The Hours: 24, Season 7: The weaponized megavirus will be ready at the end of the episode.

12 a.m. ' 1 a.m.

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The Hours: 24, Season 7: The weaponized megavirus will be ready at the end of the episode.

POSTED: Monday, April 13, 2009, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: TV 24

12 a.m. ' 1 a.m.

Don't you know that by suddenly becoming this cool, you're only guaranteeing that you're going to die?

Featuring: A subtle metaphor about the global dangers presented by an unchecked military-industrial complex. Also, Jack's face maybe melts.

Dr. Gregory House stares wistfully at a photo of beloved character actor Kal Penn. Did they just kill off Kumar on House? Spoiler! Guess I don't need to watch that one. Anyway, previously on 24, the FBI raided Starkwood and Jack was sprayed in the face with a bioweapon that will kill him shortly after this season ends.

This week opens where last week closed, as Tony, Larry Moss and an FBI team are at the Starkwood base ' home of 1,500 ultra-badass mercenaries, three platoons of whom have them surrounded. Tony and Larry exchange 'aw crud' looks while, back at the ranch, Jack, Agent Walker and Janeane Garofalo provide laptop tech support, which consists of 'aerial intel shots indicate that you guys are royally screwed.'

Jon Voight arrives on the scene and has a face-off with Larry. Voight starts shouting at him, once again randomly emphasizing words, which continues to be an effective debate tool. Voight is doing some kind of weird Larry David-as-George Steinbrenner thing here, and I'm loving it. He gives Larry and his team five minutes to clear out.

Jack is stuck back at FBI headquarters because he's been medically ruled too dead to fight. Divorced from his ability to just go kill everybody, he brainstorms a plan to find a sympathetic ear at Starkwood. Said sympathetic ear is Starkwood Chairman Doug Knowles, who has a gigantic watch and who also realizes that Hodges (Voight) is completely out of his damn mind. Knowles is played by Chris Mulkey, and I immediately remember him as Hank Jennings from Twin Peaks. I actually say 'Hey, Hank Jennings from Twin Peaks!' aloud, but as I'm watching 24 solo this week ' purely to maintain journalistic integrity, mind you ' that just kind of echoes around my apartment. So this is what it's like to die alone? Huh. My emotionally vulnerable state aside, reader, if you can't recognize tertiary Twin Peaks characters, you and I can never be friends. Ah well. J'ai une 'me solitaire!

The FBI team quickly develops their own plan and Tony uses his Junior Jack Ninja Skills to turn invisible and blend into the background while Larry and his team stand down. Greg, John Voight's toady sidekick, gets pissy with Larry and demands that he be uncuffed or 'it's gonna get ugly.' Larry knocks him out with a single punch. A Starkwood merc clobbers Larry with a rifle to the face, but he just kind of shrugs it off. Oh, Larry, don't you know that by suddenly becoming this cool, you're only guaranteeing that you're going to die by the end of the day?

The FBI packs up and heads out, allowing Inviso-Tony to sneak inside the hanger and hook up with Knowles. Walker informs Jack that their plan is working, but Jack is too busy grimacing and dying to be very happy about it.

Jack is able to temporarily stop dying long enough to teleconference with President Pillowface Taylor and Evil First Daughter Olivia Taylor. Pillowface is incensed by the idea that Voight would have his mercs ready to fire on federal agents. She drafts her new pal Jack Bauer into running the operation and tries to small talk Jack on the phone with a 'Heard you were dying, buddy, how's that going?' But Jack has no time for this, he blows her off with a 'Yes, Ms. Lady President Ma'am.'

First Daughter makes her own telephone call to that shady reporter guy from a few episodes ago. His sources tell him that there are a doin's a goin' down at Starkwood. He wants the inside dirt, but when Olivia won't play ball, he drops the 'I'll tell your mom that you had the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States fired so you could then become the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States yourself' card. That old trick. First Daughter has Aaron Pierce get her a car so she can go kill this dope.

