(8:00 A.M. - 9:00 A.M.)
Review/Commentary
Reviewer: D
At the end of his commentary on Hour 19, J asked hopefully, "Has Sherry Palmer vanished?" Well, it's clear from the coming attractions that, unfortunately, Sherry will awaken from her nap during Hour 21 and her subplot will be raising its irritating head again. She was enlisted to help President Palmer in his battle against a guy whose death will not mean a thing compared to the hundreds - maybe thousands - of folks who may die thanks to the Cordilla virus. When so many other lame subplots have been mercifully abandoned, I have to ask why oh why must we return to Sherry's, which is the lamest of them all?
Of course, you may be asking why I'm starting off talking about Hour 21's coming attractions when I haven't even talked about the content of Hour 20 yet. Well, mostly it's because Hour 20 was a "bridge" episode - an hour that exists mostly to close one chapter and open another without necessarily adding a whole lot of substance. But, if you insist, I'll burn through this bridge so we can concentrate on what's really important - getting to the part where Jane Saunders and Kim Bauer make out! Oh come one - you've seen the significant looks these two busty youngsters have exchanged. I wouldn't be surprised if their relationship spawns (yuk yuk) the whacky "24" spin-off "My Father The Spy" where Kim and Jane try to settle down to a calm middle-class lesbian existence, much to the consternation of their bitter, paranoid, and embattled fathers who will remain intertwined in an international game of cat-and-mouse. Laughs ensue when Stephen Saunders threatens to annihilate Beijing after the girls begin the process of adopting a baby girl from China!
Can't you imagine Chloe as the passive-aggressive nanny who also acts as a mole funneling information to Jack Bauer. And Chase as the bumbling suitor who still loves Kim - he tries to get her to go hetero but is constantly foiled because he keeps confusing her with Jane! I smell Emmy here, people! And you development folks at Fox, you can reach me through this web site if you want more ideas - I've got a million of 'em!
Anyway - we close the book on a few sidelights in Hour 20 in preparation for what we can only hope is an adrenaline rush of episodes before the big finale. First off, we find out Michelle isn't infected - whew! Even with the addition of the rough-hewn, low-rent, poor-man's-Kim-Bauer appeal of Jane Saunders, the babe quotient on "24" was going to get dangerously low if we lost Michelle. And for all you trivia mongers, the "24" web site identifies the doctor who delivered the results to Michelle as "Dr. Sunny Macer." "Sunny" - is that supposed to be an ironic touch or what?
If you need proof of the "bridge" nature of this episode, you need look no further than the tearful exchange between Tony and Michelle. I will admit it was kind of touching and all. But it went on a bit and Michelle's steely return to business at the end of the call was just a tad melodramatic, if you ask me. After all of the restrained tension between these two over this entire season, the scene was a little bit of a sell-out. But, hey, maybe I'm just bitter because I spent my 13th wedding anniversary last week threatening my rowdy horde of kids into bed while my wife was out on the town with a coupla girlfriends from back in the day. Hmmm, could be.
Oh, but in a slick bit of bait and switch, we find out at the show's very end that Michelle has been kidnapped by Saunders and will now be used by him to hold Tony - and through him, CTU - hostage. Which of course begs the question, where is Saunders getting all of these henchmen from? He has a half-dozen or so that he can afford to lose as decoys (see Hour 18), another half-dozen or so that blew up the MI6 building, and one that he guns down in cold blood giving us our requisite dead body for the hour. And that's not to mention the bunch he sent across the country with vials of the virus. But still he has a few left over to nab Michelle and stick a weirdly detailed knife up to her eye. (If Tony was on his game, wouldn't he have done a screen-cap on that knife, sent it over to Chloe's screen, and within 12 minutes we would have known who was wielding the knife, not to mention their shoe size and favorite color?)
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