Moose watches 24

Season 7: 5am - 6am

Jack tracked down the gas canister and stopped the attack and arrested Tony. Which is weird because this isn't the finale and yet everything was wrapped up halfway into the episode.

Oh but wait, I totally forgot! Kim appeared and didn't end up in any trouble! That's not right! Can't let that happen! So of course Tony's crew are threatening to kill her unless Jack helps Tony escape.

Despite that irritating twist, it was a good episode. The scene where Jack finally got Tony was good. Tony didn't say much but he said enough and I'm fully satisfied with his motivations now. He's dead inside.

I really hope this finale is something special because it would be a shame for an overall good season to end on a down note.

Season 7: 6am -7am

About 10 minutes from the end of this episode I was thinking "This is a weird finale". Then I realised that Netflix lists Redemption as Season 7 Episode 1. So although this episode is episode 24, it's not the finale. Thankfully. Because that would have been bizarre.

Jack broke Tony out of custody but Tony took Jack with him. Why? Now that all of the bio-weapon has been used up the only way to get it back is to remake it using samples from Jack. Holy shit Tony's a bastard.

Kim's got some balls now, which is great. She helped take out one of the agents Tony sent to kill her and she followed the other one to let FBI know where he was. Then when his car crashed and was on fire she got into to get the man's laptop because it would help locate Tony.

I get the feeling Jack's going to try to kill himself in a horrible way. The doctors that were working on him, before he killed them and escaped, mentioned the only way to kill the disease is with high temperatures. So Jack's probably going to try an pull a Terminator 2 and throw himself into a furnace or something.

Season 7: 7am - 8am

Aaaaaaaarrrgh that's not enough damn it! That is not enough of an ending! I wanted to see Jack meet his granddaughter.

The first half of the episode was pretty great though. Tony revealed that he wasn't actually evil. Sort of. He was doing the whole thing just for personal revenge. The guy in charge of this mysterious conspiracy is the same guy who masterminded the plot in season 5. He was behind Charles Logan and everything he did, which means he was responsible for Michelle's death. But what we didn't know is that Michelle was pregnant at the time.

Tony spent the last few years working up to getting a meeting with this man just to kill him, and he finally got it, but Jack stopped him from doing it. They need to guy alive so they can try to find out more about the conspiracy. He denied everything of course, but Renee knew she could make him talk. She asked Jack for advice which was quite a nice scene.

It ended with Jack in the hospital in a coma and Kim deciding to go through with the stem cell treatment. Which will obviously work since there's another season to go.

This was a good season. The first half with Dubaku was the best part because it was just a more interesting situation, but the second half was good too. The last few episodes were just odd because you really had no idea what Tony was doing. But that was resolved in the finale and in a pretty great way. Tony's scene with Wilson (I think that was the guy's name) was the best part of the episode.

Season 8: 4pm - 5pm

Jack's happy. For the first time in, like, forever. He's close with his family again and he's planning on moving back to LA with Kim and Teri. But of course that doesn't last long.

President Taylor is about to reach a succesful peace negotiation with the Islamic Republic. But someone is plotting to assassinate President Hassan before the treaty can be signed. A guy who knew about the plot was almost killed and ran to Jack for help, because he was informant for Jack ages ago. Jack tried to get him to CTU (CTU is back for some reason), but the assassin guys came after him and killed him before he could get there. All Jack found was that there was someone on the inside who was helping the assassin.

That someone is a reporter who's profiling Hassan for some publication or other.

A decent opening. Confused as to why CTU is back in action, and Chloe working there is weird. It doesn't look right somehow. The assassination is supposed to happen in the next few hours, which may indicate this season is going back to the faster paced style of seasons 4-6. I hope it doesn't end up like that.

Season 7: 5pm - 6pm

CTU arrested the reporter who's been spying on Hassan for the assassin. Except she wasn't spying on him, just sleeping with him, and she's been framed. That's what Chloe thinks anyway, and she got Jack to back her up. But the director of CTU didn't believe either of them, so Chloe asked Jack to help her figure this out.

