Yes, terrible, awful things happened tonight on 24. If you haven’t seen it yet, be advised that this post is FULL OF SPOILERS!! STOP NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET!.

The Happily Ever After we all wanted...

Another heart-breaker people! I haven’t been that upset over someone’s death on 24 since Tony. But you know what? Thank god 24 has some balls once again. I was happy to have Tony back last season, for my own selfish hormonal reasons, but they just hacked at his character. The writers keep a beloved character around too long, and they degrade exponentially. The only exception being Jack and Chloe, in my opinion. Remember how awesome Nina Meyers was, until she wasn’t? Martha Logan was great, until she really, crazily wasn’t. I would rather Renee go out in a way that gives me the vengeful, driven Jack that I love.

Does Jack deserve that kind of heartache? No one does, really, but this show is based on despair. I spent season one hoping that Jack would prevail, only to be devastated by watching his wife, the mother of his child, die in his arms. Wouldn’t a happy ending be an affront to that premise? Besides, who says romantic love is the only happy ending? Jack finally has a good relationship with his daughter Kim, and an adorable grand daughter, Teri’s namesake, to bring him joy. Why isn’t that enough, at least for now?

I admit my gooey heart was rooting for a happy Jack and Renee ending, but I give the writers mad props for being brave again. Offing Hassan last week, and wrenching Jack’s heart this week, gives me some serious drama and revenge to look forward to, and that excites me.

Plus, the extra added bonus of Chloe finally, finally! getting to run CTU, as it should be.

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I know there are many people out there who don’t agree with me, but I thought last night’s finale was rather good.

Look, it’s 24, and it’s been written so deep into a corner over the past several years that it’s amazing they’ve been able to write their way back out.

But the rebound from last season was nothing short of spectacular.

Over the course of the season, there have been more twists in the plot than on a strand of DNA.

But the finale managed to bring them all together, albeit with a whining Tony who is a mere shadow of the shell of the man he once was. We all knew that Michelle’s death hit him hard. And, OK, she was pregnant, so that makes it even harder. But watching Tony was like going back to the TV show Pretender, when Jared was doing a patented Triple Pretend.

Except for one thing: On Pretender, we always were in on Jared’s pretending. We knew he wasn’t a doctor. Or a car thief. Or whatever.

Tony? It shifted almost from week to week. Gave me a headache. Was Tony bad? Was he good? Was he bad? Was he good? Was he badly good? Goodly bad? Just plain ol’ bat-guano crazy??

Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner! Bat-guano crazy.

That’s OK.

Because you know what? Kim Bauer proved to the world that she is actually a blood relative of Jack Bauer.

She stabbed a bad guy in the leg with a pen. A PEN. She figured things out pretty quickly and even managed to chase down the bad guy without being caught.

I’m pretty sure she didn’t even screech in horror once this season.

She even dropped a D-bomb.

Little Kimmy is all growed up.

Speaking of, Renee “Red Hot” Walker was AWEsome. I’m pretty sure I’m in love. And I’m a happily married straight woman.

When she showed up in the ‘copter, shooting first; when she held onto the side of an SUV while shooting at the bad guys and then tucked and rolled without dropping her gun; when she grabbed the bad guy by the throat; when she ordered Janis out; when she smashed the intercom/doorlock system; when she handcuffed Janis; when she went into the interrogation room and shut the door behind her – Red Hot was AWEsome.

What I really like about 24, though, was exemplified in the scene between Jack and Renee, when she asked him what to do. Jack regrets absolutely nothing he’s ever done. Yet he knows how much he’s lost. He absolutely will not recommend to anyone else going down the path he’s blazed. He’s saved many lives; he’s ended many others – good and evil.

Jack Bauer does what he needs to do to save people, yet he fully accepts that he must pay the price for doing it.

Renee Walker has, in less than 24 hours, gone from despising Jack for what he’s done to, well, to becoming Jack.

A lot of other things happened in these two hours, not least of all the fact that Jack was sedated, handcuffed and had spinal fluid forcibly removed from him and STILL managed to escape from and then kill not one, not two, but THREE bad guys. That’s pretty frakkin’ Jack.

