Date of airing: November 20, 2001 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 8.18 million viewers, 5.4/8 in Households, 4.1/10 with Adults 18-49
This was kind of a heavy episode. Not just did the first couple of minutes deliver a connection between Kim’s kidnapping and the assassination attempt on David Palmer, turning things personal for Jack when he finds out that not only was his daughter kidnapped, it also might have something to do with the job he is working on, but it also brought a dark and a traumatic backstory for David Palmer and his family, including his children involved in a story that would make every soap opera writer blush. Those two plot developments were surprising, considering the stakes the show delivered during the first two hours. Nicole’s rape is already a hard pill to swallow (even if it happened in the past, and Nicole seemed not to be phased by her traumatic experience in that one scene she had in the previous episode), but the way Palmer was dealing with a potential fallout of Keith potentially having killed Nicole’s rapist makes for intriguing character drama and “time to breathe” outside the assassination attempt storyline that will keep the characters busy for most of the time.
And just in case the writers were deciding to cut a few storylines short for whatever reason, they also prepared themselves to go into stuff that usually might not even make it into a conspiracy thriller. All of a sudden there’s this huge backstory in the Palmer family, making them a lot more relatable and giving them a lot more attention as characters in a show that centers on their family. All of a sudden Jack wasn’t just on his way to prevent an assassination plot from happening. What was an issue in the first episode, because the Palmers were barely interesting, has turned into a story ready to be built at scale, and it took the writers only three episodes to get there. Mad respect!
The Palmer storyline wasn’t the only thing that made the episode so great. Kim has finally realized she and Janet were being kidnapped, and the viewers have finally realized that Kim’s kidnapping and Jack’s current case are connected – at least via the same villain currently pulling the strings in the background. If there is a rule book about television, it’s that you deliver some connecting dots after a couple of episodes. TWENTY-FOUR did that here, by marrying the two seemingly separate storylines and even giving Ira Gaines some more minutes to flesh out his character, even if the villain story wasn’t even focused on him at all.
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| The presidential candidate has the superpower to stop baseball bats from hitting him. |
This brings me to Mandy’s little story. That she would lose a tear over the murder of her girlfriend was a surprise for me, and I was wondering for a second if she took Ira’s summer job offer, because she was expecting the Martin Belkin look-a-like sharpshooter to off her as well if she had said “No” to Gaines. For once, villains are being portrayed with an emotional angle, which is something you don’t see every day. However, one thing about Mandy’s story was a bit dumb: Bridget believed she could successfully force Gaines to pay them more money because Mandy had to blow up a plane which pretty much meant she had to work extra hours. Apparently, Bridget didn’t know who she was dealing with or Mandy didn’t tell her who she was dealing with – and I can’t quite believe either wasn’t the case here. In a way, Bridget deserved to die after trying to rip off a terrorist.
Kim and Janet’s escape was okay. It seemed a little dumb halfway through, when they were “escaping” into the way of the prostituting teenager (another installment of stalling time, but I liked that the show went there for an hour), but it delivered a bit of thrill when it was uncertain where the girls would end up, and how long it would take for them to get out of the area. I did like how realistic the physical surroundings of the neighborhood were kept. I might have expected a couple more people making business in that shady back alley, but when you’re lost there and bump into one creepy person after another, there is simply no escape. This kind of made it natural for Janet to get hit by a car and for Kim to eventually get recaptured.
Still, the story had its fair share of problems: The guys weren’t able to catch up to the girls? One of the girls was either high or in pain or both, making me wonder if the guys even had the stamina to offer when running after the clearly slower girls. Gaines should kill these guys for sucking so bad at their job. But hey, at least I felt for Kim when she was recaptured at the end. It probably helped that Elisha Cuthbert felt more connected to her character at that point. There’s hope that things will get better in that regard. Plus, the moment of Janet lying there on the street and Kim desperately screaming was powerful. Cuthbert learned how to act between episodes?
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| Jack has an incriminating keycard for his former lover. |
And then there is the story of a potential asset inside the agency who could help the bad guys. As expected, Nina is pretty much out of the question when it was revealed at what exact date the key card was coded (and of course, Jack and Nina were having a weekend-long tête-à-tête, which adds to their characters’ backstories), and as expected, Tony would get into the center of attention because... Well, when Nina isn’t the mole, the audience needs to look at another character immediately, so that the suspense can be carried over to the next scene. After all, the mole story was kind of major at this point and there can’t be an episode without trying to tease who the mole might be. Also, I still don’t like Tony, but that’s a personal issue. His bottom lip hairdo may be the biggest problem I have with him at the moment.
Jack seemed to be over Richard Walsh’s death pretty quickly though (as well as his mortuary, which was published at 2:11 a.m. – less than half an hour after his death), which I find a bit ridiculous as well. But the writers needed Jack to be over that, so that the mole story could drive through this episode like a freight train. It might look weird when the writers tried to stall as much time as possible by extending storylines while jumping over others like it was not a big deal at all.
