My Reassurance On '24'

SPOILER ALERT:  I am so Eerily Prescient on '24' that all suspense will be ruined for regular viewers.  Well, a lot of the suspense.  Well, I have some questions, anyway.  For non-fans, this may be the most cryptic One Minute ever, but here we go:

1.  Ethan, the useless Madame President's Chief of Staff, is gone and they are scrambling to replace him... why?  Only a few short moments ago he was the bum who turned Jack loose so he could torture and murder a US Senator and his aide.  Now he is the hero who turned Jack loose so he could interdict a ghastly bio-weapon.  From Goat to Hero!  C'mon, give 'em his job back!  (Viewer Bonus - We will have someone in the Oval Office who can at least act a little bit).

2.  Jack, in the course of heroically interdicting the bio-weapon, got himself infected with a fast-acting prion disease similar to Jacobs-Cruy-something or other.  C'mon, he's got Mad Cow disease!  Say it!  Or are they worried that McDonalds will never sponsor anything on Fox again, ever?  Like, hell-can-freeze ever.  Like, that-useless-Madame-President-will-deliver-a-line-without-making-viewers-cringe ever.  Ever!

Look, I am not saying they need to describe it as Mad Cow while Jack munches a Big Mac, but let's have some commitment to artistic integrity here.  I'm sure it's not all about the money.

3.  Fear not!  Jack being infected is scary.  I have explained to the Young Viewers that, although Jack might not make it, all is well - Kiefer Sutherland is in a bitter contract dispute with FOX and if he won't come to terms, Special Agent Larry Moss will pick up the hero's role in '24' next season, after Jack goes insane and croaks from this hideous (but fast-acting!) disease.

But the Young Viewers see right through me!  Here's is the real scoop - Blackwater (depicted in the show as "Starkwood") has used their vast, ruthless, Cheney-like power to engineer this bio-weapon.  Their original evil, Cheney-like scheme was to release it on a US city and blame mysterious terrorists, probably Al Qaeda working in cahoots with Saddam. 

But hold on!  Ok, Cheney would shoot a friend in the face for grins so we all know he would infect a US city just for belly-laughs. But is Starkwood that nuts?  What could be in it for them?  Hmm, maybe their plan is to sit back and watch CNN in horror with the rest of us while people scream, twitch and go insane... no, that can't be right, 'American Idol' is on Fox, not CNN.

So here's a plan worthy of those evil geniuses - infect an American city, blame terrorists, then deliver the antidote!  Starkwood - from zero to hero!  I can hear the skeptics and lefty bloggers - how did Starkwood know about this disease, anyway?  Please - their people are everywhere, and our nation is grateful, or would be if it knew what was good for it.

So all Jack has to do is find this darn antidote before, or during, his brush with insanity and death.  And he's got like seven hours left.  Too easy!  Look for more plot twists ahead and more Eerie Prescience here.

[end of humanity]

Comments

[Jane]

So Jon Voight is Cheney. Thanks TM, I just couldn't place him...

[PaulL]

Does your crystal ball tell you how many more stupid global warming public service messages we'll have to endure? Talk about torture.

Even so, this season is WAY better than the previous two.

[Nick]

I've really tried to get into 24, but I always seem to miss an episode, and it kind of throws me off. Sigh.

http://www.notoriouslyconservative.com

[Tom Bowler]

An Irishman and his wife are ordering dinner in a Dublin restaurant. He says to the waitress, "I'll have the thickest, juiciest steak you've got." The startled waitress exclaims, "Well, what about Mad Cow?!" "She'll have the same," says he.

My sister told me that one. Heard it in Ireland. Really.

[Mike Huggins]

I'd probably prefer to see a horde of irradiated and mutated, walking dead, "Valencians" descend on Washington and the White House and just take out the whole lot of them. I'd watch if we could see zombies taking Janeanne Garafolo off to be messily devoured. We could call it all "24 Hours Later."

[Thomas Collins]

Just read the summary of the show you missed on the Fox website, Nick. Doesn't Fox also put up a tape of the prior shows?

Interesting theory on Jack, Starkwood and an antidote, TM. My theory is that, since Jack has up to two days to live, they could get through two more seasons, as long as no time elapsed between each season (then they can enter into a deal with one of those no-doze medicines). Or, perhaps Fox has decided to kill off Jack. After all, Chloe is really the key to protecting the USA!

Ethan had to take the fall, so Olivia could become Chief of Staff.

I think Voight deserves an Emmy for his performance this season.

[Danube of Thought]

I need the Sopranos.

[clarice]

OT--Apparently our favorite prosecutor will indict Blag this afternoon. Not that he'd leak to the press of course.

[Jane]

Clarice,

I hear Blago is in Disneyworld this week.

Might as well...

[Thomas Collins]

Perhaps Fitz will be appointed special prosecutor to examine CTU's activities over the years. If so, Jack should retain Brendan "I'm Not a Potted Plant" Sullivan to represent him. That is, after Dr. House saves Jack's life.

And who says I can't keep reality and fiction straight . . . .

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

And no, I don't know how I got that link back two or three posts either.

[Barry Dauphin]

Ethan had to take the fall, so Olivia could become Chief of Staff.

...which worked well until it was discovered that Olivia hadn't paid her taxes.

[Barry Dauphin]

Ethan had to take the fall, so Olivia could become Chief of Staff.