Tony and Knowles are sneaking around Starkwood HQ with Garofalo acting as an ersatz Chloe for Tony. She tries to tell him how some computer card reader works, and Tony basically tells her to shut up. Some mercs in an armored Humvee drive by, so Knowles tries to create a distraction, Bart Simpson style, which means he pretty much just runs out and yells 'Look at me, everybody, I'm Chairman of the Board!' They throw his dumb ass in the back of the Humvee.

Meanwhile, Walker and Jack are babbling about something and OH MAN, JACK JUST DIED! OK, he just kind of had a convulsion and fell to the ground, knocking over a bunch of CDs. I wonder who has to pick all those up. But wait! His face is bubbling! I think. Maybe he was turning into a werewolf? I don't really know what was going on there. It was like when Schwarzenegger's head was getting ready to explode on the surface of Mars at the end of Total Recall. Spoiler!

Jon Voight is informed that his men have found Knowles just taking a stroll around the Starkwood compound. They ask if they should make with the killing, but Voight tells them that you can't kill a guy just for taking a walk. This is the only line Voight has delivered on show thus far that I could tell he didn't believe. He gets an update from some bald scientist guy that the weaponized megavirus will be ready at the end of the episode.

First Daughter and Aaron Pierce arrive at the reporter's place, and she talks Pierce into waiting in the hall. Reporter Guy demands the lowdown on the showdown. Olivia tells him that she can't tell him because of National Security. He says 'c'mon, please?' and she almost immediately tells him everything. She tries to buy his silence by playing to his feelings, but reporters have no feelings. Instead, he demands that she buy him off via sexing him up. Eww, not with Aaron Pierce waiting just outside the door, you creep.

Back at the FBI, Jack talks to the CDC doctor, who is actually CDC Director Sunny Macer from way back in Season 3, an amazing continuity recall on the part of the producers. Despite her weirdly My Little Pony-esque name, Macer is a pro. She tells Jack that there is some kind of experimental procedure that could possibly save him, but Jack has no interest and instead chooses medicine that will just mask the effects of his impending death so he can be more useful for the next few hours. Kim Bauer is mentioned, and Jack tells Walker that he and his daughter are no longer on speaking terms, and he's content to die without letting Kim know. All Sean Avery jokes will be saved until Elisha Cuthbert actually shows up on screen, NHL fans.

Jack informs Tony that eight hostiles are en route to his location, and Tony gets ready to get his awesome on. Two mercs are sent his way, and Tony takes them out with a pretty sweet move, catching one guy in flying half-nelson while whipping around and kicking the second guy in the same motion, before pausing to break the first guy's neck. As the second guy starts to get up, Tony runs over and punts him right in the face. Advantage, Almeida! For the record, we're counting this as 1.5 Starkwood deaths for now.

Back from commercial, Tony is loading himself up with merc gear. Still no official confirmation that he killed that second guy. I mean, he probably did, but at least Jack makes it clear, so I'm only scoring Tony a half point. He gets into an elevator with the bald scientist, who has photos of Important Science Stuff. Presumably, that will be a plot point in an episode or two. They chit chat. It's not exactly the elevator scene in Big Trouble in Little China, as far as classic incidental elevator scenes go.

Tony makes his way down to the Evil Bioweapons Lab and snaps some pics of the canisters with his Sprint Mobile Phone. Jack confirms those are the canisters that killed him, and now an air strike can be called in on Starkwood.

Knowles is being held in an office, and Jon Voight comes rolling in. Knowles raises his voice to Voight. Huge mistake. JV calmly pours himself a drink and gives us a little backstory about how Starkwood 'pulled America's ass out of the fire, again and again and again!' He does a slight variation on Nicholson's 'You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!' speech from A Few Good Men. Knowles tries to talk some sense into him. As you may have guessed, talking sense is the exact wrong tactic when dealing with Jon Voight, who responds by beating Knowles to death with either a vase or wine decanter, then tosses him over the side of a railing. Knowles lands sprawled out over a giant world map. Then an eagle with a single tear in its eye flies in carrying a faded flag in its talons. This may be a metaphor for something.

