24 Episode 6.20 - "1:00 AM - 2:00 AM"
Airdate: Monday, April 30th, 2007

"You're cursed, Jack. Everything you touch, one way or another, ends up dead."

When I started watching this season of 24, which is the first one I've followed consistently every week, I expected the thrill ride. I expected the loopy plotting and cliffhanger endings, the ticking plunk of a clock at the end of every hour telling me it would be another seven days before I'd find out the fate of 24's free world. I expected a master class in plotting from some of television's most diabolical minds.

What I didn't really expect was to become so involved, so engaged, with the CHARACTERS. I assumed these men and women, from Jack Bauer to Chloe O'Brian and onward, were just elaborate placeholders in a big, crazy board game--a televised speed chess match born in a Southern California writers' room and broadcast to the world an hour at a time.

Yet this season, while a real white-knuckle ride, has really boiled its essence down to people, and the things they do for love...like walking in the rain and the snow, when there's nowhere to go, and you're feelin' like a part of you is dyin'.

Seriously! It's not just a crappy song on lite FM radio anymore; it's the theme to last night's episode of 24!

In the White House, we have love betrayed--Vice-President Daniels learns that his top aide and bedroom partner, Lisa Miller, has been sleeping with another fella, and this fella has leaked critical information about the situation with the Chinese to the Russian government, who are not lovers but fighters, and thus are none too pleased that Jack Bauer used a piece of key Russian defense tech as a bargaining chip to free his girlfriend.

The scene when Daniels reveals Lisa's betrayal to Tom Lennox is a minor masterpiece in 24's long history. All along, whether through ignorance or lack of information, I've assumed Daniels to be the kind of guy with a wife his own age and a younger piece on the side. In last night's episode, we learn instead that he sought comfort from Lisa Miller because his own wife had died. Powers Boothe really humanizes the character in these few moments, to the point where it's easy to feel sorry for the guy, even though in the back of your brain you know he tried to kill President Palmer and nuke Iran into the stone age.

At CTU, it's love triumphant--well, sorta. Jack is secretly freed by Mike Doyle to take Audrey hostage so that a creepy, evil CTU doctor won't try to use risky drugs to free her from her catatonic state. Jack takes care of business and whisks Audrey down into the bowels of CTU, where he locks the two of them into a room and tries to break through her brainwashed haze. At long last, Audrey reaches down and takes Jack's hand, and all is sweetness and light...

...until Nadia and a cadre of CTU agents turn up to burn the door open, which pisses Jack off and freaks Audrey out. The music swells, and metal sparks fly at the impenetrable door, and it reminds me of nothing less than Han Solo going into carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe it's just cause I'm a Star Wars nerd, but there's a similar feeling of hopelessness--the best-laid plans of Jack have finally hit a wall, and there's not much else he can do to help his lady love.

But 24 hasn't even played this week's trump card yet. No, that comes from a surprise cameo by The Great William Devane as Audrey's father, former Secretary of Defense Heller. (It's not an official title, like "Sir" or "Doctor," but I prefer to refer to The Great William Devane with all caps, in deference to his decades of service as one of Hollywood's most dependable and scenery-chomping actors.)

The Great William Devane is there to take Audrey home, but before he can, he stops by Jack's cell, where he utters the words that opened this review. It's a CRUSHING moment--not only have all of Jack's schemes ultimately failed him completely, to the point where he's saved the world but finds himself a captive of his own government, but the woman he loves has suffered the ultimate price for his actions. Which has of course happened before, so this isn't even his first time at this particular rodeo.

Deep down, he must know Heller's words are true, but having to hear them spoken--what Jack Bauer, and we the audience, have known for years--it's truly devastating. If all of Jack's plans and schemes have left him here with less than nothing, then what's been the point, other than the visceral release of adrenaline?

Powerful, powerful stuff. I didn't expect to get that from season six of 24, but I'm glad I did. It's great television.

iTunes Links

24 - Series
24 - Season 6
"1:00 AM - 2:00 AM"