Jack said no. Which was nice. He wanted to go back to LA with his family and he intended to stick with that. But Kim told him it was okay for him to stay if he was needed. Which was also nice. I like that Jack's family isn't being left in the dark or just completely ignored.

So Jack and Chloe are working together on this little plan while the rest of CTU works on the reporter.

Also, some woman at CTU called Dana is getting phone calls from some dude from her past who just out of jail and he's threatening/blackmailing/whatever her because she apparently used to be called Jennie and was all different and a slut or something. I really don't care. This is a totally new character with no meaningful connection to any of the established main characters. I just hope this doesn't take up much time.

Dana is 50% of the first half of the season.

Well there had better be some kind of mind blowing pay off to it all.

Season 8: 6pm - 7pm

FUCK YOU NETFLIX. I hate this system. After very episode finishes a preview of the next episode appears immediately and invariably spoils something. This episode ended with Agent Cole stopping the assassination attempt and possibly dying, but now I know he lives and gets captured by the assassin because of that fucking screenshot that popped up as soon as the credits rolled.

Anyway Jack tracked the assassin back to some cop's house and found the cop dead. The assassin had switched patrols with him so he could be at the UN. He planted fake evidence of a bomb on the reporter's computer so that the building would be evacuated and he could hit Hassan outside with the real bomb.

Jack and Chloe figured this all out on their own and told Cole so he could stop it.

Also Dana's old boyfriend showed up at CTU and instead of just telling security that she didn't know him and to get rid of him, she gave him the key to her place and agreed to let him stay. Smart girl. Oh no, wait, not smart. The other thing. Retarded.

Everyone will know Jack was right now, so they should start listening to him. Although why they weren't listening to him in the first place is a mystery. It's Jack Bauer for fuck's sake. You listen to what he has to say because he will be right.

They weren't going to kill Freddy Prinz Jr. after three episodes.

It's only Freddy Prince Jr.

Season 8: 7pm - 8pm

Kick ass. Renee's back.

Jack killed the assassin but CTU found evidence of radioactive materials on his body. Weapons grade uraniam. Which means nuclear weapons. I guess this answers the question I posed in season 6.

Quote :

Is every other season of 24 Nuclear Season or something?

Yes. Yes it is.

The assassin had a bunch of tattoos which indicated he was part of an elite Russian gang that's very existence is unproven. So CTU brought in the biggest expert on the Russian mob they have. Renee Walker. She was under cover with them 6 years ago and her cover is still intact. So she's going back in to find out what's going on.

And Jack is going with her. He was going to leave and get on a plane to be with his family, but he was worried about Renee. She had some kind of breakdown after what happened with Wilson (she nearly killed him during the interrogation) and Jack thinks she's not ready to do this.

His concerns might be well placed. Renee met with a contact but he couldn't help because he was under house arrest. So she sawed his thumb off to get the arrest bracelet off his wrist without tampering with it.

Now I'm interested in where this season is going. Renee's arc was the most interesting part of season 7 and now in season 8 it's like her and Jack's roles have been reversed. Jack's just been following stuff up without much incident so far but Renee's only just showed up and she's already mutilated someone. She has apparently tried to commit suicide at least once since season 7, so it seems she can't handle this stuff like Jack can, but she's still going in guns blazing. This should be good.

Season 8: 8pm - 9pm

This Dana woman at CTU is pissing me off. Okay, so she went to jail when she was younger because her then boyfriend killed someone and she's changed her life since then. But rather than going to her head of CTU field ops fiance and saying "Hey, my abusive ex has turned up. Maybe you could help me with this?", she's falling right back into it and now it seems she's going to help him rob a bank or some stupd shit.

Anyway, back in Important Stuff Land, Renee got the guy with one thumb to take her to Vladimir, a guy who is supposed to have contact with the group hired to kill Hassad and who is selling the nuclear material to Hassad's brother. Hassad's brother was the real insider who tried to have Hassad killed by the way.