Fall over the map.

We finally go back to the creepy reporter's swingers pad, and oh no, they totally did it while Aaron Pierce was waiting outside. In the interest of keeping CritMass the most accurate (and therefore sexiest) 24 recap blog, I went back and did the math on this: allowing for 24's sliding real time scale, this off-screen sex scene clocks in at 16+ minutes, shattering the previous record of a 60 second commercial break sex scene set by President Logan in Season 5. Olivia buttons up, having ignored Supreme Court Justice Pat Benatar's mandate against weaponized sex. Evil reporter, who is lounging in bed in the creepiest way allowable on network TV, does the journalistic equivalent of turning into a post-sex vampire by telling First Daughter he's going to run the story anyway. You cad! First Daughter shrugs and plays her trump card, revealing that she recorded them doin' it on her Sprint Mobile Phone and will leak the footage scummy reporter's wife and colleagues if he runs the story.

Chief of Staffs! Olivia records
longest sex-scene in 24 history!

What would happen in real life in this situation: this weasel would immediately grab his own Sprint Mobile Phone to call up and divorce his wife, then giddily tell all his buddies what just happened before selling his copy of the Hot Evil First Daughter Sex Tape for at least five or ten million dollars. After that, he'd settle in to his new career of earning $25,000 a night for one hour of attending parties to high-five douchey, backwards baseball cap-wearing ex-frat guys with names like Trey and Troy, and supplementing his income by making paid appearances in the crowd at Ultimate Fighting pay-per-views and maybe boxing Danny Bonnaduce at a Wrestlemania. Now, reader, I realize this is not the kind of life that either you or I would ever want to lead. But this scuzzbag, who blackmails people into sex romps? This would be the greatest thing that could ever possibly happen.

What happens on the show: the slimy reporter says 'Oh noes! My sham of a marriage and career!' and silently agrees not to tell anyone about the Starkwood story. This is the least realistic thing to ever happen on a show where two nuclear bombs were detonated on US soil in the span of four seasons. The least realistic thing to happen on a show where both lead characters have died and come back to life. The least realistic thing to happen on a show where twelve guys took over the White House less than five hours ago.

JV heads down to the lab to meet up with Greg and the head scientist guy to celebrate their bioweapon almost being ready. He puts his hands on both their shoulders, and they both shudder. Then Voight brags about killing Knowles a few minutes ago. Greg looks away slightly disgusted, but JV keeps staring at him, all 'Isn't it great, Greg, how I just killed that guy? Come on, Greg, you know you think it's great. Look at me, Greg, acknowledge that I killed that guy.'

Can you fear me now?

In the War Room, President Pillowface gets a video call from Voight, who demands that she turn back the jets heading for Starkwood. He tells her that three stolen missiles, loaded with the bioweapons, are pointed at the Eastern US seaboard, and then proves it by shooting her a jpeg of the missiles taken on his Sprint Mobile Phone. We get multiple split screen shots of the President and JV, the latter from the perspective of Voight's Sprint Mobile Phone. That's right, Jon Voight is now directing part of the episodes himself.

After some standard hour-ending split screen montage action ' featuring Jack doping himself with death-concealing drugs and Aaron shooting Olivia a 'you totally had sex while I was like, thirty feet away, didn't you?' look ' the President is forced to stand down and call off the strike team. That's right, terrorists can nuke the West Coast twice, but no President will ever let the East take another a hit like that. This is the biggest ego boost for the East Coast since we won the Ventriloquist Feud of 1997. You got my back, Professor Murder?

Death Watch:

1.5 Starkwood mercs
Doug Knowles

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