The last hour is here… Oooo no Previouslys… Thanks goodness.

Walker, on the scene with Kim who’s being treated for her burn, is talking to Chloe who’s working on the laptop Kim recovered. They’re not having any luck decrypting some kind of node. I don’t know. I’m geeky but I’m not THAT geeky.

Meanwhile, Jack makes his way into some kind of garage housing a couple of cabs. As he tries to break into one, Tony discovers him and starts shooting. Jack manages to shut the garage door all the way (it had been open a crack) but Tony returns with a forklift and use it to slide the heavy door up. Suring Tony’s shooting, he sprang a leak in one of the cabs. Jack grabs a nearby roadflare and tries to blow the place up, but Tony gets in there in time, and knocks Jack out.

And now we come back to Olivia. Again. This time Kanin is back. And Olivia is busted and betrayed. Woot. Aaron growled at her too, it  was awesome. Kanin is left alone with her, and though she knows she’s defeated, she still tries to weasel her way out of it. But all Kanin wants her to do is tell her mother what she did. He’s not after his job, he’s not after revenge, he just wants Olivia to come clean to the one person he knows will hurt her most.

Jack, in the meantime, is cuffed to a fence, and pleading with Tony to let him die in peace. He begs Tony not to let him be used to kill innocent people.

…

And Tony faces him, and tells him he had no such intention. That everything he’s done, every move he’s made, has been to get this bigger cog, this ‘Alan Wilson’ guy to meet him face to face. Apparently, he of the innocuous name, Alan Wilson, is THE COG behind pretty much everything. Palmer’s assassination, Logan, Jack’s wacky brother, but most of all, he is the one behind the death of Michelle, Tony’s beloved wife. Then it basically becomes a pissing match between Jack and Tony as to who was the day’s bigger hero, with Tony sounding like the little brother who isn’t getting his way.

Jack tells Tony that if he kills Alan Wilson, no one will ever know about the conspiracy. Tony says he’s not going to kill him - Jack is. He then wraps a belt full of explosives around Jack.

“You aren’t honouring her death. You’re revelling in her death and she would despise you for it.” Jack spits out at Tony.

Tony switches the explosives on, and duct tapes him. Cara walks in, and tells Tony Wilson will arrive soon.

As Wilson arrives, Tony and Cara go to meet him. They’re frisked as a squad of beefy security types fan out and clear the area. Wilson gets out of his limo and Cara is the only one allowed to approach him. Tony tells him he’s been looking forward to this and that he can bring a lot more to the table. Wilson asks to see Bauer’s patholgy report as two security guys drag Jack out. Tony fiddles with his cell phone/detonator as Jack comes in proximity of Wilson, but before he can set it off, Walker and the FBI arrive in a chopper and begin shooting. Wilson and Cara head for cover, as does Jack and Tony. Walker has the chopper set down, things get explodey, Walker makes her way to Jack and disarms the explosives as he explains why tony’s doing what he’s doing. He tells her that to stop this, she needs to stop Tony from killing Wilson.

Inside the building Wilson, Tony and Cara escaped into, Cara is leading Wilson along when they meet Tony. She runs to him and tells him they need to find a safe extraction point. Tony, however has other plans. He draws his weapon, and kills her, stunned disbelief on her face she she sinks to the floor. Then, crazed, Tony runs at Wilson, and holds his gun to Wilson’s head. In a chilling little diatribe where Tony lays the blame for Michelle’s death at Wilson’s feet, we also learn that Michelle, at the time of her death, was pregnant with Tony’s son. And for the first time in a long while, Tony speaks above a growly whisper and screams at Wilson for killing his son. As he’s about to pull the trigger, Walker runs in and shoots him in the shoulder. As Tony crawls toward his dropped weapon, maniacal determination on his pained face, Jack shouts at him to stop moving, but he refuses. Steeling himself, Jack takes aim, and shoots Tony in the hand.

As the agents lead Tony away, he yells at Jack for running away, for being a coward, for not doing something about the men responsible for all the deaths they’ve endured. “How would Terri feel about that?!” he screams as Jack flinches and collapses against the nearest wall.

Jack is taken to the nearest medic and Walker has a little showdown with Wilson who is all cool and collected. She threatens him with treason, he smiles and says he’s innocent and to take it up with his lawyers. This pisses her off and she’s about to rough him up a little when she’s interrupted with news that Jack’s about to be taken to the hospital. She goes to Jack and they have a moment together where she asks him for help on what to do next.

But Jack can’t help her anymore. He tells her he used to think that if he saved people, he saved himself. That he knows that laws must be upheld, but when faced with saving 15 people on a bus or upholding the law, he could only do what he could live with. And that was his advice to Walker: Try to make choices you can live with.

