Date of airing: December 18, 2001 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 8.17 million viewers, 5.3/8 in Households, 4.0/11 with Adults 18-49
This was the first episode with a good amount of truly WTF-worthy moments and I don’t know what I would have done as an American viewer, having to wait three weeks for the next episode to air after the twists and turns in this hour. The writers and producers must have known that this episode would be the last one before the holiday season, which is most likely why they packed the biggest twist so far near the end of this installment and doubled it up with a revelation for Teri that might change the second part of this season’s first half. Yes, this episode ends the first quarter of TWENTY-FOUR’s first season, and it did it with some great bombshells. TWENTY-FOUR is known as a television thriller with a Brinks truck full of twists and turns, so we can consider Janet’s murder and the revelation that Alan York is not who he says he is as the very first major twist in the history of TWENTY-FOUR.
Seriously, the reveal of that Alan York moment was just great, and his easy and calm murder of Janet, before he’s probably about to kidnap Teri as well, brought some tension into the plot that was necessarily needed, since the story was currently walking on a conveniently paved road, not giving the viewers any excitement or a rocky experience. The twist certainly explains his crappy behavior towards the policeman on the bike a few episodes ago – after all, the man was probably hired to keep Teri away from the kidnapped girls and try to find out where her daughter is, and make enemies with a cop and getting arrested in the process was a good way of stalling time. Turns out the writers have in fact been planning ahead for a couple of episodes, or most of the previous scenes with “Alan York” wouldn’t be shining in a different light all of a sudden, giving a whole different and more creepy vibe to the show I appreciate right now.
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| Enjoy the happiness before you get back out into this terrorist madness. |
The twist paid out in this episode, the thrill when “Alan” killed Janet was top-notch, and when Teri learned the identity of Jack’s murder victim through Nina (in the weirdest way imaginable, I must say – I can’t imagine that Nina would hope for Teri to get to Jack first, when Nina could do what everyone else had been doing: leave a voicemail), I got a few goosebumps. Those moments were also proof that the writers could mess up their characters’ situations. Because honestly, it might not have even been necessary to make “Alan” evil and have him most likely kidnap Teri (though the fact that she is in danger now brings her character front and center again, after she was pretty much way in the background in the previous episode), because the show has already been dealing with so much, but Teri’s situation gives another angle to the story and it makes sure that the narrative turns it into a personal issue for Jack Bauer with each episode. As he is starting to learn, all this may be about him.
Before Teri realized what kind of messed-up situation she was in, I already loved the moment between her and Jack, when he told her about Kim’s kidnapping. It was an unusually strong scene pushing for a lot of emotion and character depth, and it depicted a relationship between Jack and Teri that hadn’t been depicted before, and would eventually become necessary – with Teri in a bit of anger now and Jack having to fight for both Kim and Teri, it was nice to see them close together, in a loving embrace. Also, the scene in general was handled quite realistically. Jack told her what he knew without telling her everything, and Teri broke down like a mother would when she learned that her only child was in danger. Still, Teri’s later behavior in this episode was off for me, because she didn’t seem to care about her daughter’s kidnapping after Jack told her about the situation. She knows what is happening now, so why would she go with “Alan” to a random address, behaving like Kim is just lost, when she knows there is more to the situation?
In the meantime, Kim got something to do for once. I don’t get why Gaines would remove the tape from her mouth and have her walk around and help Rick, but she is a character in a TV series, able to do something about her situation and dream of an escape, although Rick seems a very stupid boy and she shouldn’t be making friends with him. He got into the kidnapping business for the money, but having empathy for the victim is more important for this dumb boy than the money. Rick is not smart enough to have empathy for Kim and I’m stunned that he cared so much about hating the violence he committed. I’m also stunned that she was connecting with him on that emotional level, making me think that she was already suffering from Stockholm syndrome. That didn’t take long at all.
And then there was Jack, who finally made contact with Gaines (well, the other way around, to be exact). It looks like Gaines was going to use Jack to execute the assassination attempt, giving the writers a quick way into explaining why Kim was kidnapped without actually saying so, and continuing to develop the notion that the assassination attempt is about Jack and not necessarily about the first-ever African-American president of the United States. On the other hand, Gaines is kind of a lame villain at this point (he’s kind of just sitting in his camp, watching Jack on computer screens), and I wonder where Mandy went. It looks like her only job was blowing up the plane, and as soon as she has done that, she is nowhere to be found. But yeah, now that Jack is the marionette, the show can slowly move into the next chapter of its storytelling: the actual assassination attempt.
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| The body needs to be six feet under before sunrise. |
And finally, there is David Palmer. His story is only there for the drama of the show right now, and unfortunately, I couldn’t find reasons to care about his story. When he learns that his entire family (and some of his advisors) were conspiring against him to cover up Keith murdering his sister’s rapist, he should have been more shocked than just “My entire family knew this.” He should have been disgusted by the entire thing and it should have blown up his relationship with his wife immediately, and not just in the way of removing her hand from the door handle. This could have been the episode in which David lost trust in his wife (and some of his advisors), making his story count a little more. Sure, he kind of lost trust in Sherry, but it didn’t come over as a major point of character development in his story. It’s almost like the writers needed to continue the story because they started the arc in the first episode and now need to bring it to a close. In the end, there were fewer emotional stakes in David’s story than during the Jack/Teri scene. Maybe it’s because the story itself is quite calm and slow, compared to what Jack is currently going through.
