[Updates below.]

Jim Henley covers the basics for me. Just a few notes and on to other things.

I can't concur enough with Mr. Henley's observation: "will CTU ever secure a location they decide to raid?" If there is a single competent administrator in the entire agency, they'd fire every bastard running and operating in these "perimeter units" who have consistently demonstrated their utter inability to keep the good buys safe and the bad guys contained.

I think it would be a fun and challenging exercise for a libertarian-minded person to examine this season to ascertain as accurately as possible the amount of government resources deployed and how they were whipped back and forth from crisis location to crisis location. It simply astonishes me this calmness CTU HQ exhibits when it throws teams around the nation. I grant artistic license only so far, especially when hard numbers are offered up so often by the program itself.

I'd also like to take the time to point out I have libertarian tendencies, know the show fairly well, and have far too much time on my hands. Cash-bearing suitors are welcome!

I was waiting for Jack Bauer to tell Audrey that, beyond just "sitting down to talk" about what happened over the last few hours, he'd swear to leave the business for good, to swear he'd never get involved in shit like this again. My 24 watching buddy, after I mentioned this, then reminded me that Bauer's made that promise before - look where it's gotten him! I really hated how he asserted the things he does are required of those who do this job and how he is therefore somehow justified in doing them, as if he can't turn away and leave it behind. If I was Audry, I'd call him on this cop-out and dump the bastard post haste.

Relating this to Mr. Henley's idea of a "new, American kind of martyrdom" that the creative team wants us to feel for government agents, I see that Michelle and Tony decided to get back together and leave It All behind once this crisis is over. Even before the preview for the final episode, I predicted Tony would get stuck in some situation that threatens his life. I'm eagerly awaiting Jack's deepest condolences to Michelle after he wastes the love of her life in order to do his job. Poor Tony; he's had a pretty shitty day and it looks like it'll get worse.

Conclusion: Jack Bauer doesn't just take on America's enemies, he also breaks up relationships with ease!

It was entertaining to watch the cabinet meeting scene among President Logan, ex-President Palmer, and the Speaker of the House. It resolves to:

"I'm in charge!"
"No, I'm in charge!"
"No, The People are in charge!"

The formalities of government power, unable to ignore the trappings and supposed entitlements of office. In another life I would have laughed.

The creative team missed a potential moment of Supreme Grand Irony. In their version of events, Richard Heller didn't tell of his homosexual encounter a week prior because he thought it had nothing to do with the terrorism of that day. They tip the show slightly against him due to his previous statement (under duress) that affirmed this: he had nothing to tell because it had nothing to do with what CTU and his Secretary of Defense father wanted to know. Thus, in the words of his dad, he "made a profound mistake" by not emptying his guts of every possible thing that might help CTU find and fight the terrorists. The self-selected superhumans were demanding super-human effort from everyone.

It would have been more satisfying on a lesson-teaching level to have Richard simply never make the connection between a seemingly innocent anonymous encounter and a vast terrorist conspiracy. By (truthfully?) denying he had absolutely no knowledge of either the phone call to Marwan or any terrorists, Richard's physical state would have quickly eroded in the bloody utilitarian grip of Jack Bauer's desire for results. Thus, Richard would have been either killed or brutally harmed to extract information that he thought he didn't know on the assumption he did know, maliciously when in fact he did know, benignly.

On a related note, none of the above Richard drama would have been necessary of CTU had taken the basic fucking step of examining his phone records hours ago and asking HIM if anything seemed out of the ordinary. Instead, they hopped straight to the "sensory-deprivation" torture technique (if you don't think that's torture, then at least humor me on the de facto kidnapping to bring him to CTU HQ).

I can't really discern if there is some deeper political meaning to Richard's self-outing. Anyone who attempts to use it as a metaphor or example to denounce gays in general is quite simply a raging fool. This also applies to the other cultural indictment against him: he "got high" with that couple in addition to risky sexual acts.

But what was the problem that we were supposed to resolve? Richard knew something but he wasn't going to tell because he thought it wasn't relevant...but also because by doing so he'd have to admit to behaviors society frowns upon. That last motivation cripples him. Is that an indictment of him or those opposing values? I'm inclined to side with the latter because the former implies he has the positive duty to empty the contents of his memory on demand.

Season-ender in less than one week!

Previous entries: 24 and Torture, Fox's '24': A Libertarian Nightmare, The Jack Bauer Power Hour, Inner Outrage; The Enslavement of Behrooz Araz, The Total Erosion of the Fourth Wall, The '24' Embrace of Contemporary Politics, Humanity Revealed in FOX's 24, and The Latest Hour of '24'

UPDATED 3/13/2006 9:45am
My Take on FOX's '24' Ethics