But in the end, 24 has always been a show about a family, oddly enough. After Kim was gone, Chloe and Audrey kind of filled in as surrogate family members. Even Season 6 had the craptacular Bauer clan.

We have one more season yet to come, and then, perhaps, a movie. Season 8 will take place in New York City, CTU will be reconstituted and Allison Taylor will still be president (by the way, that subplot did drag on too long, but how much do you love Aaron Pierce around now? Hmm? How much?). Renee Walker will be around (they’d better freakin’ kiss), and I’m betting Aaron Pierce will be around, because he’s the only person other than Jack Bauer to have been in every season.

Anil Kapoor of Slumdog Millionaire will play the brother of/secretary of state to the president of yet another unnamed Middle Eastern nation. His wife and daughter are in the picture, but I’m hoping this isn’t another Behrooz plot.

No matter case, we have one more season to cheer Jack on – to urge him to stab someone in the neck with a pen, shoot someone in the knee, save the world.

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With tonight being the TWO HOUR season finale of 24, I had to set up a poll:

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Honestly, it’s hard to get too excited about an episode that was so obviously filler and in which so little happened.

I mean, what does it say when Kiefer Sutherland headbutting a fashion designer on the streets of Manhattan in defense (kinda sorta) of Brooke Shields is almost more interesting than the Monday episode (for the definitive story on this, see Point / Counterpoint)? Especially when there are only three hours left in this day and we still have no idea what the frak is going on.

I guess that’s why I never really got around to a separate blog post on it this week and decided to wait for the weekly blog carnival, which I am always happy to host.

Basically, this is what happened this week:

Tony and Red Not forced the Token Muslim guy to pretend he’s a jihadist so they could blame their bad behavior on “those people.” Thing is, this guy was basically the least enthusiastic jihadist EVAR. Seriously, folks, if anyone in the intelligence (or intelligent) community actually believed this video, that this man who had nothing on his record and just got a bunch of money wired to him minutes before the video was shot (ahem, Chloe had that figured out before Jack even got to the guy’s house, for goodness sakes!) and was SO unenthusiastic about his jihad against the bad Americans, they need a vacation. Now. He couldn’t even convince his brother.

Olivia turned from hard-nosed Bitch to whiny little beyotch after nothing more than a car bomb. And, by the way, the car bomb was a little obvious, guys. Adam from The Jack Sack publicly called it before it happened and on 24, whenever someone is left alone in a car for “just a minute” while the other person goes about 200 yards away to “sign him out,”  you can pretty well bet the car’s going to blow up. And Olivia, SHUT UP! Stop whining girl, you got what you wanted. And it’s a pretty good bet you’ll be caught, even if this was independent of your shenanigans, so I hope you enjoy sullying your mother’s good name. (Kudos to Sprague Grayden, by the way, who is obviously a good actress, being able to play such an unlikeable character after being such a likeable character on Jericho!)

The first husband came home to the White House, the best villain in quite some time bit the dust, Jack apologized to Chloe for not telling her he had mad cow (frankly, Mary Lynn and Kiefer both did an excellent job on that scene) and at the liveblog we said “Mooooo” a lot.

And before Jonas went “boom,” he was renamed Robert Tippet and learned he would have to live next door to Steve Martin doing a mobster impression for the rest of his life. That’s when he put out the contract on his own life.

The main question left, besides WTF is wrong with Tony?, is who the last mole is. The fanbase is rooting for Janis Gold. Don’t disappoint us, Howard.

OK, so to the carnival:

Steve gives us his usually detailed recap, Season 7 – 24 – 4 am to 5 am, posted at Magic Lamp. It’s full of Web 2.0 jokes and made me giggle more than once.

Colin Timberlake gave us Underappreciated Actors: Michael Massee, posted at colintimberlake.com. Anyone who could plot to kidnap Jack’s wife, even at the bidding of Victor Drazen, has a titanium-coated pair.

King Tom wrote Of Patsies, Overachieving Hitmen and a Wasted Supervillain, posted at King Tom’s Kingdom, bemoaning the lack of action this season and the loss of a great Jonas-in-witness protection spinoff, which would have been 24‘s first spinoff in seven seasons.

