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

This week’s recap is probably going to be a shorter

11:03
Jack’s getting a very special shower out on Not-Duke Street as we start this week’s episode. They make some comments about pathogens and neurotoxins, but it’s all pretty unclear. Nerve agents tend to be pretty much fatal or harmless, without much degree of in between. But, maybe the writers of 24 know just about as much about bioweapons as they do about DC geography.

11:07
And now, Tony and Jonas are facing off at the Fauxwater headquarters in suburban Virginia where they’ve brought the bioweapon. It strikes us as odd that Fauxwater would have a small military installation inside the Beltway where land is so brutally expensive, but, I suppose, if the CIA can do it, so can Fauxwater.

11:10
As it turns out, the bioweapon appears to be a weaponized version of Mad Cow disease, which has a few of us kinda squirming in our seats a little bit. That’s worthy of being scary, but usually the lag-time on Mad Cow Disease is too long to really be all that terrifying.

11:12
Li’l Taylor and her Moms are hanging out in the Oval Office, and President Woman President offers her daughter the acting Chief of Staff gig while they work on getting a new one (which will definitely take longer than the eight hours the show has left.), while the Homeland Security Liaison interrupts with an important call that reveals all of last week’s episode, plus the bioweapon. She calls for a cabinet meeting, which means we pretty much won’t see her again this hour.

11:17
Back in Fedland, Renee is looking sullen, as she’s been detained by Agent Moss and his crew. Agent Moss fills in Renee, who stops hearing anything after “Jack’s been exposed,” showing off her smouldering love/hate for Jack. This was when I started wondering if there’s 24 fanfic. As it turns out, there sure is. (don’t click that link if you want to continue to have any faith in our society at large.)

11:22
Well, it seems in 10 minutes, despite it being the middle of the night, the Joint Chiefs came over from the Pentagon, and all the cabinet’s there. They’ve identified (in 15 minutes!) that it’s a Mad Cow plague that’s been weaponized by Fauxwater and sold off to the Juma Regime. The generals are pretty much arguing that because there are 1500 troops in the facility, pretty much the only way to be sure to get them all is to nuke them from orbit. None of them were sitting in a wheelchair with a nervous tick and a bad German accent. Pity.

11:24
They’re just about to ice Tony for knowing who Jonas is, and what his involvement is, when the right hand of Evil Jon Voight ices the guy and helps Tony escape, earning our Turncoat the OH SNAP of the week.

11:30
Don is quick to point out that the map that they flash up on the screen in the SitRoom is, in fact, down near Quantico, which would be due South of where they were before, not due West.

This was about where our TiVo decided that the crappy Comcast feed was too much to bear, and died. What’s left we watched in Standard Def, and some of this is just transcribed from our chat:

11:40

The facility is listed as being “13 miles from the Capital,” which, we all recognize is crap, if they’re down in Triangle. That’s more like 35 miles as the crow flies. Nice map reading, jackasses.

11:43
Don also notes that they read off lat/long coordinates tonight in decimal form, but then immediately typed them in in minutes & seconds. That’s either some mighty fancy math, or the people who read the scripts in special effects ignored the writers and decided that minutes and seconds was the True form of lat/long. Either way, there’s no way that math happened on the fly like that. Worse, the lat/long they read off was dead in the middle of the San Diego Airport some 2500 miles away from DC. Nice job, guys. Nice job.

11:51
An FBI assault team is now landing at the Fauxwater complex 35 miles south of DC. Never mind it was only really authorized 10 minutes before, and that they took helicopters, and not matter transporters. As Mike wrote, “An Executive order from the President to search your building.” Man, they told me if Obama was elected we wouldn’t see this sort of warrantless intrusion.

11:53
As it turns out, Turncoat is really a Turnturncoat, and has lead the FBI force into a trap, not to the source of the bioweapons attack, which means it’s back to square one. Fauxwater surrounds the FBI guys and there’s a tense scene. Of course, had it been a Cuban boy, or a Jesus wannabe in there, we’d have known just what to do. I have a feeling that Janet Reno is sitting at home, screaming at her television shaking her fist. That’s pretty much it for this week. Seeya next week!

We’ll be doing the usual double-duty tonight: Cover-it-Live Liveblogging, plus recap for the TiVo set.

Tom Bridge

I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.