Season 8: 9pm - 10pm

I take back what I said. This Dana woman is a genius. Let me give you the situation:

You're from scummy town in the south. Your boyfriend is an asshole but he has a car so that's cool. He kills someone and you both go to prison. You get out and reinvent yourself. You get a job at the Counter Terrorist Unit and get engaged to the head of field ops. Your ex gets out of jail and uses your past to blackmail you. He says if you help him commit yet another crime he'll leave and won't tell anyone. Do you;

A) Believe him, because he's obviously totally trustworthy.

B) Take note of the fact that he's using your criminal record to control you because only he knows about, realise that helping him to commit further crimes simply gives him even more leverage over you, and promptly seek help from the appropriate authorities.

If you said B, you're dumb. Because Dana went with A and she's as fucking smart as they come. Clearly.

Anyway.

What just happened? At the end of the last episode CTU was getting ready to send teams in to pull Renee out because she was about to be killed. But she got out of it and Jack called in to tell the teams to stand down. At the start of this episode however, he immediately calls CTU and tells them they need to get Renee out. It was literally 2 minutes ago that he told them not to do that.

This is all just really weird. The actual main plot with Jack feels like a side story at the moment, what with Dana's dumbass plot and Hassad's plot and then there the Russian mobster trying to save his brother from radiation poisoning...

I've heard this season picks up in the second half. I hope that's true.

Season 8: 10pm - 11pm

This episode was a waste of time apart from the last 10 minutes when Renee snapped and brutally stabbed Vladimir to death and then stabbed Jack too. But he's Jack Bauer so ten seconds later he was fine. The Russians who have the nuclear stuff came and took him.

Oh, and you might be surprised to know that Dana's efforts to get rid of her ex by doing whatever he says didn't go so well. Apparently he and his friend are too stupid to walk in and out of an empty evidence storage unit without beating a police officer unconscious. Which is pretty stupid.

Seriously, when Renee stabbed Jack I was shocked. But then he pulled the knife out and threw it into someone's throat, and after that he seemed fine. Kind of ruined the moment.

Season 8: 11pm - 12am

I nearly had a heart attack when Dana's ex told her he wasn't leaving like he said he would. It was that shocking. Not to worry though. Dana's going to make it all better by shooting him. Because that'll solve all her problems.

Jack's scars from his time in China have mysteriously disappeared. He was tortured by the Russians but escaped and killed them all and took the head guy into custody. He agreed to tell CTU where the nuclear fuel rods were, but they had already been stolen. By his son.

Season 8: 12am - 1am

Hassan's brother got his hands on the rods, but now that the government know about his plan it's impossible to get them out of the country. So his men came up with a different idea. Use the rods to make a bomb and attack New York. Hassan's brother wasn't so keen on this so he escaped and called CTU.

Meanwhile back at CTU, the White House isn't pleased about how the operation went and is looking for someone to blame. They decide to blame Renee. Jack doesn't like that though. After a series of incidents he agrees to stay on at CTU and help them until the crisis is over, in return for dropping the charges against Renee.

I would write about Dana's story but I don't care and it's hopefully over now anyway.

Best part of the episode is when a guard had a gun on Jack and Jack was unarmed, and Jack was like "You better put that down or you're gonna get hurt". And the guard did it. Jack got hit with a stun gun a few seconds later by a second guard, but still, it was a cool bit.

Season 8: 1am - 2am

Jack got to Hassan's brother but he died before he could identify the men with the rods. So CTU put out a fake story that he was alive and being transferred to a hospital, so the terrorists would try to attack and CTU could capture one of them.

The terrorist that arrived had an explosive vest on, but CTU remotely disarmed the detonator so he couldn't use it. But he's pretty determined to kill himself, so he jumped out of the window. That didn't work, so he ran back into the hospital and stumbled across some kind of nuclear bunker/oxygen chamber and locked himself inside. He's going to try to manually set off the vest.

Okay, I know I've complained about the show moving too fast, but this season is taking the piss with how slow it's going. Mainly because the primary plot could clearly be done a lot faster but it's being padded out with a bunch of arbitrary side stories like Dana. Now President Hassan's daughter has run away with his head of security, so that's undoubtedly going to waste some screen time in episodes to come. Most, if not all of the other seasons also did stuff like this, but season 8 is the worst offender by far.

