week begins with Jack receiving an IV full of Imminent Death Temporary Postponement Medicine from CDC Director Macer. This enables Jack to barely spit out that Tony is now, for lack of a better term, Pure Evil.

Agent Walker calls out a warning to the feds to stop Tony, but we quickly flash to Evil Tony blowing away two unsuspecting FBI agents and escaping in their ride. If we've learned anything in these last few episodes, it would be that federal agents should avoid hanging around their vans right at the top of any hour, because there's always one last bad guy hanging around who needs some wheels.

Jack regains full speech capabilities and gives Walker the details about Tony's heinous betrayal, including the fact that Tony killed American Hero Larry Moss. Renee gets a report from another fed, who has found the two guys Tony killed about 30 seconds ago. Hey, guy, Tony can only be about 30 seconds away. You know this show is in real time, right? Go after him!

Tony meets up with Galvez at an EconoLodge. Understandably, Galvez is scared shitless of Jack Bauer coming after them. He's watched the show before. Tony assures him 'you don't have to worry about Jack Bauer,' which is almost certainly the dumbest thing any character has ever said in the history of television. Tony and Galvez settle up, cash-wise, and Galvez appears to hand over the canister of megasuperbioweapon. It seems patently obvious that Tony is going to kill Galvez and, amazingly, Galvez figures this out. He really has been watching the show! The canister isn't in the bag, and he gets the drop on Tony. But Tony's newfound evil nature gives him metahuman powers, and he clears the distance between them with his evil superspeed, throws Galvez into the bathroom after a quick fight and Galvez gets his head conked on a tub. Tony then suffocates him with a shower curtain. Luckily for Galvez, it's a clear shower curtain and not one of those curtains with a flower pattern or a naked, bathing Santa, so at least he gets to die with some dignity.

Galvez. See all the dignity?

The Luminous President Cherry Jones is in the Oval Office talking about Presidential Stuff with Tim, the Director of Homeland Security. She gets the call from Jack and Renee informing her that Tony is evil again. The President informs them of Hodges' claim that he was only part of a vast evil conspiracy and Jack quickly realizes that he hasn't had a scene with Jon Voight yet, so they decide that they need an exciting Jack/Hodges torture scene to serve as the centerpiece of this episode. Sweet!

Back at the Ramada Inn, Tony receives a visitor in the form of that evil mistress of disguise who pretended to be Voight's lawyer last week. Lady Zartan ' or Zartan's sister Zarana, if you want to get into Advanced G.I. Joe reference dropping ' has dumped her blonde wig. They bicker over how many canisters of supermegabioweapon are needed, and Tony is convinced that one is enough to do whatever the hell it is they're going to do.

Partly-Evil First Daughter Olivia Taylor and Aaron Pierce arrive at the Oval Office, where the President breaks the news to Olivia that they need to put Jon Voight in the witness protection program and pretend he really died after eating that Poisoned Hot Tamale last week. Olivia is o-livid that her mother won't agree to waterboard the hell out of Voight, since he was behind the murder of the First Son back in 24: Redemption. President Mom won't take Olivia's guff and stands her ground, and she has a point, because waterboarding can't really be that much worse than a Bauer interrogation, can it? She orders First Daughter to go draw up the papers.

Lady Zartan contacts the shadowy cabal behind all of the days event, and the entire thing takes place online in some kind of weird Webinar, where everyone is identified only by red dots on her laptop and speak through voice modulators that make them all sound like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. We do get some cutaways of a few of the members of this Corporate Legion of Doom, filmed in shadowy office shots. They're all giving Lady Zartan a lot of pushback about her desire to move forward with their schemes. Seeing the tide turning against her, she IMs our new main villain, as played by Will Patton, and I can't believe it's taken seven seasons to get Will Patton on this show as a villain. The two literally IM each other a few times before she finally convinces him to step in and win everybody over to her side. Then they have an e-vote. This is some Six Sigma terrorist management, here.

Aw, Galvez.

