24 season 7 episode 15 review

So leaping right into it – Jack heads out to meet Tony (Tony looks like he belongs on the ring) to see if they can’t intercept this mysterious shipment that has come in. So we can expect some action this episode… woo hoo, right?

At the White House, Bob Gunton’s Ethan Kanin does some superb silent acting, realising he may well be to blame for the leak relating to Senator Meyers’s murder. And with that he quits gracefully. The President obviously puts up a fight, but quickly relents and he’s off.

Oh and less surprising is that Olivia is playing little miss political scumbag, liar, leak from the presidents office.  Lets not ponder how annoying she is, Lets just wait for the sweet moment when she goes down and hope it’s worth the wait. Sadly it will probably be in the form of mum saying YOURE FIRED!

Jon Voight is being a little more active, and gets to interact in a boardroom meeting with his company. So we see his motives coming to the surface more. A few more of his underlings are shown and get a bit of precious screen time.  But otherwise he’s still waiting around and just talking the talk until the show has time and purpose for him to actually be doing something other than yakking away.

So then more poor writing follows this. Tony and Jack go to the shipyard and make mention of one port authority officer.  So what happens? We get to see said officer on the phone walking his beat. Not only that, we also see his wife appear onscreen at their home on the other end of the line. We learn they have kids and an unborn baby on the way. RECORD SCREECHES TO A HALT. Er… Now why would they do this?  Why would they show such detail for such an obvious minor bit player?  Hmmm… Remember that hilarious scene in Austin Powers with the security guy who dies?  Alarm bells are going off.  Are we to assume that this man is for the offing? Is this quick and cheap piece of manipulation going to help us give a shit about this guy when danger is upon him?

Of course Jack grabs him. Of course he promises to protect him.  (AHHH! Again!)  So that’s why we were given that cheap ass info on the security guy.  Cause wouldn’t you know it… His life is now in jeopardy!  Of course we’ve been here before. But Jack doesn’t feel too bad cause he finds out the guy knew the bad guys were coming under illegal circumstances.  Ok he didn’t know the precise reason, but he made a deal with baddies regardless so he now has to help Jack out.

Sadly, all this leads to Jack having to make a choice.  Save the man who has DEAD MEAT written on his chest and then break into a fire fight; or let him die and save the country that much faster.  Never doing anything the easy way, Jack of course goes for option 1. Cue Fire fight.

And just as poor old Tony wasn’t getting much of a look in since he’s been back; he promptly gets grabbed whilst Jack makes off with a truck full of chemical weapons. Then hilariously Jack has to stop as he finds a bit of a problem with the device and then almost immediately loses it again to the bad guys. (Boy they were quick to get in there!). So now they have Tony and the device. And yes!  Jack does shout “DAMN IT!”

(I think we should do a DAMN IT count in 24 to see if it matches Sawyer’s SON OF A BITCH in Lost count).

Jack, the bloody cry baby that he is now, in the process of stopping, checking and then losing the chemical weapon, also found time to get exposed to the fumes in the canister. He calls in back up and then there’s that ticking clock and it all goes black.

So it’s a bit of a Mission: Failed this week.

Check out Stephen’s review of episode 14 here.