And Adam gave us multiple posts to peruse at The Jack Sack, including his 4 a.m. to  a.m. Quick Review and his Star Trek Movie Review – love the art on that. You also have to check out his co-produced (with the folks at AlmeidaisGod[dot]com) – “Almeida” music video.

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Bauer!!!. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Bauer!!! using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Want to host a future edition of the carnival? Say so in the comments and mention your favorite Jack Bauer kill.
Link to B4B’s Point/Counter

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I don’t know why I’ve had a hard time this week writing about 24.

I think it’s a combination of factors:

Tony is so utterly bad (unless he’s not) – boo! Chloe’s back – yay! Jack’s dying – boo! Jack went off on Janis Gold (otherwise known as Grimace, in some circles) – yay! Larry’s still dead – sorry, best I can do is neutral on that one. I only liked him for about 5 minutes before he was killed.

I can’t believe that Jack is going to die, and I assume that Kim is giving blood or spinal fluid or stem cells or whatever it is that she needs to donate in order to save Daddy, despite what he said. At least she’s no longer with Pony Boy.

Jack cannot die from mad cow. There’s another season to go.

There’s still a chance Tony might still be good, but I doubt it.

Chloe is totally Chloe, which makes me happy. But I also hate Mary Lynn Rajskub for looking that good so soon after having a baby.

Janis must be stopped. I don’t think she’s the mole, though. Unfortunately. It would be really sweet if she were.

But I realized Monday night how desperately Jack misses David Palmer. And how very much I, as a viewer, miss the character. He may well be the best president this country’s ever had.

Sure, Jack has mad cow and is slightly insane right now. But the reason he said Palmer’s name is that he knows Palmer would trust him, Palmer would know that if he said to do something, it needed to be done. And he also feels incredibly guilty for vouching for Tony.

Jack is at a crossroads.

Whatever happens at the end of this season, Jack will never be the same.

Next season will be different, even though CTU’s supposed to return. Jack can’t do this anymore. He’s given absolutely everything to his country and all that’s happened in return is that everything he’s ever cared about has been taken away, except for Chloe. She’s all he has left.

I remember when Chloe first started, she annoyed the crap out of me, as well as many other 24 fans. But she grew on you, like mold, in large part because of her unflinching loyalty to Jack. No one has ever had Jack’s back more than Chloe.

If Jack were to die, I truly believe Chloe would feel the loss deeper than anyone, even Kim.

Have faith, Chloe. We love you, almost as much as we love Jack.

P.S. I cannot take credit for coining “moozure” – it was, of course, my pal Adam over at The Jack Sack, who came up with that one on the fly Monday night. If you’ve never joined our liveblog over at Blogs.4Bauer.com, you’re really missing out. If you can’t watch and join in our liveblog at the same time, that’s what DVRs are for.

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Didn’t watch? Don’t read. That’s all I’m gonna say.

They could not have made Tony look any more suspicious last night if they’d said to him, “Hey, Carlos, make Tony look really suspicious tonight.” Actually, that’s probably what they did.

Thing is, Tony knows that if anyone could sniff out his duplicity, it’s Jack. And he also knows that the only way to stop Jack once he knows what you’re up to is to kill him.

Which makes me think that maybe Tony isn’t truly Darth Zombie Tony Almeida, but merely Zombie Tony Almeida, double agent.

24 loves the red herring. They always try to make you think things are one way and then toss in something else that makes you go, whaaaaaaa? Like when we discovered President Logan was evil. And then discovered that he was answering to someone else entirely. And then discovered the next season that that someone else was Jack’s family.

The show is sometimes like a Matryoshka doll, twists inside of twists inside of twists.

To quote Winston Churchill:

It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.

Sure, Churchill was talking about Soviet Russia, but same difference.

So, what do we know for sure about Tony?

• Tony killed Larry. Larry is definitely dead. But remember, Jack killed Chappell and Curtis to serve the greater good. Just because he killed a good guy (who we hated until only about 10 minutes before he died – admit it, you know you did) doesn’t automatically make him a bad guy.

• He helped random bad dude escape. Can we count how many times Jack’s let a bad guy loose in order to track down who the really bad guy is? Again, doesn’t have to mean anything.

