Twenty Twenty Twenty-Four Hours to Go (I Wanna Be Sedated)

Oh my God.

24 24 24

Okay, yes, that ending to 24 was EXTREMELY contrived and you could see it coming a mile away. BUT ... holy lord, that was incredible. Jack Bauer hits absolute ROCK BOTTOM as he ...


(spoilers)


... IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PAUL REINS' DEATH! Wow, that last 5 minutes, despite that everyone and I mean everyone knew what was coming, as it was well-telegraphed, wow I was holding my breath and had to loudly exhale upon hearing that final beeeeeeeep. This show has balls, that much is for sure.

The sad part is that the more I think about it the more it looks like they may be headed towards a season finale that finally sees Jack sacrifice himself in the line of duty. They are setting him up as a man with nothing left to lose. Sure, his unseen daughter is out there somewhere, probably getting caught in a cougar trap or something, but otherwise, I feel like Jack might be headed for the big CTU in the sky. If that happens, I am going to be very sad indeed. But for now, the stakes have been raised. Sure, this China stuff is coming out of nowhere, and is quite a tangent to go on this late in the season, but it looks like all hell is going to break loose, and oh yeah, a nuke is about to go off in an hour! Can even Palmer save us?

more thoughts .....

- nice exchange between Chloe and Edgar.

- more nice moments between Michelle and Tony -- I think that Tony's redemption and reunion with Michelle is being set up to parallel Jack's tragic fall and isolation from those close to him.

- the thing with Buchanan going off on Tony did pretty much come out of nowhere though

- so wait, in the case of a NUCLEAR BOMB THREAT, the Chinese consulate can't hand over a man with proven terrorist connections? Wow I hope that wouldn't happen in real life. In any case this seemed just a bit absurd.

- Man, those Chinese guards sure were trigger happy ...

- Dude, Jack's covert ops mission was straight outta Metal Gear Solid ... am I wrong? SNAKE? SNAKE! SNAAAAAAAKE!

- Palmer lives three minutes from the President's bunker?

- And shouldn't he be talking with oh, I don't know, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, etc, before making decisions?

- Yeah, things as always are a little contrived and require huge suspension of disbelief, but daaaaamn these writers know how to set up a dramatic situation. If not for the end this episode would probably rank a mere B or B+, but the ending's emotional impact, cleverly woven and built up to throught the episode, elevates this KICKASS installment of 24 from a Tony "Yeah." to a classic, Jack Bauer "Dammit!" Basically, you're not gonna find a more nail-biting, exciting, well-told story on TV. My grade: A

TODAY:

- Escorted Wanda Sykes and Lost's Jorge Garcia (aka Hurley, aka Hugo) to their dressing rooms for Leno. I told Jorge I was a huge fan of Lost and enjoyed his character. Damn that dude is HUGE, like that big bearded guy from Harry Potter huge. I said I couldn't wait to find out what was goign to happen in the season finale, and he smiled as his friend jokingly exclaimed "everybody dies." Now that would be pretty funny.

- Didn't even get to meet the new pages as I was giving tours and at the Tonight Show all day, and tommorow I'm going to be at Ellen so I may not get to meet them until later in the week. Oh well.

- Well an assignment I want at NBC has finally come up for grabs - in the Primetime Prgramming dept. It'd be a lot of work but I'd get to get my hands on all kinds of scripts and stuff, so I'm going to apply for it. We'll see what happens. Oh, and it would require strict confidentiality. Hmm, I wonder if that includes blogs? (yeah I'm sure it does).

NBA:

Terrible refereeing across the board tonight. In the Rockets-Mavs game, A bunch of bad calls really hurt Houston, especially the totally wrong no-call where Michael Finley was allowed to help steal the ball while out of bounds. Then in the Spurs-Nuggets game, an Earl Boykins (who by the way, at like 5"2, had an awesome game tonight) three was called as a two-pointer, which would have been the difference in the Nuggets winning the game before going into overtime, where they handily lost. Still, very close, entertaining games tonight, marred by some very bad, crucial calls by the referees.

Tommorow - GO PACERS.

At work:

Ellen all day + tour in the morning = loooooong day.

Scary Thought of the Day:

And you thought 24 was pure fiction ... Condoleeza Rice says that we're not scared of a nuclear threat from North Korea, and basically says "bring it on" since we have ample deterrent capabilities. Okay ... that makes me feel comfortable. Millions will be dead here, but it will be all good since we got 'em back good. I'm not saying we should negotiate with rogue nations, but how about using some language that doesn't seem to provoke a nuclear attack? All I know is, our President is no David Palmer, and we can see all the trouble HE's had dealing with threats to the country. Yeah, bring it on indeed.