Hour Thirteen (8:00 P.M. - 9:00 P.M.) Review/Commentary
					Well, how about that!  Some explanation, finally, for why someone inside the Presidency would knowingly take part in a nuclear bomb threat against the United States.  More dirty looks and catty sniping from Lynne and Sherry!  More puppy dog sad eyes from Kate Warner!  More dying by Mason!  More of whatever we’ve decided to call Kim’s actions!  It’s all here!  It’s jumbofun!  Makes you wonder if these poor people ever have normal days.  I mean, does Tony ever punch out at 5 and go watch the Cubs lose on DirecTV?  Does Michele go update her profile on Match.com?  Does Mason wear a dark suit even on the weekends when he’s mowing his lawn?  For pete’s sake, the guy’s dying a painful radiation death and all he’s done is loosen his tie.  Relax, pal!  It’ll all be over soon.  Just another eleven hours to go.  Cast member sightings:  The actor playing Stanton is evidently on “Mr. Sterling” on NBC, although you’d have to tie me to a chair and threaten to shoot my children to get me to watch that.  And I was home for lunch one day a couple weeks ago and the actress who played the mercurial Alberta Greene last season is on some soap opera.  (No, I don’t know which one.  Really, I don’t.)  It was also confirmed for me by a couple of readers that “Simmons” did indeed play RFK – twice, in fact.  Most notably in the Cuban missle crisis movie, Thirteen Days.  I thought he looked familiar.  But really, if we’re going to use a Kennedy to torture information out of someone, why don’t we just plop Stanton in Ted Kennedy’s car and hand Ted a scotch?  (Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.) Okay, so anyway, let me get on with it before one of you comes at me with a defibrillator.  So the big news was that Stanton began spilling the beans about the nuclear bomb.  Honestly, I would have taken Palmer’s deal offered an hour or two ago to let Roger walk into retirement with no strings attached if he complied fully.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Roger cracks and Palmer then dismisses Simmons from the room.  Ah, okay.  Simmons has just violated the civil rights of the director of the NSA and tortured him for information at the direct request of the President – but yeah, he should leave the room now.  Huh?  Now we’re going back to protocol?   Anyway, so Roger admits that the NSA allowed the bomb into the country and that Col. Samuels’ coral snake unit is tracking it and will never allow it to detonate, but that they did all this to give Palmer’s defense policy “some balls,” as Roger put it.  Hmmm, it would seem to me that many agencies would need to be in on this cover up – letting a nuke into the country.  How about CTU for example?  Wouldn’t they usually monitor such things?  Or is the NSA capable of screwing with them?  I wouldn’t think so.  I would think the CIA would also have to be involved, but at this point it doesn’t look that way.  And who else wants the defense policy to have more balls?  Who else was in on this with Stanton (besides Sherry)?  It would have to include the Joint Chiefs, wouldn’t it? So Palmer learns that not only is Stanton behind a lot of this, but the coral snake special ops paramilitary group has “gone dark” and is not communicating anymore.  Oh, fantastic.  That’s always comforting to think about a highly trained group of commandos going bonkers when there’s a nuke at stake.  Not good.  However, then we find out that the commandos are dead.  Some shot right between the eyes.  Usually, we get to see the deaths on 24, so that makes this one kind of weird.  You don’t suppose Kim’s new friend in the woods is the missing seventh coral snake fella who whacked the other six, do you?  I realize that’s quite a stretch, but stranger things have happened and wouldn’t that be an interesting – if silly – way to tie Kim back into Plot A. So, anyway, the commandos are dead, there’s a rogue one somewhere, and despite converging ALL resources on that plane, there’s no bomb in it.  Now we all know where the bomb is – it’s in that panel truck and pulled away from the hangar right before the CTU gang showed up.  I mean, they showed us that for a reason.  Now, isn’t the airfield secured?  Hasn’t all traffic – air, ground or pogo stick – been halted??  I don’t mean to be a stick in the mud, but don’t you think someone would notice a big silver panel truck tooling through the area?  “Hey, Agent Baker!  What’s that?” “Oh, that could be a bread truck.” *looks through binoculars* “No, wait, that’s the roach coach – they’ll be setting up soon with sandwiches and coffee.” “Oh, okay.” *Baker puts arm around young agent* “Yes, you see, young silly agent, the terrorists drive trucks labeled ‘TERRORIST IN HERE’ just to keep it more sporting for us.  I mean, fair is fair.  We wear jackets that say ‘CTU.’” So the bomb is moving away from the area.  I have a question, though.  Isn’t there a way to track radiation and be able to locate heightened areas of radiation?  If so, we should be able to follow this bomb.  And who’s driving that truck?  Omar is in the plane, and I thought Marie was still in the hangar when the truck took off.  Hmmm, perhaps the rogue Coral Snake soldier?  (Yes, I realize I have multiple postulations about him.)  I guess we’ll find out about this soon enough.                                     Go on to Page Two of Review
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