"Madam President, I know that there's a risk, but I would not be asking youto do this if I didn't think it would work. Please, I am begging you. Trust me."
-- Jack (Kiefer Sutherland)
||SPOILERS|| Okay, did Kiefer Sutherland sprain his ankle while filming, or something? Jack Bauer's been out of action for so long now that I'm beginning to suspect the writers had to work around a crippled actor! Whatever the reason, episode 18 is another hour where Jack and Renee (Annie Wersching) guide Tony (Carlos Bernard) around the Starkwood complex, after President Taylor (Cherry Jones) calls off the air strike...
Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight) is preparing to sit down with the President, face-to-face, and go over his demands, or else he'll be forced to launch one of his bioweapons on a US city, killing thousands. Taylor has no option but to listen to Hodges' spiel, once he arrives with booklets giving Starkwood a "seat at the table" regarding all future US military decision-making. Fortunately, Tony spots Starkwood's rockets being fuelled, and believes he can detonate a bomb that will destroy the bioweapons. It's a plan the President can't authorize when Jack calls her (and reveals he knows why she stopped the air strike), but she infers that their plan should go ahead, under-the-radar. Even the normally by-the-book Agent Moss (Jeffrey Nordling) is eager to get some payback on Starkwood, so Tony holds the fate of thousands in his hand as he tries to prime his bomb...
Meanwhile, Jack is still feeling the effects of contamination from a bioweapon and has started losing his short-term memory. Renee reveals that she's taken it upon herself to call his daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) to the FBI Field Office, in the hope he'll accept her help with the experimental stem-cell procedure. There follows a surprisingly strong scene between Sutherland and Cuthbert, as Jack pleads with his daughter to let him die, as he isn't willing to allow the small risk to his daughter that the operation would entail. Considering Cuthbert isn't exactly known for her acting skills, and has been dropped into the season after a few year's absence from the show, I thought both actors really handled the emotional scenes well. Sutherland rarely gets a chance to bring some raw, human emotion to 24, but he grabs the opportunity with both hands.What genuinely sticks in the memory about this episode were the two surprises (one I didn't expect so soon, and the other I just didn't expect.) After Tony manages to set his bomb and destroy Starkwood's arsenal of weapons, the President is informed of their success and gets to storm back into the Oval Office to arrest Hodges and his accomplice Greg Seaton (Rory Cochrane). I expected Starkwood to remain the big threat for Day 7 until the season finale, but that's clearly not going to be the case. A shame in some ways (Voight has been a great baddie), but the storyline had painted itself into a corner these last few weeks. Still, before being taken into custody, Hodges has time to scare the President by revealing he's just a "small cog" in a big machine. Are we going to get some clarity on that in the remaining five episodes, or will Hodges' words feed into season 8?
The second surprise concerns Tony, who is arrested by Moss once the FBI return to assume control of Starkwood after the explosion, only for a rogue Starkwood operative to smuggle a canister of the bioweapon out of the compound. Moss and Tony (in handcuffs) give chase in a helicopter, guided by Renee, but after they land to try and retrieve the canister, Moss is shot and wounded. Then, rather than help, Tony crouches over Moss' body and smothers him with his hand, as it's revealed the Starkwood agent is working for Tony, and they leave with the canister.
Quite a shocker, but I'm not entirely convinced just yet. Day 7 began by asking us to accept Tony had become a terrorist avenging the death of his wife, but we never truly believed it – and, true enough, it was revealed that Tony was deep undercover. Only now, it turns out that was a double-bluff? But Tony has definitely been helping Jack stop Dubaku, then General Juma and Starkwood -– so were they entirely unrelated to his own long-term goal? Was he always after just one canister he knew Starkwood were going to receive? It's difficult to accept that Tony has another acceptable excuse for his actions, as suffocating Larry is inexcusable. I'm still not sure how I feel about this one, so we'll have to see where they take it.
Overall, this was a pretty average episode in itself, but with two eye-opening moments, that weren't quite enough to punch it up a notch. I'm glad the Starkwood threat is over, I loved the Sutherland/Cuthbert scene, I'm really hoping the writers stop toying with Jack's mortality and just cure him, I'm sad to see Larry go (Jeffrey Nordling was one of Day 7's better newcomers), and I'm intrigued to see what Tony's up to. I think it's a near-certainty we'll be seeing Jack murder his best-friend in the finale, as originally threatened in Day 7's earlier episodes. But are we happy with that development? Or was it just an easy shock to pull, that's difficult to properly explain?
20 April 2009
Sky1, 9pm
Writer: Manny Coto & Brannon Braga (story by Howard Gordon)
Director: Brad Turner
Cast: Kiefer Sutherland (Jack), Cherry Jones (President Taylor), Annie Wersching (Renee), Jeffrey Nordling (Larry), Janeane Garofalo (Janis), Carlos Bernard (Tony), Gabriel Casseus (Galvez), Larry Sullivan (SS Agent), John Griffin (Starkwood Tech), Eric Nenninger (Agent Davis), Jon Voight (Hodges), Marci Michelle (Agent Marci), Marc Shaffer (Agent Miller), Philip Anthony-Rodriguez (Tom Chapman), Michael Rodrick (Stokes), Frank John Hughes (Tim Woods), Elisha Cuthbert (Kim), Christina Chang (Dr. Sunny Macer) & Rory Cochrane (Greg)