And then he’s wheeled away.

And now it’s time for Olivia to face the music. She calls her parents to a room and tells them what she did. And then Daddy’s little girl might get a reprieve after Henry practically orders the President to cover up what she did to save their family. He’s cruel about it, saying her job as President cost their son his life. They are interrupted before she can say which way she’ll come down, and she has to go hear the good news about what’s happening with Tony.

At FBI, Janice and Chloe say their awkward, but kind of touching goodbyes and well, I like Janice. But she’s no Chloe.

And at the hospital, Dr. Macer is telling Jack that because the pathogen was weaponized, the disease is at an advanced stage. She tells him she can administer morphine but it will induce a coma. Jack is not ready for that. A nurse comes in to tell him he has a visitor… It is the Imam from Jibraan’s mosque. Apparently Jack asked for him. Jack feels a need to unburden, and the lovely Imam patiently tells Jack that he can forgive himself for all the wrongs. That he is a man with flaws and stuff. I thought there would be a sort of deathbed confession here, but I think Jack just needed to hear someone forgive him. He thanks the Imam, and says, “It’s time.”

Time for what, we don’t know yet, because we’re back with feckin’ Olivia. The President returns, hugs them both and tells them she never imagined the job would be so hard on them. And then she apologises for that, and brings Aaron in to remand her daughter into custody. She does the horrible, awful, but right thing. And it will cost her.

But one thing she will retain is her loyal friend, Ethan Kanin. I’m glad the old Warden from Shawshank turned out to be a good guy in this. The President gathers her strength, and enlists his help with Alan Wilson.

Wilson is led into an interrogation room at FBI. Walker watches icily as he’s seated. Janice enters to be a witness to Wilson’s transfer, but Walker has other ideas. She orders Janice out, but she refuses to go. So she forces Janice, at gunpoint, to cuff herself to something. Janice pleads with her to not do what she’s about to do - torture Wilson - but Walker must have decided that torturing him is something she could live with.

At the hospital, the Imam watches Jack through a window as Kim arrives to see him. Jack is in an induced coma and although Jack has accepted death, Kim has not and she tells Macer she wants to go ahead with the stem cell procedure..

“I’m sorry daddy. But I’m not ready to let you go.”

And so ends another day in the life of Jack Bauer. What a day it was. I’d love to hear what you thought in the comments

Ok kids, this is it. The last 2 hours in this dreadful day. Will Jack really die? Will he save Kim from Evil Tony (if he had his Cubs mug back, he wouldn’t be evil anymore.) and then let her save him? Will Olivia lose it completely and give her dirty deeds away? Will Aaron pretty much save everyone and be the lead in Season 8? Well ok that’s a stretch, but it could happen!

Let’s find out…

We begin with the “formality” of Olivia getting questioned in the matter of Jonas Hodges’ death. While she’s being questioned, the President goes into a meeting with her cabinet where she begins briefing them on everything from Hodges’ claim that there are bigger cogs than him involved, to Tony’s capture.

Speaking of Tony, he’s sitting in the squad van cool as a cuke, probably knowing that Jack is sweating bullets trying to figure out a way to break him out. FakeLawyer’s whispering not-so-sweet nothings in Jack’s ear to remind him of this very fact. She reminds him that they have Kim, which they do, sort of. Kim just doesn’t know it yet.

But she’s getting suspicious (well as many times as she’s been nicked, you’d think she’d have a pretty good Spidey-sense by now). The husband/Starkwood operative gets asked by a bystander to move his laptop/webcam he’s got trained on Kim so that an elderly lady can be seated. As he moves it, Kim notices a spot of blood on the guy’s neck. He plays it off, but Kim looks like she smells a rat.

As the husband/op goes off in search of a band-aid (pfft.), he calls FakeLawyer because he’s getting antsy and he thinks Kim suspects something. She tells him to hang tight, but if Kim gets in the way, “Do what you have to do.” Eep.

Time’s getting short for Jack as his van approaches an exit he was told to watch for. He suddenly draws his weapon and trains it on Walker and Random Agent next to her. He tells them to draw their weapons and slide them over to him. They don’t comply so Jack makes with the threats, including his favourite: shoot someone in the knee and if you don’t believe I’m serious, I’ll kill him because I’m in Save Kim mode and nothing gets in my way, not even hot chicks.