• He looked REALLY untrustworthy throughout the entire episode. OK, two things about that – first, the show creators love to make us distrust everyone. Who haven’t we thought was a mole so far this season? OK, except for Jack and Chloe. And Morris, but only because he does love Chloe and we just wanted to see him get the hell off the screen already. Second, we “knew” he was a bad guy, so we were looking for him to act all suspiciously. I bet he made that same face multiple times the week before, but we assumed he was just being suspicious of someone else.

So, what is the truth about Tony?

Something tells me we’re not going to know for sure until the last 15 minutes or so of Hour 24. Or sometime in Season 8.

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I almost don’t know what to say.

OK, I know one thing to say: If you haven’t watched tonight’s episode of 24 yet, stop reading NOW. NOWWWWWWW.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In fact, tonight’s episode was so frakkin’ unbelievable that I’m not going to write ANOTHER WORD before the jump in case someone isn’t listening to me.

So, Tony Almeida: Bad or good?

We’re certainly exepcted to believe he’s a bad guy. And he certainly may be.

I do know that Adam over at The Jack Sack is going to possibly quit 24 forEVer if Tony stays bad.

That alone is enough for me to say:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

But even without that potential, I still would say:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I mean, we endured Tony’s Season 5 “death,” where he didn’t even get the silent clock treatment.

We endured the bizarre twist that brought him back (actually, brought him back to life).

We endured thinking he’d turned bad because Michelle was killed and rejoiced when we were told he was a good man who’d just temporarily gone bad.

But Tony killing Larry (who, as one of my B4B compatriots so eloquently put it, we’d hated until about 5 minutes before he was killed, so his loss wasn’t so punishing) and letting the bad guy go free with the biological weapon? WTF is that? Whiskey Foxtrot Tango, they’re making Tony the big bad. Possibly bigger and badder than Jonas Hodges?

There are still six hours left in this day, time enough to rectify this situation.

And I love 24 and its insane twists.

But making Tony the truly bad guy is just insanity.

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The big debate Monday night on Blogs4Bauer’s liveblog of Hour 14 was the status of moles.

Right now, it seems as if there are so many moles in the White House, the Rose Garden should collapse in on itself.

Let’s look at the candidates, shall we?

Olivia Taylor

Pro: The first daughter looks awfully good in the Mole Olympics. She’s sneaky, duplicitous and not afraid to wallow in the mud. She played dirty tricks during mommy’s campaign for the presidency, which is what caused them to have a falling out. Now, she’s totally on the dark side, being back in her mom’s good graces. Nearly getting killed by a crazy African dictator will do that for a relationship. She’s totally trying to get Ethan fired and there’s no doubt that she lined up that TV guy to lie for her about his sources to cover her ass. Did you see that smirk when Ethan came up to her after being confronted about that guy being killed in the hospital? She’s the best manipulative beyotch this show has had since Sherri Palmer.

Con: Whatever Sherri Palmer did, she never knowingly betrayed the nation to a crazed dictator. The more you compare Olivia Taylor to Sherri Palmer, the less likely it seems she’s the mole. Plus, she’s SO obvious. They’ve practically bashed us over the head with clues that she’s the mole, so she probably isn’t.

Ethan Kanin

Pro: The money was on him from Hour 1 (I almost said Day 1, but on 24, that doesn’t really work). He always has these sneaky looks on his face. He advocated letting Jack torture. He let Jack go in to the hospital room (did he know that someone was going in there to kill the witness and Jack would get framed for it? Hmm?). The camera’s always lingering on him, too. He is totally all shifty-eyed.

Con: He’s perhaps the only one more obvious to be the mole than Olivia Taylor. And he advocated letting Jack torture someone!

Janis Gold

Pro: Honestly, she hadn’t even occurred to me until Monday as we were watching. She’s so suspicious of everyone, though, and is so quick to rat everyone else out. She totally HAS to know everything that’s going on and can’t stand to be on the outside. She’s the go-to girl when it comes to ‘puters in the office. And she ratted out Chloe! Plus, the guys who absolutely hate her because she’s played by a known liberal will forever love Howard Gordon & Co. if she turns out to be the mole.