Season 8: 2am - 3am

Speaking of nothing happening, Jack spent the whole episode trying to talk the guy into coming out of the chamber. Eventually he did, but the terrorists triggered a fail safe on the vest and remotely triggered it (which they could do because the guy rearmed it). All the guy told Jack before he died was that Hassan's head of security was in on the plot.

This is getting boring now. It's taking forever for anything important to happen and all the unimportant crap is just annoying. It looks like Jack and Renee might have feelings for eachother too, or maybe Jack just wants to make sure she gets over her suicidal tendencies, I dunno. After the way things ended with Audrey it'll be strange if ends up with Renee.

Season 8: 3am - 4am

Okay, now we're cooking. That was pretty damn cool.

Tarin (or however it's spelled, Hassan's ex head of security) took Hassan's daughter to the terrorists. They held her hostage and demanded that Hassan give them "file 33". Which, it turns out, is a secret file documenting every weakness in America's nuclear defenses, which Hassan clearly shouldn't have. With that file the terrorists will be able to exploit the weaknesses and move the fuel rods into Manhattan to build the bomb.

Of course CTU has no intention of letting Hassan hand over that file, so they set up a fake one for him to send. But before that could happen, Tarin's feelings got the better of him and he helped Hassan's daughter escape. He told her to call CTU and gave her the number. He got shot but she got away. She called CTU and told them where she was being held, and they gave her directions to their HQ.

Jack and Cole went to get the terrorists but they were already on the move, and Tarin was with them. Curious... So the escape was deliberate... But I don't see-OH MY GOD THE CAR SHE'S IN IS RIGGED TO BLOW AND CTU LEAD HER RIGHT TO THEM! KABOOM!

Well, slight kaboom. It was a EMP. So CTU is completely disabled, which means they can't monitor the radiation detectors around the city, which means the terrorists can get the fuel rods in.

This feels like the turning point I've waiting for, hopefully the remainder of the season doesn't disappoint. The build up to the final scene was great. The last 10 minutes or so of the episode it was very clear that something else was going on but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Season 8: 4am - 5am

Okay, things just went from crazy to certifiably insane. Can't remember if I talked about it before but for a few episodes now Kevin's (he's Dana's ex-boyfriend) probation officer has been hassling Dana trying to find Kevin and she's been keeping him at bay. He found out about the evidence locker robbery and that Kevin was there, and also that someone helped them by disabling the security cameras. He has friends on the police or something so he knows all this stuff. He kept asking for the security footage from CTU's archives and junk.

The EMP wiped all that out however, so Dana says. So problem over. Or not. The probation officer went over her head to the director of CTU to get some answers, and Dana was so pissed off that she murdered him and stuffed his body inside a wall cavity. She then phones the terrorists and assured them that she would continue to help them but that her cover might soon be exposed.

Jack spent the whole episode pinned down in a gun fight while CTU was offline, but they got out of it in the end. The terrorists got the rods across the river into the city but CTU knows roughly where are.

What the fuck is going on. Seriously. Did that really just happen? First of all, it's yet another spy inside CTU. Although that hasn't been done since season 5 if I remember right, but it's still overdone. Second of all, why are all the spies women? Apart from that dude in season 5 but he wasn't working for terrorists, he was just secretly reporting to someone in the white house without CTU's knowledge. Third of all, this makes no fucking sense.

Season 8: 5am - 6am

The President put Jack in charge of Hassan's evacuation from the UN for no particular reason other than he's Jack Bauer. The terrorists called the President and demanded she turn over Hassan or they would detonate the bomb in 1 hour. The President wasn't going to do that.

So some other people in the government got together and decided to take matters into their own hands and arranged for a special ops team to attack the evacuation team, kidnap Hassan, and take him to the terrorists. That way the terrorists would get what they want and but America wouldn't have (publicly) given in.

But Jack Bauer put a stop to that, naturally. So now the bomb is armed and it's going to explode in 15 minutes.

