24 season 7 episode 14 review

Despite last weeks slump, thankfully things play out a little more entertainingly this week

Jon Voight’s Jonas Hodges manages to do a bit of acting this time out, if only to raise his voice so that we as an audience know that in some sort of deluded way he believes himself to be a patriot, despite supporting the deployment of a biological weapon that will kill many an innocent bystander.

“Larry the Arse” does a lot of running around. In the space of an hour he manages to travel back to FBI headquarters, puts Renee into custody since she (as predicted) is helping out Jack. Again. And then he even manages to make it to Senator Meyer’s house where Jack gets holed up for the better part of this show. That Larry is one fast mover! I’m lucky if I make it to work in the morning that fast!

We also get to see the lovably sarcastic Morris help the FBI out with a bit of decryption so they will let Chloe off the hook (Of course she isn’t very grateful for his efforts as this sets the FBI after Jack). But it is impressive to see Morris do this decrypting literally in the space of about 15 seconds.  It’s nice to see him do what he does best with the very little screen time allotted to him. Plus it makes Janeane Garofalo’s plastic faced nerd Janice look like a moron, which she is.

Meanwhile over at the White House things are heating up between President Taylor’s daughter Olivia and her chief of staff Ethan Kanin. It looks like for the next couple of hours at least Ethan is going get the brunt of it before he gets any satisfactory pay off if any. The cheap effect though is showing Olivia in “EVIL CLOSE UP GLARE” camera mode a little too often. So that we dislike her! But filming this way not only makes you dislike someone, but you kind of think they have the sort of face only a Boxer could love.

More interesting though is Jack himself. He heads over to Senator Meyer’s place, where he insists on seeing some files and finally makes the connection to the big American company that is behind it all.  We then also get to see some decent human drama between the two men as Meyer quite tenderly questions Bauer and his motives and actually makes a trust connection.

Of course, it isn’t that simple. Seconds later the assassin shows up and promptly blows the Senator away and makes chase on Jack. Of course by this time the FBI have figured out where Jack is thanks to the help of Morris and they of course arrive to find a dead Senator with Jack the only suspect.

We also get a good face off between Jack and the assassin which of course ends with Jack triumphant and with one more shard of evidence to go on.

So things are kind of just trundling along. It seems seasons ago when this show was all about hunting Tony Almeida down!  And then it was general Dubaku. That’s all a distant memory.  And with General Juma out the way last week too, the show is just running on fumes. It is missing a solid thoroughfare. Like a book without a spine.

Check out Stephen’s review of episode 13 here.