(5:00 P.M. - 6:00 P.M.)
Review/Commentary
Reviewer: J
CLANK-BANG-SQUEAK.
What’s that noise? Oh, that’s a clanking, squeaking, poorly-oiled plot machine. We know it’s not operating all that well because it churned out a suicide which, to paraphrase D from last season has got to be among the lamest plot devices ever; it’s right up there with amnesia and cross-dressing.
Yet there Maya lies, dead as dead can be, while her mother wails… well, actually she doesn’t really wail, does she? It’s more like a sort of annoyed, “dammit, now I have to deal with this” kind of moan. I’m really not impressed with Alberta Watson and her range of acting. This barely seems to be more of an annoyance than having the Secretary of Defense riding around in her asscrack the way he is.
So, naturally, as I was subjected to scenes involving Maya in an otherwise spectacular episode, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that D has almost wholly avoided reviewing that little nuisance’s presence on our screens. Ah, but this hour we learned why she was written in – to be a vehicle to make Driscoll seem more human and, if the previews are to be believed, to work Tony back into the fold as Director of CTU. Wow, I bet Tony didn’t wake up expecting his day to take that turn. His plans were for soccer, beer out of his Cubbies mug, and perhaps a hummer (and who knows in what order).
To wrap up my thoughts on the Maya thread, what will it take to shut down the incompetent CTU clinic? Didn’t Nina start killing people from there last year? Didn’t they almost kill Maya with incorrect meds earlier this season? And now they somehow lose track of her long enough for her to find sharp enough objects to slash her wrists? And then, she is left alone long enough to bleed to death on the floor? Driscoll entered the room and everyone was looking at Maya with that “Holy shit, did you see that?” look that the gathered crowd has after a twelve-car pileup on the Palisades Parkway. Nobody’s checking her vitals or administering CPR or trying, I don’t know, something?? Is Behrooz there? Is this where Dina will be helped? Make sure you get what you need from her now, Tony, because the freakin’ clinic is more deadly than Araz Iced Tea.
Okay, so on to more important things – like how this episode freakin’ rocked. Start to finish, it was excellent. One of the many things that 24 does well is with its previews. Many shows give away too much or set you up with a cheap trick (not the band) like showing us a clip of a character saying something that winds up being so out of context it has nothing to do with what you thought it was going to. However, 24 does things differently. Last week, for instance, they showed the whole scene where Jack drops into the laundry chute and gets into his scuffle with Araz – one might have thought that would be a lot of the hour, but it wasn’t. That whole thing was concluded by 12 minutes after the hour. This week, we knew Paul Raines was a suspect and that he’d be on the receiving end of some bare wires and that Marwan might shoot up a workspace (how many readers have had thoughts of “pulling a Marwan” in their own cube farms?). What we got was a terrific episode that almost wraps up the season. The override device has been located and Marwan has been flushed out. Are the next thirteen hours the manhunt for Marwan? Somehow I think he has something else up his sleeve.
How else do I love thee, 24? Well, CTU is competent a lot of the time. Unlike shows use lazy methods to achieve suspense, 24 shows its agents being successful a lot of the time, instead of being against the ropes like Rocky for most of the season and then mustering up a 15th round knockout. In this hour, the suddenly competent Sarah links everything to Marwan in about a half hour. At about this time, people are CTU are starting to worry about Curtis, who isn’t answering his phone or checking in. Nor are the other agents he went there with. You know, if a patrolman pulls me over for running a stop sigh, he radios his position and if he doesn’t follow up in about 5 minutes, they send another car to him. I would think CTU would have something similar in place.
Ah, Curtis. I wasn’t sure what to make of Curtis to this point. He’s clearly what Tony was in earlier seasons – a combat-ready agent whose assignment was in the office. I kept thinking he looked a little chunky, like he’d been at his desk for too many months and had skipped the treadmill a few mornings (hey, who has time?). But when I saw him playing possum and then whupping the unsuspecting white boys (evidently also American, I might add) I actually heard myself whoop out loud, “Go Curtis!” I was sure he was a goner, as were many of us, I’ll bet. Yet his martial arts style mercilessness and lethal fighting was simply awesome. Plus he’s a slick cat and took down the other henchies on that floor without too much trouble, even peeping in on Ali as he caused a headache for Pacific Bell.
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