The 24 Season 5 Premiere
Okay, before I actually get into the review here, I just want to point a few things out.
At the end of last season, Jack Bauer had to fake his own death so he could avoid going into Secret Service custody for breaking in to a Chinese embassy and kidnapping an ambassador. Seems pretty plausible, yeah? Anyway, we last saw him walking down a train track after his friends Tony and Michelle got him to safety, presumably to start a new life elsewhere. Mexico, maybe? Canada? Or how about a town a thirty-minute drive away from where he used to live?
I'm driven to believe that Jack Bauer may have done the worst job of faking his death in the history of faking deaths. Not only for the reason mentioned above, but these as well:
* In that town only thirty minutes away, Jack could encounter any number of his old co-workers (of which there are many, we've been led to believe), especially if he were to end up somewhere potentially dangerous, like, let's say, an oil rig.
* Jack now works on an oil rig.
* That oil rig job would require at least some identification, at the very least a Social Security number, and a background check.
* At least one of the people who knew Jack was alive, his former co-worker Chloe, had Jack's number programmed into her cell phone. If her phone were ever confiscated and searched, not unlikely for someone working for a government agency where there's copious backstabbing and everyone's under suspicion, he would have been easily located.
We can tell that Jack knows he's done a crappy job, though, because he takes a gun with him whenever anybody knocks on his door, even if it's the woman who owns his apartment.
There were a few other things that bugged me about the episode(s):
* They killed off the most respectable character (even though there wasn't really anything left to do with him, so it's not that much of a loss).
* They killed off the hottest character.
* They severely injured and incapacitated my favorite secondary character (though his Chicago Cubs mug remains unharmed).
* Jack just killed the dude who assassinated the respectable character, even though the dude fessed up to it pretty readily and could have been turned in by Chloe to avoid all the frame-up stuff.
* The terrorists who went to great lengths to frame Jack for the assassination and be all covert about things then just waltzed right into an airport and started shooting presumably so they could announce their demands. Why didn't they just go announce their demands?
* The First Lady so crazy.
Hopefully some of that will come to more light in future episodes. That may seem like a lot of complaints, but keep in mind that this is 24, and that's sort of par for the course. Frankly, in spite of all the nonsense (and in part because of it), these two episodes kicked my ass. The assassination! Holy crap! The car explosion! Didn't see that coming! Metal Gear-style sneaking around! Cool! Lots of talking on phones! That ought to earn it a solid B+.
At the end of last season, Jack Bauer had to fake his own death so he could avoid going into Secret Service custody for breaking in to a Chinese embassy and kidnapping an ambassador. Seems pretty plausible, yeah? Anyway, we last saw him walking down a train track after his friends Tony and Michelle got him to safety, presumably to start a new life elsewhere. Mexico, maybe? Canada? Or how about a town a thirty-minute drive away from where he used to live?
I'm driven to believe that Jack Bauer may have done the worst job of faking his death in the history of faking deaths. Not only for the reason mentioned above, but these as well:
* In that town only thirty minutes away, Jack could encounter any number of his old co-workers (of which there are many, we've been led to believe), especially if he were to end up somewhere potentially dangerous, like, let's say, an oil rig.
* Jack now works on an oil rig.
* That oil rig job would require at least some identification, at the very least a Social Security number, and a background check.
* At least one of the people who knew Jack was alive, his former co-worker Chloe, had Jack's number programmed into her cell phone. If her phone were ever confiscated and searched, not unlikely for someone working for a government agency where there's copious backstabbing and everyone's under suspicion, he would have been easily located.
We can tell that Jack knows he's done a crappy job, though, because he takes a gun with him whenever anybody knocks on his door, even if it's the woman who owns his apartment.
There were a few other things that bugged me about the episode(s):
* They killed off the most respectable character (even though there wasn't really anything left to do with him, so it's not that much of a loss).
* They killed off the hottest character.
* They severely injured and incapacitated my favorite secondary character (though his Chicago Cubs mug remains unharmed).
* Jack just killed the dude who assassinated the respectable character, even though the dude fessed up to it pretty readily and could have been turned in by Chloe to avoid all the frame-up stuff.
* The terrorists who went to great lengths to frame Jack for the assassination and be all covert about things then just waltzed right into an airport and started shooting presumably so they could announce their demands. Why didn't they just go announce their demands?
* The First Lady so crazy.
Hopefully some of that will come to more light in future episodes. That may seem like a lot of complaints, but keep in mind that this is 24, and that's sort of par for the course. Frankly, in spite of all the nonsense (and in part because of it), these two episodes kicked my ass. The assassination! Holy crap! The car explosion! Didn't see that coming! Metal Gear-style sneaking around! Cool! Lots of talking on phones! That ought to earn it a solid B+.
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