Hour Ten (5:00 P.M. - 6:00 P.M.) Review/Commentary
					I’m not sure where to start.  I think this is the second consecutive episode that is of very high quality, and by that I mean high quality on the 24 scale.  There were some obvious things that made this episode gripping as usual and twisty-turny as we’ve come to expect, but there were also a couple of subplots that look to be developing – subplots that are new for 24.  While romantic tension is not new to 24, the way that Tony and Michele’s scene was written was new.  And of course, if you read the news wires about 24 prior to the season, you knew that Sarah Wynter was being brought in as “a potential love interest” for Jack.  Before you say something about how there’s no way a romance could develop in one day, let’s remember two things: 1. Intense, pressure situations often do lead to hot steamy romance (at least in the smutty harlequin romances I read) 2. Prez Palmer and his wifey fell apart in 24 hours last season.  Less actually.  And it was fairly believable.  So anyway, I guess my point is I really liked this episode a lot.  On top of that, some of the happenings allow me to jump up and down pointing and say “I told ya so! I told ya so!”  Well, okay, I didn’t exactly predict what would happen, but I’m proud of the fact that my instincts about virtually every character have been right so far.  As always, however, I have some beefs that I will point out as we go along, and I think that they’re fairly legitimate (as usual).  Sometimes I fear that my commentary sounds like I don’t like 24, but if you know me and/or my reviews at all, you know that’s far from the truth.  I just think that since I especially DO like 24, I should be honest and point out the issues for which I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. Okay, moving right along, I want to begin where the episode began, with Palmer handling the media.  I again want to say I think he’s an excellent actor in the role of the President – we all want to believe our Prez is honest and intelligent, yet savvy and ruthless if he has to be.  Palmer is showing all of these qualities and he’s also got an element of realism to him in terms of being a politician – he’s not completely honest with the public and believes that part of his job is telling us what we need to hear.  Many liberal civil rights freaks would disagree, but it’s actually true.  Yes, we have a right to know a lot, but when knowledge would cause chaos, unfortunately the sheep need to be kept at bay (did I just make up a metaphor there?). Sticking with the President, I was so happy to learn that he didn’t want to completely honor his “deal” with Nina that they struck the previous hour.  In fact, this is where I want to be smug and insert a comment a made about the previous week’s show: “What makes her (Nina) think that having a pardon of ANY sort will hold up?  What’s to stop Palmer from ordering Nina be taken out if she harms Jack?  To hell with her pardon!  Double-cross her!” So Palmer gets a sniper into position and Jack, being a former Delta Force commando, knows exactly what to do.  When you think about it, he had an excellent point:  He’s dead anyway, and she can’t kill him yet.  Of course, she could have wounded him, but that’s a reasonable chance that Jack had to take.  He knows he screwed up and got himself taken hostage by her, but his wits are still about him and his instincts are still superior.  I’m curious as to where Nina was trained for all her killing abilities.  Yes, anyone can pull a trigger, but I really think she was trained at some sort of renegade terrorist camp.  She had to have been.  I’d love to know her real background at this point.  Nina does bring up Teri to Jack and how she only killed her because Teri heard details she wasn’t supposed to hear.  Well, yeah, that should patch things up with Jack.  Like he’s now going to say, “oh, well if the crazy bitch did THAT, then I would have killed her too.” One more comment on our time in the Angeles National Forest: what did Jack whisper to Nina before they took her away?  It could be any number of things, but since we never got back to it, it seems suspicious to me.  It could be as simple as “You ass is going back to L.A. to fry with everyone else.”  Or it could have been a comment about how now he IS going to hunt her down and kill her when this is all over.  Or, and I certainly hope this doesn’t turn out to be the case, it could have been something foreshadowing Jack not being as good a guy as we think.  Now, I can’t surmise any reason why he would be involved negatively.  I don’t think 24’s writers/producers would do that to us at this point.  However, if Sutherland does decide to leave 24 at some point, I imagine one of the options would be to turn him into a mole.  Either that or he dies heroically and that’s how he’s remembered.  Keep in mind, though, that this is 24 and they rarely tie things up with a neat little bow.  Just some food for thought.                                       Go on to Page Two of Review
	Back to the Unofficial 24 Page Go Back to Television Go Back Home!