Jack directs the van to FakeLawyer (Okay, I have learned her name is Cara. Sorry to those annoyed by me calling her FakeLawyer. Cara seems so anticlimactic though) who’s parked in a tunnel. Jack begs Walker, as he’s cuffing her, to do whatever it takes to save Kim. Tony makes Jack cuff himself, and then leads him to the waiting SUV Cara has brought. She questions his motive for bringing a hostage along, especially Jack, but he smirks and tells her that the canisters may be destroyed but everything they need to reproduce the weapon is within Jack. They can harvest what they need from him. Ummm, yuck.  Smiling, she and Tony get in and drive off.

At the White House, Aaron meets Ethan Kanin as he arrives and convinces him to access the digital recordings from his former office. Aaron is highly suspicious of Olivia and is making al the right connections from her to Hodges’ death. Kanin agrees to check the recordings.  While that’s going on, Olivia finishes up her grilling and heads for her office where she meets Kanin. At first it looks like he can play off his reason for being there as a need for some of his files. But because he’s apparently never learned to close things when you’re done with them, Olivia spots the recording area hidden behind a painting in the wall after he leaves. She realizes that Kanin came for something that could incriminate her, so she orders him detained. Aaron, so far, doesn’t seem complicit in this (to Olivia).

At the tunnel where Tony escaped, the scene is crawling with agents and Walker briefs Janice and Chloe on the situation with Jack and Kim. Chloe begins tracking down an agent at Kim’s airport gate so that Walker can speak with them. Eventually, Kim gets up to the gate thinking she’s going to be boarding, but she takes a call from Walker who fills her in. The jig is up. Kim knows the couple she’s been sitting with are “watching” her. I give her props for keeping her cool when the husband/op comes up as she’s on the phone and she quickly makes the call with Walker be about a small security problem with her luggage. She calmly goes back to sit with them, but soon they notice security moving in.

The guy stands up, and begins shooting at the guards while the wife/op grabs Kim and holds her at knifepoint. As shoot out ensues, Kim reachs into her pocket for something and stabs the wife/op in the leg, getting clear, and allowing security to shoot her. She’s down. But the husband/op escapes - injured. Kim calls Walker and tells her security is down all over the place, no airport cops in sight and the bad guy’s getting away. Then her battery dies (ha! Jack should give her one of his awesome phones) and Kim makes the decision to go for the bad guy herself. Walker told her that he’s the only lead to finding her father.

At the White House prison (who knew they had one?) Olivia forces Kanin to give up the recording. As Kanin is processed out, Olivia breaks the data card with the recording…. or does she? Muahahaha. Kanin is a paranoid sumbitch and Aaron was actually holding onto the real recording. They meet up, Kanin gets the card from Aaron and heads to his car to listen.

Tony, Cara and Jack arrive at some facility where Jack, who’s seizing up is lef away by a couple of guys wearing biomasks. Tony calmly tells him he’s going to be used to reconstitute the bioweapon. Jack is placed face down on a table and they painfully check his spinal fluid to see if any of it’s viable. While they work on Jack, Jack takes Cara aside and tells her he wan’t s abigger part in the Organization. Cara tells Tony that he can only be invited in and that the head Evil Guy is very careful about his anonimity. Tony presses his case, saying without him the whole operation is off. She looks like she’ll think it over.

Olivia does some more whinging with Martin Collier from Hitmen-R-Us until she’s called into a briefing with her mother.

At the airport, Kim follows husband/op until she runs into a pair of airport cops. She tells them who she is and that she needs to contact Walker. Husband/op manages to thieve a car but the cops Kim is talking to stop him at the exit by shooting the crap out of the car until it rolls and catches fire. Kim bravely climbs in the car and reaches for the laptop the guy was using. The guy, bloodied and gross, reaches for her and won’t let go, but she fights for it and gets clear as her jacket catches fire. She tears off her jacket and gets clear of the car as Walker and her team run up. Kim tells Walker about the laptop and spouts some CTU technobabble which makes Walker look at her funny. Then Kim learns Chloe is working with them and this pleases Kim mightily

Back at the White House again, Kanin pops in the recording and has a listen. Oh dear, Olivia’s in trouble. Good.

Tony learns from the bioguys that there’s plenty of pathogen goo inside Jack, but that his organs will be needed in order to reconstitute the weapon. We also learn that exposure to extreme heat will kill the pathogen, that it can survive in the “host” (Jack) up to two hours after his death, that all of this info has been uploaded to Tony’s computer, and that Jack has maybe two hours to live. Tony tells the bioguys to ready him for transport. Meanwhile, Cara calls Allen (the bigger cog) and briefs him, also telling him he should consider making Tony a larger partner in the organization. Allen is cautious, but agrees to meet and tells Cara he will come supervise Jack’s transfer himself. He also says he will look Tony in the eye and if he doesn’t like what he sees, well, Tony won’t survive the meeting.

