Jack Bauer stares down a threatening-looking bug.
courtesy of tiffany bridge

9:02

Jack’s running out to his car which is supposed to be at Kennedy Memorial Hospital. He breaks into a sweet old ride with a nice laptop inside, not to mention some easily spottable Sprint gear.

9:04

That’s a really derelict looking hospital that Jack just “escaped” from. More Warehouse than Hospital, I think.

Aaaaand Freckles with the ID of The Real Killer in the photo! Good job, Freckles! And not just the ID, but exposition too! Hey wait a minute… is she after Bill’s job? God, the body’s not even cold yet…

9:07

Hodges and his lackey are talking in what looks like a very nice K Street office. It actually looks a lot like one of the floors at the Columbia Square building on E Street, but I’m not 100% sure.

9:10

Jack is driving through somewhere in DC. Judging by the amount of not-turning, I’d say he’s on one of the main arteries. Of course, this is magic DC, so Jack’s probably using some sort of cross-dimensional highway that just LOOKS like he’s using a straight road, when instead he’s using a mythic tunnel between Anacostia and Petworth or something.

9:19

And, we’re back. Freckles is indignant to Agent Moss, and finds herself under arrest.

The Senator’s at his mythical home on Deerbrook Avenue, somewhere in one of the four quadrants. It is, I’m certain, no accident that the search results in Google suggest, instead, a map of Washington DC:

DON’T GO IN THE BASEMENT, SENATOR! Oh wait, it’s just Jack. Who must be, like, the politest hostage-taker ever. Do you see how he addresses the Senator as “sir” while ordering him around? That’s what separates us from the terrorists, kiddies.

9:28

Does anyone believe that’s the White House briefing room? Anyone? It’s laughable.

The guy who plays the murderer on like, every episode of Law & Order ever has some illicit information for Junction Jack. Oh noes! A leak? (Why wouldn’t there be a leak in an administration where the FBI, Secret Service, and Congressional staff are all compromised? Does this surprise anyone? And why doesn’t anyone have a password on their computer?)

Meanwhile, Mr. Chloe is getting strong-armed into decrypting what Freckles sent to Jack. It’s Blowfish encryption, he says, very strong UNLESS you know the secret back door into it that the coder built. Apparently the 24 writers don’t know that Bruce Schneier, Geek God of Security, wrote the Blowfish algorithm while ensconced on the holy mount of Encryptius. In other words, don’t go accusing him of building back doors into his shit. He will punk your day. Also, 148-bit Blowfish encryption is mathematically impossible.

So Jack is accessing the sekrit files pertaining to Sangala and Starkwood on the Senator’s mysteriously unprotected computer, and apparently NO ONE EVER ENHANCED THE PHOTO of the cop at the accident scene before, because look! He’s the same guy who killed the federal witness!

And juuuuust as the Senator comes around to being a Bauer-Booster, there’s a knock at the door. OH SNAP*, the Senator is gunned down in the doorway of his own house. That’s cold, dude.

*That was for Katie.

9:53

Junction Jack is accusing Li’l Taylor of leaking the information about Bauer to the media, right in front of her mother! Li’l Taylor makes with the alibi, though, making Jack look the fool.

Don’t you cross Junction Jack. He will cast you down with the Sodomites.

And at LAST, we are finally back outside, where Jack Bauer is whining like a sissy at that tiny little cut on his hand. I’m pretty sure there are no fences that tall in DC, and especially not anywhere near a neighborhood where a Senator lives. For that matter, I’m pretty sure in the Senator’s neighborhood that amount of machine gun fire wouldn’t go unnoticed.

But hey! Jack found a bulldozer with the keys still in it! Convenient, no? After Jack brings a fist to the gunfight and WINS, he conveniently finds a text message on the dead suspect’s phone that tells him that our next big plot point is happening at the Port of Alexandria, yard C, at 10:30. It takes half an hour to get there from the middle of DC-ish, and so conveniently, that’s how long Jack HAS to get there.

Oh yeah, and Tony’s at 5th and B. STILL NO QUADRANT. Seriously, writers? Read a damn book about DC.

And that wraps it up for this week. But next week? BLACK HELICOPTERS. Because no show taking place in DC is complete without them.