Date of airing: March 12, 2002 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 8.86 million viewers, 5.4/8 in Households, 4.1/10 with Adults 18-49
written by: Michael Chernuchin
directed by: Jon Cassar
In which Rick returned and is for some reason still involved in the story, and it is making my head hurt. The character has been rather useless and weird when he turned out to be a friendly and lovable kidnapper, but now he has been redeveloped into a love interest for Kim, which is wrong on so many levels. It is one of the stories I am not at all excited to follow up on, but it is now part of the show, so the writers are now forcing me to continue keeping up with Rick. I am going to assume and say that the writers did not come up with any other way for Kim to be part of the story for the remainder of the season. They gave Teri a pregnancy and a whole lot more difficulties with her husband, but Kim would have had nothing to do if it was not for Rick’s return. By the way, I thought the kid was on his way to Mexico, so what is he still doing in Los Angeles? I can only hope the Drazens know that there is still one member of Camp Gaines alive, which means Rick is a target now and will be disposed and dismembered in the next hour.
This is probably where this season of TWENTY-FOUR went off-road and decided to start telling a story that might become way too annoying for some people. Seeing Rick on the bus and driving towards freedom was a good enough end to his character journey, and I never expressed interest in seeing his character in this series ever again. Yet there is Kim Bauer who as a teenager has a couple of hormones laying around, ready to be used, because it is impossible for a teenage character in a drama show not to be involved in a story about a boy who could be considered the “bad boy.” TWENTY-FOUR, the conspiracy action thriller, is serving up a teenage drama trope, and you will get to know how much I resent this story and how I would love to invent a time machine, so I can go back to 2001 and tell the writers’ room not to bother with Rick and Kim. She was kidnapped... Why would she be falling in love with one of her kidnappers? Is this a new version of the Stockholm syndrome or something?
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| The two most important people of the story are finally in the same room. |
That was not the only thing that kept Kim from being likable in this episode. Apparently, she was eager to believe that her mother got pregnant after she was raped a few hours ago. I chuckled a bit about that because there was no reason for her to believe that her mother may have had sex a few weeks ago, let alone is still at the age of getting pregnant. Turns out Kim is not the smartest of the bunch. Following this, she had to get into a confrontational talk with her mother, because according to Kim, it is a travesty that wanting to get pregnant without the other child’s approval is a travesty. If it was not for the threat of Jack’s family still being targeted, the writers would have certainly managed to make Kim the least likable character of the series. She kind of is at this point, but because she is still a target, it still gives her a purpose in the show.
Teri got the better end of the story, confronting Nina with her suspicions about Jack sleeping with her and turning TWENTY-FOUR into a soap opera for this hour. While it was standard melodrama fare, just a little bit of soap opera will keep the viewers engaged, and it kept me engaged, since the entire story was putting a brake on the show for 45 minutes, leaving the viewers to breathe and expect new shenanigans to follow soon. But for now, they can just watch a primetime character drama with eyeroll-worthy moments of love triangles and all that jazz. Teri finding out everything about Jack and Nina was a nice scene, and it brought with it some backstory for Teri, who still loves Jack enough to excuse his infidelity (they truly know what it means to be “on a break”), but does not know whether to move forward in this marriage. As if she is being forced to make a decision, now that she knows she is pregnant.
The main part of the episode was clearly the very long conversation Jack and David Palmer had in the CTU conference room, followed by a three-men, two-city investigation which sounded very entertaining on the surface, especially when Bob Ellis got involved. First of all, I was questioning whether he had become an alcoholic or if the bar he was seemingly living in was just set inside a sauna, which is why he looked like he was removing all the water from his body through his head. Secondly, I had to laugh when he got his special laptop out of his bag, making me wonder if he was still in the spy business and simply needed to be on alert, even when he was betting away (and probably drinking away) his money in some shady New Orleans bar.
Unfortunately, the story’s end was predictable. Palmer already said that when he and Jack are on a list, Bob Ellis would be as well, which means he would be finding his demise by the end of the episode (how convenient that this happened in this very hour and not yesterday). Despite the predictability, it was still a good story, and what it did even better was deliver a lot of backstories and the old motive for Jack and David finding themselves in the crosshairs of a terrorist conspiracy. Also refreshing was David’s realization that the assassination attempt on him was just good old-fashioned revenge, and had nothing to do with his run for office or with him being black. This was 2002, and the fear of a black presidential candidate being hit by an assassin was huge. Even I was thinking about the huge possibility of Barack Obama being hit by assassins during his presidency, but only because I saw THE WEST WING’s “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen” already, and figured the KKK and their secret off-branches were most likely planning something, and they probably were.
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| The unnecessary love story continues over the phone. |
And finally, I celebrated a little when David metaphorically kicked Ryan Chappelle in his superior ass. Now that Jack is reinstated (albeit temporarily), the idea of Jack being the villain for the first half of the season has been finished as a storyline, and the writers were able to focus even more on the current plot at hand. Which they already did in this episode by giving the attractive assassin a name (that he is a Drazen could be considered a surprise), and having him and his brother talk about their loved ones who died back during Operation Nightfall. There was a moment of character depth for these two antagonists, which I very much liked. The fact that the Drazens acting out on their revenge makes the entire thing personal – something I was missing with Gaines who eventually was revealed just to be a boring (and stupid) hire. Things will hopefully get better, now that this is an eye-for-an-eye-type situation.