Con: She ratted out Chloe, thereby chancing that she’d be exposed. And she’s such an easy target, as a good portion of the show’s fanbase hates her simply b/c she’s played by Janene Garafolo; would they go the easy route?

Tony Almeida

Pro: Where was Tony the last couple hours? And making him the bad guy would totally give viewers whiplash.

Con: Um, he’s TONY. They just brought him back from the dead. They wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t do that to Adam’s and Rickey’s fragile emotions.

President Allison Taylor

Pro: OK, I know I’m reaching here, but what would 24 be without wholly preposterous plots? After all, Season 5 ended with the total gut-check that the President was in on it all from the beginning! They’ve done it before and they can do it again.

Con: Really? Her? Don’t think so.

There is no other mole

Pro: Haven’t we had enough already this season?

Con: Come on, get real.

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So many times in the past two nights, I have wanted to yell at my television, ordering everyone to just listen to Jack already. After all these years, they haven’t realized that Jack is ALWAYS – not sometimes, always – right?

President David Palmer knew it. And he got the 23rd amendment pulled on him for his belief in Jack. But Palmer’s the only one who ever believed Jack.

Agent Walker’s pretty damn close to becoming a Bauer-ciple, however. She believed him in the first two hours and now finds herself acting like him. C’mon, you know you cheered when she pressed her gun right into Tanner’s wound through the badge and then cut off his oxygen? Thatw as a classic Jack move if I ever saw one.

So after four hours, these are my basic thoughts about Day 7:

• Who knew Bill Buchanan was such a hardass? He’s ready to sacrifice anyone, Jack included, to achieve his objective. He’s kind of like Jack, but on an even bigger scale. What do you think happened to make him this way? Someone kill Karen? We have, however, only seen four hours, and if there’s anything we’ve learned after six years of this show, it’s that nothing and no one is ever what they seem to be, except Jack.

• Tony was actually physically dead for 10 minutes before being revived. Does that make him part zombie? And he did actually work for the bad guys for a while, until “innocent Americans” started being targeted. He’s such a Boy Scout, deep down.

• Chloe is all in, but if it came to protecting Jack, I think she’d personally jump in to save him. She’s mellowed a lot. I think having a baby must have done that.

• How did Bill and Tony and Chloe all hook up to be the Band of Brothers with no agency behind them? There’s something more to this that we don’t know. And who’s paying the rent for the abandoned embassy they’re hanging out in? (I don’t know that it actually is an abandoned embassy, I’d imagine that’s rather unlikely, but it sure seemed that way – the wide stairs, marble or granite walls/stairs, high ceilings. It is D.C., after all.)

• Emerson’s British accent keeps fading out. Also, he’s a bastard.

• Jack’s tried to puncture someone’s eardrum with a pen, taken a baseball bat to a bad guy and cut off an FBI agent’s air supply to knock her out. I love this man. He has not, however, directly killed anyone as yet.

• Yes, Jack DID hotwire a car after subduing it with the butt of a pistol, then drive it off the second or third story of a parking deck while laying on the floor and not watching where he was going. And he was only mildly injured.

• Don’t most folks who are going incognito but using a van use a white panel van instead of a rather bright blue one? I mean, how does that slip through a perimeter?

• Who else already is annoyed by Janis Gold and Queens Boulevard?

I’m kind of relieved that 24 moves into its normal time slot next week and we have only an hour to sit through. As fantastic as the past two nights have been, especially for a die-hard fan who’s been without her Jack Bauer for far too long, I don’t think I could keep up the pace.

I wondered, too, if this season could keep up the pace, considering the astounding four-hour opening from last year in which Jack bit off a terrorist’s ear, comandeered a helicopter, killed Curtis and saw Valencia nuked. I think we can all agree that Day 6 was pretty damn craptacular all in all…

There were plenty of classic “24″ conversations between characters tonight, though – Chloe being pissed off that the FBI has a geek almost as good as her, who could “ping” her off the network; Tony apologizing for invoking Teri; Jack apologizing to Tony for beating him up; the “Why did you come back to the U.S.” convo with Emerson. Even the boring exposition with the president (by the way, who else thinks Ethan is the bad guy in the administration?)…

The past two nights held a lot of promise. Let’s hope the producers can keep that promise to us.

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