As the team readies Jack for transfer, Jack’s eye pops open. he’d been playing possum. He pulls a Nina and slices and dices and cracks necks of the bioguys. Sadly, no thighs of doom He’s still cuffed and fighting seizures, but manages to make his way outside. Tony and Cara are in pursuit…

Eeeeeeeep. They only have an hour to save Jack!

Thank to everyone who listened to me join Mike and Tony on 2 guys Talking 24. I had much fun! But now it’s time for another exciting hour of 24! Only two more hours left in this day and I’m anxious to find out what miracle cure they concoct to save Jack. Since Kim features in the Previouslys, I’m guessing she fixes him.

When we left Jack, he was trying to save the baddie left behind to watch Jibraan’s little bro who had stabbed him with a shard from a mirror. Tony and his FakeLawyer (argh what’s her name? This late in the season, I should know names by now) are retro fitting the Prion stuff for maximum dispersal at a DC subway location. Between 8-10,000 commuters will be exposed to the stuff.

Meanwhile, Jibraan questions what Tony is doing but Tony is not forthcoming and instead practices his bad guy banter by threatening Jibraan’s little brother some more. Tony puts Jibraan on the metro and tells him to get off at Washington Center (which is ground zero.)

Speaking of little brother, Jack calmly removes the kid’s cuffs and apologises for what went down. he then asks the Imam to talk to the kid while Jack goes to question the baddie. After a bit of torture, Jack learns the baddie doesn’t know much but has a contact number he’s only to use if something goes wrong. Jack has Walker patch the number to Chloe for a trace. He tells the baddie to start thinking of a reason to contact Tony while Janice and Chloe have a mini geek fight and Chloe makes Janice look like an idiot. Awesome. When they’re ready with a trace, Tony gets a call. The baddie gets him on the phone and says something about a failed bank transfer, but is unable to keep him on the phone long enough for Chloe to get much more than a general location.

Meanwhile, Jibraan makes an attempt at contacting the police by removing the earpiece/tag Tony made him wear and going to a subway authority. But he is thwarted when a security guard takes him aside and put the earpiece back in. Shocked, Jibraan complies, and Tony comes on comms and tells him he understands that Jibraan had to make a try for it. He’s very understanding for a bad guy. Jibraan is sufficiently frightened enough to agree to continue on with his instructions.

Olivia is having a mini freakout when she learns from Aaron that the Jusitce department is investigating the Hodges explosion. She had slipped out of Secret Service protection to meet DodgyMartin. He proceeded to talk to her like she was a naughty girl who needed a time out. This woman is in charge of advising the president. Joy. Dodgy Martin convinces her to pull her shit together and do exactly what he says. She agrees. It also turns out that DodgyMartin told the guy from Hitmen ‘R’ Us to go ahead with the murder because olivia will pay up. So, he tells her, she better pay up.

We move to an airport when Kim has arrived for her flight home. She calls her husband to let him know her flight has been delayed. After she nags up with him she catches sight of someone who was waching her. Suspicious, she takes a seat in the waiting area.

On the subway, FakeLawyer, who has disguised herself, activates the timer on the Prion bomb so that it will go off when the train gets to Washington Center. She exits the Subway, but not before Jibraan catches sight of and sort of recognizes her. Ahhhh. So the bomb will go off and Jibraan won’t realize what has happened until he’s been exposed.

Chloe has decrypted Tony’s location and Jack learns tony is only 3 blocks away. The catch up to him and slam into Tony’s van and capture him fairly quickly actually. Kind of anticlimactic. As Jack captured Tony, he dropped his handheld and not even Chloe can get it up and running…. but Janice can hehehe time for some sweet revenge.

Jack walks over to Tony, sends Tony’s guards away… and then slams his fist into Tony’s head many times. At first he asks Tony to tell him where the Prion is, but it isn’t long before he’s almost sobbing, asking why Tony betrayed him. He pulls his gun and tells Tony he has nothing left to lose, to which Tony smirkingly replies, “You think I’ve got anything left to lose?”

Janice, in the meantime, has restored Tony’s device and they figure out the target. Walker goes to get Jack who is silently staring at Tony with suck betrayal and shock in his eyes.

As Walker and Jack, head for Washington Center, janice is able to patch Jack into the comms Tiony was using to communicate with Jibraan. As the train pulls into the station, Jack asks Jibraan to wait until everyone um, de-trains, and has him look for a bag left behind. Jibraan finds it but becomes suspicious at being asked to open the bag. But he does and finds the Prion bomb (totally sounds like a band. “What are you listening to?” “Prion Bomb.” “Cool.”) with only a little over a minute left on it until it goes off.

