Your Weekly 24 Recap

Rickey’s back with your weekly 24 recap. Gird your loins Jack Bauer enthusiasts, because Rickey is becoming increasingly irritated with this show. Chloe summed it up best on Monday night’s episode when she told Logan: "I'm sorry. I'm feeling ambivalent. I have to go" which pretty much echoes Rickey’s feelings about this entire season so far.

This has indeed been a season of ambivalency. Forget the fact that the use of real-time so brilliantly executed in Season 1 is long gone—that sad fact has been obvious for several years now. What really bothers Rickey is that the show’s writers now insist on killing off or sidelining EVERY interesting character left in the show. Curtis? Logan? Even Assad had potential in the first episode, until he became background noise doomed to die uselessly. And why is Karen still stuck at the airport? That’s enough whining for now however; let’s get on with the “highlights” from Monday night:

The good news? Aaron Pierce is back. The bad news? He no longer sports a gun or suit, he looks a lot skinnier, and there’s no flamethrower to be seen nearby. Even worse, he seems to have been relegated to the task of picking up magazines for Martha (which we can safely assume include “Mad,” “Cracked,” and “Bat-Shit Crazy Housewife Quarterly”). For those watching 24 since Season 1, seeing a domesticated Aaron just isn’t right. He’s an unstoppable killing machine folks—a golem of a man. He is not a hausfrau. This new development is completely unacceptable.

And could the show have possibly telegraphed the stabbing of Logan any more? All that was missing was a flashing animated arrow pointing to the freaking knife. And then they reprised the "Crazy Martha Logan" theme (you know, the “wild oboe!” sound) from last season and you knew damn well what was about to happen next.

For those keeping score at home, the highlight of the episode was undoubtedly Powers Boothe, who somehow makes Dick Cheney look like Tickle-Me-Elmo, rather than the nefarious penguin we all know and love. It’s a miracle that staffers at the White House bunker don’t literally disintegrate before the V.P.’s withering gaze. Rickey thinks it’s fantastic that in the 24 universe, the country is now being commanded by a deranged LBJ clone who seems eager to perform a Slim Pickens impersonation from “Dr. Strangelove” and ride a nuclear missile rodeo style into the heart of the Middle East.

But one question: how exactly did this nationalist redneck V.P. manage to hop on the Black Liberal presidential ticket with Wayne Palmer? No one thought to question this? Really?

And ah yes, Ricky Schroeder. 10 points to Rickey for more or less having the same name as Rickey. 10 points deducted from Ricky Schroeder for strolling into the local hair salon and telling his barber: "give me the Luke Skywalker, circa Return of the Jedi". Also detracting from the believability of Rickey Schroeder as the head of CTU Field Ops is that, despite being 50, he still somehow looks like a kid playing cops & robbers.

And Schroeder leading a successful assault on the Russian consulate really isn’t saying much given how poorly the guards there seem to be trained. You would think the Russians guards would try and seek cover when being shot at rather than adopting the “let's all run out the door into the open and fire our guns that way!” policy. Evidently not. You deserve to be killed by Ricky Schroeder if you’re that dumb.