Breaking Down Bauer: A Look at 24, Season 7
Written by: Rob Van Winkle, CC2K Staff Writer
New Updates 2/27/09
A few more weeks have passed, and once again, it seems like three years worth of completely plausible things have occurred on 24. Over the past two hours, the following events have taken place:
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- The president’s spouse was kidnapped, and used as ransom to force the President to withdraw troops from the (still fictional) Sangala.
- FBI Agent Renee Walker held a woman and her baby at gunpoint, hoping to use them to force a bad guy to reveal important information to Jack.
- Jack killed said bad guy.
- Jack and Renee meet back up to kill the half dozen bad guys holding the President’s husband.
- The President’s husband is shot, causing the President to put any and all national emergencies on hold while she sits by his side at the hospital.
- Jack and Renee find Dubaku’s girlfriend, and convince her to serve as a decoy, leading them to her.
- It is revealed that Dubaku has a file with the names of every person who helped him in his conspiracy hidden somewhere. Odds are good this detail will have no bearing on future episodes.
- Renee issues the girlfriend’s sister a completely non-foreshadowing promise that her sister (the girlfriend) will be kept safe.
- Due to the evil machinations of the evil FBI mole, the girlfriend is killed in a car crash that incapacitates Dubaku.
- Once again seeing things that no one else can, Jack has the EMTs on the street dealing with Dubaku cut him open to reveal…a drive with that aforementioned file on it!!
- The FBI mole, desperate to avoid detection, manages to reboot the FBI hard drives, murder his accomplice and pass it off as heroism, only to be done in by the superior heroism of Chloe (entire elapsed time for this one to occur: about ten minutes).
- Jack gets into three separate discussions with Renee on the nature of actions versus consequences, each time with tenderness denigrating into shouting.
- As the day winds down into night, Jack learns that, instead of this being over, it has really…ONLY JUST BEGUN.
As I have mentioned many times already, I am simply enjoying the hell out of the pure, undistilled D.C-Ness of this season. Not only is every path trod by our characters in full view of one of the monuments, and not only is everything within a three minute drive with no traffic and ample parking of each other, but it is now also a city of celebration! I refer of course to the recent episode that featured the massive car chase through the streets of the Nation’s Capital. Now it might not have LOOKED like the nation’s capital to anyone who has ever spent any time here, but luckily for us, our fears were assuaged when, on more than one occasion, the cars drove directly underneath a giant banner that read “Washington D.C. Festival.” I think every single person in the area just bristles with excitement and anticipation for the Washington D.C. Festival each year. In fact, the only events more popular are Monday Day, the We Rock-Tackular and the Dinner is Delicious Street Fair.
Of course, this simply could not be a 24 recap without discussing the identity of the FBI Mole! It was Sean! Oh my God, WHAT a revelation! Just like that, after giving us eight whole episodes to get to know him, it was revealed that the character who we have already seen impersonate his boss for his own personal gain AND cheat on his wife…IS NO GOOD! OUTRAGEOUS!
As of this writing, we are not about to enter into the “second half” of this new season. You see, according to USA TODAY, 24 has regained its mantle of one of the best shows on television by simplifying, and not bogging itself down with too many plotlines. Little did that esteemed paper know that 24 was about to do it one better! Not only did they reduce this season thus far to “There’s a bad guy on the loose. WE HAVE TO GET HIM!,” but they then cut up the season into smaller, easy to digest chunks, so nothing at ALL gets caught in our collective throats as it’s going down.
And thank God they did. I was starting to get dizzy!