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Monday, January 19, 2009

24 Season 7, Hour 5: Doing Bad Things to Prevent Worse

One thing you can always count on Jack Bauer to do is just about whatever is necessary - including working with bad guys, threatening and even killing good people - to make sure the worst possible evil does not come to pass. Hour 5 of powerful, punch-in-the-stomach Season 7 of 24 tonight did not disappoint.

Jack gasses the good guy leader of Sangala and his wife, so that the bad guys can take the leader into custody - to wring whatever information they may be able to get from him - because that is the only way Jack and Tony can get to the device which has put air control and the U.S. power grid and who knows what else into bad guy control.

Even worse, Jack has no choice but to take Renee in custody - and kill her, unless he can find a way to make sure it looks like that's what he did. Which Jack does, and the good thing about this is now Renee should know that Jack is really a good guy, assuming she survives being buried alive, which we can assume she will.

Yes, the safe thing would have been for Jack to kill her, but he always lives dangerously, or just close to the edge. He calculates just what is necessary, how much bad to risk or do, to stop the ultimate evil, and does no more or less. That's what makes him and the show so good.

Speaking of Renee, she's more than ever Jack's soul mate, or at least, counterpart, doing just what he would do, as she refuses to follow her boss Moss's orders on behalf of what she correctly sees as a more important mission. It's now clear that Moss does have feelings for her, and Moss himself is starting to look not that bad, at least in comparison to the tool from the Attorney General's office who wants to question Renee about the way she obtained information last week (last hour or so) from Tanner.

The other big story tonight is the First Gentleman. It was pretty obvious that his Secret Service guy was no good, and now he shows his true colors by giving Mr. Taylor a paralytic drug, with a view towards setting him up to look like he killed his former daughter-in-law, and then committed suicide.

I can't see how that can happen and not bother Allison Taylor so much that she won't want to really look into it, and discover these bad guys (who at this point have some kind of connection to the bad guys with Jack, based on what little we learned about the President's son in Redemption). On the other hand, she continues to have her hands and brain more than full with the crisis in Sangala and the threat to U.S. infrastucture.

As happens so often, my only regret with this hour of 24 is that I can't watch the next until next week. Day 7 is continuing to be one of the very best seasons of 24.







6-minute podcast review of 24 Season 7 Hr 5

See also: Hours 1 and 2 ... Hours 3 and 4






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2 comments:

Eric said...

At the end of the episode when they are burying Renee there is a silent clock, which usually means a character has died, but this time they also included the sound of someone breathing just before the screen went black. I think this is a pretty clear sign Renee will be back.

dawn said...

This was a great show and I hope at the end Renee and Jack ride off in the sunset. I'm trying to figure out who the attorney general actor is I know him from another show. Great episode.

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