Jack tells Jibraan to take it and get it outside. As he does so, in a panic, knocking people aside in his frenzy, he’s halted by security guards who won’t let him pass. Jibraan, thinking quickly (Good man!) pulls out the bomb, sends everyone into a panic by shouting he has a bomb, and then makes a break for it in the chaos. He gets outside, Jack meets him, grabs the bomb and chucks it into a waiting CDC van where the Prion Bomb detonates harmlessly. Phew!

Jack comes back outside the CDC van and thanks Jibraan, and tells him they are bringing his brother to him. As Jibraan is led away to be debriefed, Jack shares a small smile with Walker, convulses a little and Walker holds him as he has a minor fit from effects of the gas.

After it passes, we check in on Kim who’s feeling paranoid about the shady guy who was watching her earlier. She goes to sit with some friendly folk and asks them to look at the guy to see if he’s staring. The shady guy gets up, talking on his cell and moves away from the area. We learn that the person he is talking to is Jack, who is having Kim watched to make sure she really leaves. Aww.

After jack hangs up with Kim’s shadow, Walker approaches and tells him about Hodges. Jack assumes who ever is behind all this will go for Tony. And he’s right. FakeLawyer calls the Bigger-The-Hodges bad guy and while he says kill Tony because he knows too much, FakeLawyer says they have another play and Tony won’t be in custody for long.

At the airport, Kim decides she needs to the loo and heads off. Her shadow follows and heads to the Mens room once he sees Kim has gone to the Ladies’. After he does his thing, the bloke who was with the nice woman Kim met comes out and strangles him to death. I KNEW they were bad. I recognize the actress playing the fellow passenger Kim befriended. A recognizable actress doesn’t do bit parts. The husband/new bad guy leaves Kim’s Shadow in a stall and rejoins his wife and Kim.

At the White House, Olivia has a little showdown with Aaron who is really pissed she broke protocol and left Secret Service protection. She’s a good liar. She pulls the ‘I’m so traumatized, I just needed some ME time’ act and Aaron falls for it like the chivalrous man he is. Or did he… After Olivia leaves him, Aaron places a call to the president’s former Chief of Staff, Ethan Kanin. He asks him if he ever disconnected the recording equipment used in his office to record conversations etc. Kanin says no but the only way to access those recordings is with his own thumbprint. He agrees to come down to the White House and help Aaron, if Aaron fills him in on what’s happening. I knew Aaron wouldn’t let me down.

Janice is getting pissy with Chloe! I love it Chloe won’t 1. admit she was wrong and 2. pat Janice on the back and it is driving Janice up the wall. *smirk*

Jack has Jibraan looking at mugshots trying to find the woman and he identifies her froma  screengrab made while she was in FakeLawyer mode. The mugshot extravaganza is cut short when Jibraan’s little bro arrives, and Jack is able to look on their reunion with a smile.

At the airport, the husband rejoins his wife and Kim in the waiting area, gives a bit of a code to his wife and sits down next to his laptop, which has a webcam focused on Kim. FakeLawyer then calls Jack and has him open the link on his phone. He’s shocked when he sees his little girl on cam. Fake Lawyer tells Jack that he will help Tony escape or the operatives will murder Kim. She makes him put the call on comms so she can hear everything he says.

Jack gets in the van with Walker, Tony, and heavy guard. FakeLawyer tells Jack that he will do as he’s told, even if it means killing those in the van with him…

Tick. Boom.

Yikes. Will Jack be able to save Kim? Will Kim figure out she’s even in danger? Will Janice scratch Chloes eyes out? Next week, 24 begins an hour earlier because it’s the season finale kids! two hours of 24 goodness, and then that is it for a long, long time. *sniffle*

So the fab fellas at 2 Guys Talking let me join them last week to talk about last Monday’s episode. I had a blast, and their show is something every good 24 fan should have in their iTunes subscriptions

I’ve never done this kind of podcast before and I have to say it was a real learning experience and a lot of fun. Thanks to Mike and Tony for inviting me

Listen to the episode with yours truly below, and visit the 2 Guys Talking website to check out their other great podcast episodes.

Listen:

The fine fellas at 2 Guys Talking 24 podcast have invited me onto their show to talk about this weeks Bauer Hour. These guys have one of the absolute best 24 podcasts around so I hope you’ll check out their site if you’re not already a fan

I’ll try to hide my disappointment at the lack of the Thighs of Doom this season.