Dana is finally interesting. The way she talked to the terrorists made it sound like she wasn't actually working for them, but just helping them under the instructions of someone else. Could it be she's like Nina? We never did find out who exactly she worked for. It seemed like she was just working alone, helping out whoever paid her the most, but in season 1 she made it sound like she had a boss. If Dana's story brings that back it might just save her character. If. And might.

Season 8: 6am - 7am

When Hassan found out the terrorists had demanded him in return for the bomb he decided to turn himself. It's amazing how Jack can take out a whole team of special forces soldiers one minute and then be taken unawares by a crowbar the next. So Hassan gave himself to the terrorists, and surprisingly they actually handed over the bomb. So that threat is averted.

Now Jack has to get Hassan back safely. They tracked him through CTU and set up an ambush but Dana helped the terrorists get out of it. They switched vehicles in a parking garage and CTU lost Hassan. But it looks like Jack is going to find out about Dana in the next episode.

Exposing Dana had better be cool. Otherwise she will have been a complete waste of time.

Season 8: 7am - 8am

Once Dana was exposed she did the sensible thing and tried to shoot her way out like a mad bastard. But that never works, unless you're Jack, so she got caught. Cole caught her and there was a scene with him and Dana that was pretty much exactly the same as when Jack caught Nina at the end of season 1. We still don't know who Dana's working for either, since she refused to say who was paying her to help the terrorists.

But she agreed to help get Hassan back for immunity and so forth. She told CTU where he was being held and they set out to get him back.

The terrorists meanwhile were trying to get Hassan to read a statement confessing his crimes and all that for a live internet broadcast, but he wasn't giving in. So Samir, the head terrorist guy, decided to do all the talking for him. The broadcast was going on as Jack and crew were working their way through the building trying to find them, and they got there just in ti- Oh. They didn't. Hassan's dead. Samir's gone. The broadcast was pre-recorded. Dang.

I'll be honest, I did not see that coming. But I think that's mainly because it doesn't seem possible. What with the whole "real time" aspect of the show, it really didn't seem like there was enough time for that video to be recorded before Jack got to the building.

Catching Samir is next on the list then, but I really hope the final episodes are based around finding out more about Dana's employers.

Season 8: 8am - 9am

OH COME ON. NOT AGAIN. YOU CAN'T KEEP DOING THIS 24. IT'S NOT FAIR!

Okay, so I was a bit confused by the end of the last episode. The video wasn't entirely pre-recorded, it was just playing a little bit behind real events. Samir was still in the room when Jack arrived and was shot along with the others. But he's alive.

However some weirdo at the scene dressed as a medic injected him with something and later he had a heart attack. So... Holy crap it's the Russians! Of course! They never wanted the peace agreement to go through in the first place because it weakens their influence in the region, so they arranged for some Russian gangsters to sell the rods to the IRK and backed the whole the plan to oust Hassan to make sure the peace agreement never happened. Those damn Russians. Renee even recognised the fake medic at the scene but didn't think anything of it at the time because she wasn't sure.

Anyway, with Hassan dead and the bomb no longer a threat, there's really no reason for Jack and Renee to stay. So they went back to Jack's place and made sweet sweet love. Because I'm fairly sure that's a proven cure for suicidal depression. But what the hey, Renee has clearly been into Jack for a while and Jack... I thought he just felt responsible for Renee's condition and wanted to help her get better, but I guess he had feelings for her.

But it should be obvious by now that sleeping with Jack Bauer is practically a death sentence. That Russian assassin who killed Samir recognised Renee from when she was undercover and didn't want to take the chance that she would identify him, so he set up shop across from Jack's apartment with a sniper rifle. And he killed Renee.

Fucking hell. I liked Renee. Audrey was neither here nor there but Renee was cool. Why the hell do the characters I like always get killed? Meanwhile Audrey, who was neither here nor there, gets off scot free with severe mental trauma. What's the deal?

Jack is back in it now then I presume. In full-on vengeance mode. Dana must have been working for the Russians. In retrospect, she was a complete waste of time.

Now starts Grand Theft Bauer.