Hour Four (11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M.) Review/Commentary
					Well, as usual this was a good episode and as usual I have some complaints/bitches, whatever.  Largely my only problems with 24 are when they make assumptions or leaps in reality that are just too far to make, in my humble opinion.  I’ll address them as we move along.  I like how now that CTU is blown up Michelle is freaking out trying to find Tony.  This raises the whole chain of command thing which has never really been clear to me.  I mean, when last season began Jack was in charge.  And now Mason is.  And we know Chapelle is Mason’s boss “at division.”  But after that, how does it go?  I assume right now that Tony is “Assistant Special-Agent-In-Charge,” but after that it’s hard to tell.  Is Michelle next in line?  If so, I’d be a little nervous because she hasn’t done anything but take orders so far.  However, she is hot and that counts for a lot in my world.  So anyway, Tony survives yet somehow Paula has something fall on her, even though she and Tony were running and holding hands when the bombs went off.  Hmmm, one of those mysteries.  In another part of CTU, Kim survives approximately her 1,369,425th brush with death in the past 18 months.  Megan now has a seizure, and I’d like to again point out what a good actress this kid is.  I know quite a bit about seizures and hers was extremely accurate as far as how the face looks.  It’s actually a little more grotesque depending on the severity of the seizure, but very good work nonetheless.  I like the girl playing Megan.  Of course, at the hospital suddenly the doctor is giving Kim these accusatory looks, implying that the visible signs of child abuse are her fault.  Um, yeah, I don’t think so.  The doctor would probably consult with the parents first, don’t you think?  Not the nanny.  Not only that, Kim can simply say “well, she’s got an abusive father who we’re in the process of running from and who cracked her head against a cabinet a couple hours ago.”  I mean, doesn’t Kim have bruises from her fracas with Gary an hour or so earlier in that alleyway?  This was kind of dumb, but what’s going to happen is the police are going to show up and Kim’s going to need to run from them as she is unfairly blamed for Megan’s issues (by Gary, for one).  To be honest, I don’t have any problem with Kim doing some more running… in fact, I think she should run in every episode.  (You know where I’m going with this, so I’ll stop now.) As for the Prez and his crew, I still think Rayburn did what a lot of government agents would do – it wouldn’t be popular publicly, but it would need to be done.  If Jack Bauer was indeed the only link to a potential nuke in LA, sacrificing some government workers actually IS worth the price.  You know?  19 people versus 2 million?  I don’t know.  I agree it’s callous, but somebody has to make the hard decisions.  I found myself thinking this about Rayburn and thinking, “I can’t believe I’m gonna defend this guy…” right up until Palmer “fired” him.  Speaking of which, back up there a second.  I’m no expert, but I’m fairly certain the President can’t just fire an NSA agent.  ESPECIALLY not in the middle of a crisis like this.  If his objectives were clearly something other than intercepting the nuke, then I would swallow it a little better, but this was simply Palmer being pissed about being kept out of the loop on something and being self-righteous about what’s right and wrong.  Sometimes it’s not that black and white, Prez.  And like I said, I don’t think he can just up and fire him and send him off to see this mean Armus guy.  Speaking of Armus, he is being made out to be some sort of a bad-ass, but so far all I can tell is that he put the nosy reporter in a room.  Oooooh, scary!  What happens to Rayburn?  This is the U.S. Government, not the freakin’ mob. So on to our poor friend Mason.  He’s a goner.  And like I predicted, it’s going to be painful (yes, I realize this isn’t much of a “prediction”).  Anyway, he is going to radiate and just wither away at a high rate of speed.  Fortunately for us 24 viewers he’s going  to be “normal” for “about the next twelve hours.”  How lucky for us!!  Only in Hollywood can your tragic death be worked seamlessly into the schedule.  Gotta love it.  Anyway, I will repeat my prediction from last week that Mason is going to eventually die doing something in the line of duty – he knows he doesn’t want to die the way he’ll die otherwise.  Why else would he have gone back to work?  It’s the first sign that ol’ George is going to fight to the end, instead of run away.  (Incidentally, I still don’t think he was running away, but that’s probably just me in denial about George cause I like him.)  Of course, George is still his callous self as he insists Paula be woken up to help decrypt the info they have on the nuke.  So let me make sure I have this straight:  Paula is the ONLY one who can unencrypt the info they were sending to NSA?  So they don’t have the info anymore on their servers due to the explosion.  Okay, that I can believe.  But what was NSA going to do with it if ONLY Paula can encrypt it?  I don’t even know what to suggest here.  I realize it’s a plot device to keep it dramatic, but come on.  What if Paula were sick one day or, as it happens, near death?  The loss of one programmer can flummox CTU completely?  Kind of shakes your faith in their ability to stop a nuke if they can’t even keep track of their own intell.  This is one of those “leaps” that I don’t like especially.  I realize the show moves at such a pace that it’s easy to let these things go, but when you actually take a closer look at the story you see things like this.  Okay, I’ll move on.                                       Go on to Page 2 of Review
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