...which worked well until it wa discovered that Olivia hadn't paid her taxes.

[narciso]

In the words of George Constanza, "Somebody please make it stop" No, art and real life situations, are disturbingly merging, with
all the embedded assumptions. It's all part
of the switcheroo that they pull every season. Specially since season 2, when the Islamist 'Second Wave' became a catspaw for the Caspian oil syndicate, which as I've pointed out, has the motives completely backward. Supposedly the events of Season 4&%, is not do the terrorist of the day, but to the neocon/oil cabal (as Mark Steyn
points out, too many cabals under one roof)
Season 6, started out with the terrorists
wave, which we discover was made possible
by the release of the terrorist, out of a
domestic type facility, but the Russians ended up being the real players behind the scenes. And this season which started with
a Leahyesque Senator interrogating Bauer, ended up with him becoming a martyr to the
Blackwater manques, who collaborated with
the evil African warlords, which once again
were the minor villains

[TM]

So Jon Voight is Cheney. Thanks TM, I just couldn't place him...

Yeah, I make these tough yet subtle calls every day. De nada.

[jimmyk]

Just read the summary of the show you missed on the Fox website, Nick.

I highly recommend reading Dave Barry's blog on '24', notably the exhaustive plot summaries by commenter "Steve." Both hilarious and informative. (Unfortunately I've been missing 24 this season due to time pressure, but the crowd on Barry's blog was a big part of the fun when I was watching.)

[jimmyk]

An Irishman and his wife are ordering dinner ...

Two cows are standing in a field, one says to other, "You heard about that Mad Cow disease? Pretty scary, huh?" The other says: "Yeah, good thing it can't happen to us chickens."

[fdcol63]

It's doubtful that any Vince Flynn books will be made into movies .... unless Hollyweird does a complete 180 on the heros / villains.

[jorod]

No, no , no,....you have it all wrong. The bio-bomb has gas in it that turns people into a vampire. Jack will become a vampire and live immortally through 400 new seasons. Of Course, Jack will be a good vampire while Agent Moss and Renee will get infected and become bad vampires. But not before Jack marries Renee on his death bed. She will get his book rights but will be terribly surprised when he comes back to "life."

For the rest of the series, Jack will drink the blood of animals and bad humans and race up and down trees. And he will never have to sleep, which he never does anyway..... The neww series title will be Blade 24...

[fdcol63]

Will we see Jack visit the good vampires in "Twilight", too? LOL

[bad]

Will we see Jack visit the good vampires in "Twilight", too?

Rene will turn out to be a good werewolf, ala "Twighlight", and their offspring will be good ______________.

(Help me out here.)

[Thomas Collins]

Filling in bad's blank:

. . . . will be good werewolfs who were trained properly and thus understand that one makes classy offerings to the Queen and doesn't bow to the Saudis.

And who are smart enough to retain Brendan Sullivan when Fitz starts investigating whether Blago paid kickbacks to werewolfs to scare folks seeking Illinois construction contracts to contribute to Blago's campaign fund, which fund is hidden in one of Ted Stevens' internet tubes.

[soccer dad]

quote:

Ethan had to take the fall, so Olivia could become Chief of Staff.

...which worked well until it wa discovered that Olivia hadn't paid her taxes.

In the 24 world not paying taxes is a disqualification? How unrealistic.

[soccer dad]

So Jack's infected but not contagious.

That would mean that it would be OK for him and Renee to ...

Seems awfully convenient.

[Thomas Collins]

I hope Larry doesn't die in the Starkwood showdown in the compound. That would pave the way for non-contagious Jack and Renee, but eliminates the triangle.

Jack being non-contagious does bring up a way to kill off Jack and keep the series going. Larry is killed in the Starkwood showdown in a firefight in which Jack, having slipped out of the FBI offices, participates. Renee witnesses Jack making a heroic but ultimately unsuccessful effort to save Larry's life. Renee falls for Jack, and Jack and Renee do the babymaking thing before Jack dies. The next season takes place 40 years later with Jack's and Renee's non-identical twin son and daughter combo having taken the career path of their parents (although it is the son who is the FBI agent and the daughter who is the special counterterrorism agent). Sutherland plays the son and Wersching the daughter. Chloe, Tony, and anyone else Fox decides to keep on wear the appropriate make-up to make them look 40 years older.

[clarice]

CBS 2 on Blago:
"Fizgerald decided not to hold a news conference to announce the indictment, unlike in Decmember when Blagojevich was arrested. Fitzgerald had taken heat for some of his comments at that news conference.

[Xrlq]

Starkwood is supposed to be Blackwater? Really? I totally missed that, as the parallels are so, like, subtle.

/sarcasm

[Danube of Thought]

Four cows are sitting around the dinner table, having beefsteak for the first time. The first cow to take a bit chews it for a moment, then says "Hmmm...we taste just like chicken."

[PJ]

This is all way too complicated. Can't we just cut to Chloe and Janice in the mud pit?

[Thomas Collins]

I'm thinking, PJ, that Janice is going to need Chloe's help to do what IT can do to stop the bio attack. I'm hoping that it will be a combination of mud pit sniping and cooperation.

Of course, Janice could still turn out to be a Starkwood mole. After all, FBI communications are still being intercepted. But I'm hoping Janice turns out to be a patriot in the end.