Tony apparently spent this scene getting a shower with Galvez' dead body right next to the tub. There's no way that shower took. He waltzes out shirtless when Lady Zartan wants to show them that they won their e-vote unanimously. Shirtless Tony leans in and kisses Lady Zartan, and suddenly, this Motel 6 more like Motel Sex, am I right?

Jack, Walker and Janeane Garofalo do a brisk pediconference, with Garofalo telling them that Voight's fake death certificate has been drawn up. She gets to deliver the only decent line they've given her this season, noting that the rest of the world will think that Voight is 'moldering on a slab.'

Voight is on a hospital bed, still tubed up, ranting at security cameras that he wants them to let him kill himself, so his family won't be in danger. Some High Quality Voight-ing goes on here. In last week's recap, Debra argued that Voight's Hodges is the funniest villain the show has had since Dennis Hopper as Victor 'Barkening Cheeps' Drazen back in Season 1, and I have to agree. The best villains on this show are either cool Anti-Jacks like Peter Weller in Season 5, or gloriously over-the-top veterans who know how to make this show work like Hopper and Voight. It suffers when it gets dour turns like the dude who played The Mummy as Marwan in Season 4 and the disappointingly flat performance by James Cromwell as Jack's Evil Dad in Season 6.

Voight has brought his Anaconda A-Game to this season and it has paid off immeasurably. If the show comes back, who can they possibly bring who has the bad guy chops to top this? Walken? Alan Rickman? Throw some money at John Malkovich? Nah, I say bring in Morris Day.

Anyway, Jack comes in and gets to deliver a Bauer Special, telling Voight 'you're already dead!' Jack assures him that their plan to fake his death will protect Voight's family, so Voight starts to play ball, giving an outline of the group he's a part of without naming any names. Basically, he and the Guild of Calamitous Intent were intending to create a national threat that would require Starkwood and company being brought in to clean up the mess, while pinning the blame on, and I quote, 'Mohamed This, Achmed That.' Only JV could get away with that line.

Voight mentions that he watched the Senate Hearing 'yesterday' ' we're past midnight, after all ' and says that Jack should be regarded as a hero, not a criminal. Jack blows this off, and then he and Voight yell in each other's faces for a bit, with Voight adamant that he doesn't know any of the names of his partners because the whole thing was set up to be an anonymous Star Chamber, arranged by Lady Zartan.

The President has been monitoring all this and asks if any of it is credible. Walker has also been watching via Predator-vision and reports that all of Voight's vital signs show that he's telling the truth. Jack and Walker are convinced that the Secret Society of Supervillains will still strike today with the remaining canister. They would want to take advantage of all the day's chaos, which does include those blown up planes, a kidnapped foreign dignitary, the First Gentlemen getting shot, the White House being taken over and the President getting backhanded. The President has wised up by now and lets Jack and Renee run the show, complete with re-instating CTU file servers.

Jack calls up the hotel where the FBI has stashed Chloe and her family to let her know what happened, complete with confirming the news that Bill Buchanan died a month or two's worth of episodes ago. Chloe doesn't want to leave her son alone, but knows that Jack only calls when the world is in the balance, so she agrees to come help.

In a rare display of normal human being-ness, Chloe shares a moment with her sleeping son Prescott and wakes up Morris, who was bumped over to the fold-out couch bed. She tells Morris that he and the kid need to get out of DC because she has to go do crazy Chloe stuff before picking up her mini-Jack Sack and heading out into the night.

Jack takes a moment to remind us that he's still got the Death Shakes before going in to brief the feds. Some FBI Jerk named Tim Moran keeps questioning Jack about things. Who is this guy? Shut up, Tim Moran! Are you the only person left in the 24-verse who doesn't know who Jack Bauer is, and that he's always right about everything? Walker drops some exposition and has a showdown with Garofalo, who continues to mostly act by doing weird things with her weird lips. Garofalo is upset that the CTU servers are being accessed, as this seems to make the FBI less important or something. Walker blows her off, as she should.

Jack and Chloe reunite, and Jack has to break the bad news that Tony is For Real Evil this time. Chloe doesn't want to believe it, but Jack sells her on the idea that Tony is now an Enemy Combatant.

