And we’re back! God it feels good to be back

I’m not going to recap my recaps because that’s just silly. So we start off the noon hour with Agent Moss briefing his men on the retrieval of Matobo, Almeida and Bauer. He tells them non-lethal force. Pfft. After the team is sent on their way, Moss receives word that the sniper Agent Walker tortured for info told his lawyers about her treatment. Now Moss is pissed at Walker and questioning whether her intel is valid. He recalls her back to the office to deal with the lawyers, but she refuses to come. She’s bent on “making this right.” So she continues on her way to Matobo.

In the panic room, Jodi Foster… er, I mean Tony’s crew works on getting in to get Matobo. One guy tries to re-establish the intercom link while another beats the tar out of Matobo’s security guard. Inside the room, Matobo’s wife works out that, if they get inside, they will use her to force Matobo to give up whatever intel they are after. She’s scared, poor girl but Matobo does his best to console her. And then the intercom kicks in. Emerson is on screen and holding a gun to Matobo’s security guy’s head, claiming he will kill the guy if Matobo does not come out. He gives him 60 seconds as Tony and Jack look on. I wonder what goes through their minds. Will they let the man die to serve the greater purpose? Yes, but at what cost to themselves…

His security guard bravely tells Matobo he is ready to die for him and for Senegal. Matobo looks torn. His wife tells him that the guard is right. He is needed to lead his people. Matobo tells Emerson that he beleives the guard really is willing to die and for that he has Matobo and his countrymen’s undying gratitude.

Just as the 60 seconds are up and Emerson’s about to pull the trigger, the guard’s phone rings. It’s the FBI. Now Emerson knows the FBI are on the way and he cold cocks the guard, knocking him out. He believes Tanner (the sniper) gave them up. One of Emerson’s men wants to bug out, but Jack makes a plea to stay saying they can gas Matobo out. He then goes into a detailed explanation of distance and travel time that it will take the FBI to get there, hehe He never did that in L.A. you know.

Emerson buys it and Jack and Tony get busy MacGuyvering a gas compound from basic household products. When it’s ready, Jack breaks out the Squirty Bottle of Death and uses it to make some chemicals react and release a toxic gas (ammonium Dissomethingorother) into the panic room’s ventilation shaft. Emerson gets on the intercome and tells Matobo about the gas. He does exactly what Matobo’s wife feared and uses her possible death from the gas as leverage to get Matobo to come out. But Matobo tells her that their cause is greater than they are. They begin choking, grasp hands and…

We flit back to the FBI where the attorney general’s office has sent someone to question Janice about her involvement with Walker’s methods. But Moss rescues her from speaking to them by pulling her onto comms.

Walker has arrived at Matobo’s unaware that Jack and co. are there. As Matobo and his wife lie on the floor, he gasps that he loves her, but she lets go his hand and crawls to the door and opens it. Letting the team inside. Matobo’s anguished cry when she does this is heartbreaking.

Emerson and the team load Matobo onto a truck as Walker watches from some cover nearby. As she’s speaking to Moss to tell him they have matobo, one of Emerson’s men catches her and cuts off her contact. After Jack convinces Emerson not to kill her, they load her into the truck as well and take off.

Emerson calls his contact, a man named Nichols, to tell him he has Matobo, the wife and Walker. He asks Nichols to check with his source inside the bureau to find out what Walker was told when she tortured Tanner the Sniper. If the source has nothing, Emerson will interrogate her when they arrive where ever they are going. Jack sits stoically and glinty-eyed as Walker mutters curses at him for his betrayal.

Back from break, and we catch up with Henry Taylor, the President’s husband, as he and his secret service guard work out a way to get the jump drive his son’s girlfriend gave him decrypted. The guard knows a guy who knows a guy type of thing. The whole thing will stay on the down-low until he knows how badly his wife’s administration has been compromised.

