that's it?!

that's your slambang finale?? Tony blinded by revenge, Alan Wilson getting arrested, Olivia handed over to the DOJ and Jack about to die? heck, we didn't even see Renee shoot Wilson in cold blood.

"we know you're still gonna watch next year! suckerzzzzzzzzzzzzz!"

how about we find out Olivia was the true mastermind (naaahhh)? or Ethan Kanin? or the First Gentleman? (now that wouldn't really make sense) i was expecting something really wild and over the top - the "over the top" part was you can actually get the whole season in DVD today as you read this!

word on the street is that next season will involve another Middle Eastern terrorist (Slumdog Millionaire's TV host). surely, Kim Bauer's volunteering for the stem cell fix will allow Jack to miraculously recover just in time to kick bad guy ass once again. they won't be able to prosecute Tony, Olivia, or Wilson (if he is still alive by 2010) because they'll have their hands full with the next crisis. give Kim a gun; she can shoot, right?


i can't imagine this all happened in 24 hours.

who?

this season's 24 is unraveling more like a whodunit, with each episode trying to play can-you-top-that in terms of revealing who's pulling the strings. it seems every time we got the mastermind pegged, the rug keeps getting pulled out from under us. as of the Redemption prequel, we all thought it was ultimately His Snakefaceness Jon Voight/Jonas Hodges (the father of the Jonas Brothers). turns out he's just little fish! and the turning of Tony Almeida wasn't really unexpected anymore, especially with the preseason hype on his return from the dead. with few hours left for this season, the teaser line is that there's still gonna be one more big plot twist, one more big reveal, one more unmasking of a traitor in the ranks. who is the final villain who will make us choke on our eggplant parmigiana, spew our Coors Light at the TV set, and scream WTF! and various invectives at nobody in particular (except the 24 writers)? who is ... the Last BOSS????


Tony Almeida ... ehhhhhh
Alan Wilson (Will Patton) ... his face is already there
First Daughter Olivia Taylor ... 1 in 3 (or not)
Philip Bauer ... 1 in 4
ex-Chief of Staff Ethan Kanin ... 1 in 5 (Chiefs of Staff are always sneaky)
Jack Bauer ... 1 in 24 (ok, joke!)
Tim Woods, Secretary of Homeland Security ... 1 in 50 (running around pretty useless seems like a good cover)
Michelle Dessler ... 1 in 55 (hey, they died, they rose again, they divorced, they reunited close enough to get revenge)
James Heller ... 1 in 60 (all a plot to destroy Jack, whom he holds responsible for ruining Audrey)
Morris O'Brian ... 1 in 99 (he wants Chloe to be a full-time mom)
Chloe O'Brian ... 1 in 99 (she wants to quit the show; what better than go out in flames?)
First Gentleman Henry Taylor ... 1 in 100
Mike Doyle ... 1 in 125 (because he still wants to be an ass, plus he's disfigured - pretty good reasons)
Janis Gold ... 1 in 200
Kim Bauer ... 1 in 250
Kim Bauer's psychiatrist ex-boyfriend ... 1 in 251
Jack McCullough ... 1 in 275
Aaron Pierce ... 1 in 300 (only character other than Jack to appear in all seasons - and 24 is synonymous with death)
Cheng Zhi ... 1 in 400
Larry Moss ... 1 in 500 (are you sure he's dead?)
Carl Benton ... 1 in 600 (are you sure he's dead?)
Habib Marwan ... 1 in 700 (are you sure he's dead?)
President Wayne Palmer ... 1 in 800 (are you sure he's alive?)
President David Palmer ... 1 in 900 (are you sure he's dead?)
Edgar Stiles ... 1 in 950 (are you sure he's dead?)
That Hobbit with a junkie sister ... 1 in 975 (are you sure he's dead?)
President Charles Logan ... 1 in 999 (are you sure he's dead?)
President Allison Taylor ... 1 in 1000
Kumar in a brief, evil cameo role ... 1 in 2000 (because he now works in the White House?)
George W. Bush ... 1 in 5000

place your bets!

TPDTA* speaks!

what? you didn't see this coming? after all the pre-season hype of me going over to the Dark Side? really?

i wish you all could have been looking at a mirror at the end of the last episode - man, that was a gas. totally hilarious. it also gave me great pleasure to kill that douchebag Larry Moss. i did him a favor. he would have gotten some blame for this fiasco anyway. he'd end up being reassigned to a desk job in the Mesquite field office. that's a fate worse than death.

Jack's been a good friend and all, and i hate to do this to him. but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Jack had his great run, although between you and me, he should have been executed by the Chinese.

now its Tony Almeida time. its my time to shine, dammit! (that's a nice change from "dammit, there's no time!")

if you guys still want a Bauer headlining "24", well, Kim Bauer can always team up with me. you know i always had eyes for that yummy dish. i couldn't be worse than a hockey player. as a matter of fact, i can kick a hockey player's ass.

so there you go kids. there's a new sheriff in town.

(Kim Bauer, yummmmmmm....)

-----
*the perpetually-dour tony almeida

deep sky

the perpetually-dour Tony Almeida's (PDTA) undercover? with the old CTU gang? WTF?

well, i guess that's the most logical explanation, and now we get the standard 24 straight-up action fare. i'm just thinking ... why not go spin us on our heads and really make Tony a bad guy.


and regardless whether its CTU, CIA, FBI or the White House, for that matter ... American security SUCKS BIG TIME. at least in Jack Bauer's world.

and he's baaaaaaack! (for real)

bring the popcorn. this will be much more enjoyable than those 4 football games we just had.

and he's baaaaaaack!

with this two-hour teaser leading into the resumption of the regular series in January, Jack raises hell again, this time in Africa. that only leaves Australia and Antarctica as the continents where Jack hasn't killed anyone (am sure he may have killed a prisoner or two during his incarceration in China between Seasons 5 and 6).

escaping the long arm of the law, Jack can only run so far as he is still served with a subpoena in deepest Africa (tsk tsk, damn lawyers) - which he obviously flouts. reluctantly leaving his safe haven with an old friend Benton (the always underrated Robert Carlyle), who is running a school for kids, he only manages to take a few steps out the door before he is yanked back into saving the world again.

a coup d'etat funded by shadowy elements of the US government (well, who else is well-placed to do these things?) puts Jack and the kids on the run to the US Embassy (currently being evacuated a-la Vietnam), resulting in Jack being placed back in US custody.

24 has a knack for having insights into the future, as the new President takes office as these events happen, a Laura Bush look-alike taking over from Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe). remember, 24 even had two black presidents before Barack actually even won the office. of course, let's just skip the fact that one was assassinated and the other one injured.

with even more skulduggery afoot (Jon Voight reprising his role in Enemy of the State), Jack will have to bail us out again, within twenty four hours. there isn't time, dammit!


wow. there's a Carly Pope sighting. been awhile, girl.