Lady Zartan and Tony pull up outside of the home of Jibraan and Hamid Al-Zarian. They quickly psychoanalyze Jibraan and say he fits the profile for being somebody they can easily make look like a terrorist. Now Tony's a racist, too! There's no going back, Almeida.

Inside the house, Jibraan is cooking breakfast for his brother at almost 4 AM, which doesn't seem terribly healthy, and we get a quick exchange between them to build up some sympathy for these soon-to-be-dead extras.

Aaron Pierce checks in on the First Daughter, who is keeping the Attorney General waiting on those witness protection program documents for Voight. Olivia vents about wanting JV dead for having killed her brother, letting slip to Pierce that Voight isn't really dead. Lucky for her that Aaron Pierce is the only non-Bauer trustworthy character left on the show. Pierce quickly talks her into giving him the papers by saying something about how 'I have seen the guilty walk free' that sounds like a Johnny Cash monologue from American IV. I would totally download an Aaron Pierce cover of 'The Man Comes Around.'

Olivia mumbles something about Pierce killing Voight for her, and there's a weird pause where it almost seems for a second like she's going to try to sex Pierce into being her assassin, but thankfully they don't go that way. Instead, after Aaron leaves, Olivia calls up yet another shady shirtless dude who specializes in making problems go away. I think this guy is played by Leland Orser, one of those people on ER for, like, ten years, but if you started naming people who were on ER, you'd go through about 70 cast members before you got to him. Good actor, though!

Back at the FBI, Garofalo continues to be annoying, and Jack has had enough. He goes sickhouse on her, screaming at her from about a foot away in his 'TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS' voice, and Garofalo can only tremble her lips in shock. Jack, however, keeps saying 'President Palmer' instead of 'President Taylor', and it's obvious to everyone that he's still losing his mind.

Literally. It's melting, you see.

Meanwhile, Tony and Lady Zartan infiltrate the Al-Zarian brothers' place and it kind of ends there with Tony holding Jibraan at gunpoint. Kind of a weak cliffhanger, everybody. I think I just recapped my first filler episode of the season.

Death Count:

Two FBI agents
Robert Galvez

Cinnamon Carter

Posted 2009-05-04 16:02:26

You are the best at doing a recap!! Ha ha.



But what about the Gay Hitman? Didn't you forget to mention him? That was part of the buzz last week on a couple of those '24' boards.  The actor's name is Leland Orser.....the character's name is (apparently, as we will be informed, "Martin Collier").......which, btw, are the names of two Florida counties.....nice touch since



Evil Olivia called up her Gay Hitman friend on her Sprint cellphone and asked why he 'wasn't in Florida working on the campaign."



Gay hitman's response was that "The Governor found my tactics a little too hardball"........(nice pun).  (Please do look at some scuttlebutt...lots of buttscuttle as a matter of fact....about Florida Governor Charlie the Tanned One Crist.....)....too see what a dirty little soap opera '24' has become.



PS......that was quite nice of you to refer to The President (Taylor) as 'the luminous Cherry Jones.'



Wiseguy.

Bob

Posted 2009-05-04 21:19:24

I did get a quick mention of Orser and his "political fixer" in up there a few paragraphs from the end, but truthfully, I didn't quite get a handle on what his connection to Olivia was, so that scene was glossed over slightly. Looks like he'll be Olivia's version of that guy Palmer kept on hand to "delay" reporters back in season 2. I was, sadly, just happy that I somehow pay attention during the online conference of evil.



It's a bit odd for them to be throwing in this many characters - Tony's master of disguise partner, Collier, Will Patton and the rest of the people on the Webinar of Doom - so late in a season. My suspicion is they're putting things in place for next season, probably to bring Patton's bad guy back as the main villain next year like they did with Jack's brother from Season 5-6. Patton feels like too much of a quality Hollywood bad guy to waste for a few episodes like this. I guess we'll see in the next few weeks.



Thanks for reading!

Catherine

Posted 2009-05-06 11:04:07

I'm looking forward this recap every week, great job !!! this season rocks !!!!!!and Kiefer deserves an another Emmy

Posted by bobmccormick @ 3:39 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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