Meanwhile, in the Oval Office, President Taylor asks her Chief for his help. She’s going to authorize the strike in Senegal as planned. She simply refuses to back down. As she discusses this, she is informed about Matobo’s abduction. She is shocked. She tells her people to ‘bring in every relevant agency’ to rack down and retrieve Matobo.

back at the FBI office, Creepy Sean asks an agent to do some snazzy FBI stuff about a perimeter for the SWAT team, and then apologises to her for snapping at her before (he did. I may or may not have mentioned that in one of the previous recaps ) During this little exchange, it comes out that it’s possible the two are having an affair. I KNEW he was creepy, the bastard.

Moss receives a call from SWAT telling him that Walker was taken along with Matobo and his wife. He’s visibly upset by this. I think there’s a little something something going on between those two. He tells Janice to make sure everyone knows it is a priority that Walker be found.

On board the abduction bus, Janice apologises to matobo for being unable to protect them. Jack twitches. Guilt no doubt. Matobo tells her she has nothing to apologise for as Emerson gets a call from Nichols informing him that Walker is extraneous and should be killed before they arrive. He gives orders to head for an abandoned construction site where they will dump her.

As Moss starts cracking skulls to get more agents looking for Walker, Janice tells Creepy Sean that she thinks Moss has feelings for Walker. He asks her how she knows, and she says she just knows. He looks meaningfully across the room at his bit on the side and I think he’s going to start wondering if Janice can suss out his own affair.

At Dubuku’s headquarters, where Nichols is as well, Dubuku receives a call from General Juma. Juma tells him the President still has not begin the retreat of American forces. And then I accidentally buggered my DVR and ended up back at the beginning of the show. So I’m writing this as it fast forwards to where I was. *sigh*

Ok I’m back. Dubuku’s getting slightly panicky but Nichols tells him that if she still won’t withdraw the troops, then it’s time to use the CIP device again. This time, to kill.

Taylor arrives at his guard’s friend’s *really* nice apartment – drinking a coffee which seemed odd to me. Something fishy’s about to happen. As they walk inside, Taylor asks the guard to turn on the air because he feels hot. As he walks over to some photos on a table, he realizes the pics are of Samantha and his son. The guard has brought him to his son’s girlfriend’s place. The guard slips on some rubber gloves as Taylor realizes the guard is the one who killed his son. He falls to the ground, drugged with a paralyzer and the guard takes the jump drive and assures Taylor he’ll die as quickly as his son did. He calls his… friend? Cohort? anyway he makes a call to the person who’s watching Samantha the Girlfriend and tells him it’s time to get her back to her apartment. The plan is to make it look like a murder suicide.

At the FBI office, the AG still wants to interrogate Janice but Moss won’t let him, and is interrupted with news that a call was intercepted in which Walker was referenced. Janice replays the call for him in which Emerson is told to kill Walker. He’s visibly upset.

Speakign of Walker, the abduction bus arrives at the abandoned site and Emerson tells Jack to kill Walker. Jack leads walk over to a drainage ditch and with the eyes of the crew watching, Jack whispers to her to trust her and he will get her through this alive. he forces her onto her knees – at such an angle so as to make it seems as though he’s shooting her in the head. But really he;s grazing her neck with the bullet. Damn. She collapses and he rolls her into the ditch and covers her in plastic. He thinks that should do it until Emerson tells him to bury her.

Walker is forced to lie quietly under the plastic and watch while Jack and Tony shovel dirt onto her. The final clock is silent, except for her breaths.

Wow. Good use of the clock It will make a good trivia question someday, hehe Excellent episode – a lot of emotional stuff. The President’s husband’s storyline finally got interesting which just shows me I need more patience.

Speaking of Presidents, tomorrow our country will swear in Barack Obama. I could not be more proud to be American than I will be when that happens. I don’t usually like to show my politics here or anywhere else online because I’m no good at talking politics. But for all the hype that 24 is a show for “conservatives” out there, I have to speak up and say I’m one of those damn liberal Democrats and I love 24. And when President Obama makes his first speech I think I will probably be a blubbering LibDem.

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