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24 Blog 9.6: There is a light that never goes out

24 9 6-1

”And if a double-decker bus crashes into us…”

It’s as if the writers of “24” have been reading this blog, and secretly sent me a love letter.

What, the Smiths reference isn’t enough proof? Fine, I’ll go one better. Jack is trying to trick weasel arms dealer Karl Rask into uploading tracking software to his computer – meanwhile, in the next room, Kate is getting the shit kicked out of her as a decoy, because what Federal agent wouldn’t sign up for that? – and Rask tells Jack that he knows the people at the bank where he set up the account, and asks him about Metzger (that’s the German spelling of my name. It means ‘butcher,’ if you’re curious). The move is clearly a bluff, and Jack sniffs it out. Still, both Rask and Jack are repeatedly talking about Metzger. “Describe Metzger to me!” “There is no Metzger at the bank.”

In the end, I apparently don’t exist. Damn. Still, for a few moments, this episode was all about me, and that felt pretty damn good.

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24 Blog 9.5: Panic Station

24 9 5-2

For all concerned, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve arrived at Panic Station.

The British Prime Minister (my wife still laughs whenever Stephen Fry is on screen, for the sheer absurdity of it all) has to be freaking the hell out right now, because he stands to lose far more than Big Dick Heller does. He stuck his neck out for Big Dick – let’s pause for a moment and examine that sentence, ‘stuck his neck out for Big Dick,’ shall we? – by defending the Americans’ drone program, and that decision might cost thousands of Londoners their lives. We have a small quibble with Mommie Dearest’s video, though. She made a point about how her group spared the innocent, then threatened to bomb London if Heller didn’t surrender to her, meaning that she had contradicted herself, on tape, within seconds. Terrorists: if you can’t trust them to be true to their word, who can you trust?

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24 Blog 9.3: The Angry Mob

24 9 3-1

“We are the angry mob, we read the papers every day / We like who we like, we hate who we hate, but we’re also easily swayed.”

Well, you’re a mob, so by definition, you’re prone to outrage and righteous indignation. As an added bonus, not having all of the facts makes it easier for your collective conscience to rationalize your behavior. “So tonight, you’ll sleep softly in your beds…”

The Kaiser Chiefs – writers of the above lyrics, and this week’s blog title – never really established more than a cult following here in the States – and that makes sense, given their overt “Britishness,” for lack of a better word – but damn, do I love those guys. And their new record, the politically charged Education, Education, Education and War, is their best in ages. All right, Shameless Plug of the Week ends here.

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24 Blog: 9.1/9.2 – Good Morning Britain

24_1-1

Aaaaaaaaand we’re back! First, I’d like to thank Fox for giving me a four-year vacation from blogging “24.” It was much needed, long overdue, and I enjoyed every minute of it, but I am refreshed and ready for duty, sir. So, what are we doing this year?

Ah, of course: we’re doing the same damn thing, only in London.

To be fair, the setup for this season isn’t awful; it’s just not any different than any other season. Jack Bauer, a wanted man in three countries, is still carrying out his duties as a counter-terrorist agent, despite the fact that his own countrymen consider him a terrorist. They’ve done this before, you may remember, when he began a season undercover as an employee for a Mexican drug cartel. Wasn’t that adorable? At least this premise makes more sense. Jack has always fought to protect the best interests of the United States; he just didn’t have much of a filter when it came to interrogating anyone he considered an enemy of the state. Foreign, domestic, whatever. If you mess with the USA, you will answer to me.

And who is the president now? Why, none other than Big Dick Heller! This is a contrived move but a savvy one as well. He’s a much-loved supporting character by “24” fans, and as an added bonus, Jack’s involvement with Big Dick’s daughter Audrey led to her abduction and subsequent torture at the hands of the Chinese government. Audrey is now married to Big Dick’s chief of staff Mark Boudreau (official “24” nickname: Hercules, because yes, he was the voice of Hercules in the 1997 Disney movie), and he doesn’t want Jack’s name even mentioned in front of Audrey, for fear it will cause her to relapse into the catatonic state that she was in when we last saw her. But that’s all busy plot stuff. What is really happening here?

24_1-2

“They said, ‘Hey, you’re blonde, awesome, when can you start?’ Easiest, audition, ever. Wait, is there a catch?”

Someone’s plotting to kill Big Dick on foreign soil, and they just did a test run on the murder weapon (a US drone, which is as heavy-handed as irony gets) by hijacking a drone pilot’s memory key and setting him up for the fall. Off-the-grid Jack intercepted intel that mentioned an assassination attempt on Big Dick, which is why he allowed himself to get caught by the CIA so he can break out Chloe, who’s gone all Wikileaks since we last saw her, and was being held in the CIA equivalent of Zed’s basement, only with torture instead of rape.

This might sound loyal or even romantic, but really, he broke her out because the person responsible for the drone strike is one of her now-former coworkers, who thankfully doesn’t live to the end credits of the second hour, for a couple of reasons. The guy is rightly paranoid about being afraid for his life since dead men collect no cash, yet he doesn’t suspect that the undersexed Russian Barbie doll he calls a girlfriend might be in fact an English assassin employed to kill him (hell, he didn’t even notice that she was wearing a wig). That needed to happen. Thank you, Fox. We may curse your name later but for now, we thank you. And bonus points for having her twist the knife in his head. That was a nice extra dose of nastiness.

Each blog post is based on a song title, and this week’s title comes courtesy of my lovely wife, after I complained that all of the songs with “London” in the title didn’t quite fit (I’m going to save those for later, with the hope that they might work out). The funny thing is that this song was co-written by Roddy Frame, who’s Scottish, but he has Mick Jones, a member of UK rock royalty, joining him, so it’s all good.

  

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