Real Time 24 Recap Hour 12

Every so often, someone will ask me why I recap 24 and not some other show. The answer is while 24 is formulaic; it is not as formulaic as some other shows.

Take for instance, “The Biggest Loser”. This is a show about comically obese people losing weight with the help of trainers who shout cuss words. I got hooked on the show last year, but each show was like this: Contestant says he is fat and has been all of his life. He wants to lose weight for his wife (for some reason, the wife is way hotter than this guy) and his kids. Cries. Cut to some “challenge” that looks like someone is making it up as it is going along. “Uh, take this flag and put it on that hill and hop on one foot while twirling your arms”. Whoever wins the challenge gets to stay on the ranch for another week of working out and getting f-bombed by the trainer. The winner cries. They weigh the other contestants. Someone one is voted off for not losing enough weight. They cry. Then we see what they “look like now”, which is sometimes good and sometimes just a skinnier version of an ugly person.

24 is no way like that even though they are always setting up a perimeter, which, by the way, did not work for the 4000th time last night. This failure of a perimeter led to the death of about 200 NYPD’s finest.

The failure of the perimeter enabled those two love birds, Kayla and Tarin, to make it to a waiting cab which high tails it to the terrorist hideout with Jack and Agent Chico in hot pursuit. They catch up with the cab, but it is empty. Try finding an empty cab in New York.

The head terrorist calls President Poofy Hair and tells him that he has his daughter hostage. To prove it, he shows Kayla in front of a real Arab looking flag and he demands File 33. By this time, Jack is back at the UN and quickly surmises that is contains operational details of all U.S. anti-nuclear defenses. File 32 contains clippings of a bunch of pictures of kittens with cute sayings like “All I want is one sammich”. Jack argues with President Poofy Hair about American foreign policy.

Meanwhile, the world’s most persistent state employee, Bill Dauterive, meets with The Not That Hot Tech and wears her down with the same expression he used as the blind radio station owner in “O Brother Where Art Thou?” about her knowledge of Jethro and Cletus. Pretty soon she is confessing to everything, including giving birth to John Edwards’ love child.

Chloe advises Jack that they have a lead on Kayla’s location and Jack and Agent Chico spring into action because, like everything else in New York, it happens to be only ten minutes away. Jack and Agent Chico find the hideout, but like usual, the bad guys are ahead of them exiting through another door (where was that great perimeter of yours Jack?). Tarin and Kayla try to run away. Tarin is shot. Kayla jumps into a car and speeds away.

Kayla calls CTU, which is on everyone’s speed dial. They told her just to come on by if there’s anything they can do. So she heads to the super secret CTU New York Headquarters, which, oddly enough, is only about ten minutes away from where she was held hostage.

However, Tarin wasn’t really shot. The car he led Kayla to was equipped with a bomb, set to go off in ten minutes. Meanwhile, Jack, who has spent most of this hour talking on a telephone, realizes that it is a setup and he warns CTU. Too late! CTU was smart enough to yank the hot Kayla out of the car and have a dumpy security guard try to move it when it goes off. I’ll give 24 this: they have had the most creative explosions of TV this year. Jack loses all communication with CTU and tells Agent Chico: “Oh well, let’s see if there’s a Waffle House around here, I’m starved.”