This week's season finale was craziness, and I found it quite good overall. A lot of things were very predictable and it felt like they wasted the last half hour, but the preceding hour and a half had a lot of action and a few good twists. To make things more sensible I'll break it down by a paragraph for each half hour, rather than by storyline like usual.

The first half hour kicked off the two main storylines that mostly made up the finale...one involving Jack, Tony, Kim and the FBI, and the other storyline involving Olivia, Aaron, Ethan, and the White House. Jack is now trying to help Tony escape in order to save Kim, who Tony and Cara's "operatives" have. As expected, Jack had to overpower the people in the van: Renee, another FBI guy, and the driver. Of course he did this without explanation, as he had been instructed via Cara through the earpiece. However, he then went ahead and explained what was going on to Renee. This didn't make any sense to me...wasn't he told not to tell anyone? Why would he risk Kim getting killed/harmed? And more importantly, why didn't Cara or Tony care? It made sense to have Jack help Tony get away without explaining what was going on and then Tony would have ended up free. Instead, now Renee knows the Kim situation and is able to contact and warn her...why would they want that? Regardless, Jack is able to get to Cara and they proceed to their hideout with Tony. Somehow Jack encounters no symptoms the whole time he's taking over the van and freeing Tony. In the meantime, Ethan arrives at the WHite House and Aaron knows they have a small window to get the recording while Olivia is being questioned. Ethan takes forever to understand the situation and actually retrieve the recording, and I saw he hadn't quite closed the picture frame fully when trying to act inconspicous when Olivia returned. Of course as soon as Olivia figured out what had happened she detained Ethan. But his confidence when she was questioning him made it apparent that Aaron had the real card at that point.

Olivia then proceeded to "destroy" the card by cracking it in half. This was totally ridiculous as that would not prevent data from being read off it...she should have erased the card or melted it or something. And sure enough, Ethan talks to Aaron and gets the real card...and how convenient, he can play it in his car! Of course there's no security on such confidential information and he can play it in any old MP3 player such as the convenient *cough*product plug*cough* Hyundai Genesis with Auxiliary input*cough*. Seriously, that couldn't have been a more blatant ad! It was also great how there should have been months of data, but he was able to fast forward to exactly the right part on the first try. Back to Jack and Kim, Jack is finally showing signs of illness as he gets dragged in to check if he has the pathogen and it can be used to reconstitute the bioweapon. Doesn't Tony know there's only an hour left? I liked how the syringe to knock out Jack seemed to take effect so fast, he was getting knocked out as they inserted it. Tony has a conversation with Cara about wanting to get promoted to a full-blown member of SuperMegaEvilMilitaryConglomerate, Inc. She, in turn, calls Alan...the head of said organization. Of course she convinces him to come vet Tony in person. This was completely ridiculous. Why would he risk exposing himself when they were in the middle of all this activity and the FBI were after them? They seemed to try to write that off by his saying he would supervise Bauer's transfer, but couldn't they keep Jack unconscious as they were already? But wait! Jack's awake and a tray full of scalpels has been conveniently pushed within his reach. Three neck wounds later, Jack has escaped. Tony and Cara split up to find him. Really? They're doing work for this mega-organization that controlled the likes of Starkwood and have seemingly infinite resources, and Tony and Cara have to look for Jack on their own? Where are all the hired goons?

Kim's so hot it's scary, even to herself

Tony ends up finding Jack in a garage where Jack is trying to light himself on fire so the pathogen will be destroyed for good. He is able to prevent Jack from doing so, and he recaptures Jack. He then explains what's going on to Jack...he's done all this to get to and kill Alan Wilson! (Lame name, by the way) He has been avenging Michelle's death all along, and he claims that was his plan. Jack tries to convince him that it's wrong, but he doesn't care and he wires Jack with an explosive belt to kill Alan. He then heads off to meet Alan who is just arriving, and it seems like Jack could easily have taken the tape off his mouth (he's only handcuffed) and said something to Cara. Tony and Cara go to meet Alan and it's overly dramatic. I loved that Tony had his phone in plain sight as if he were about to set off a bomb. Alan's thugs go to get Jack, and it made no sense that they wouldn't have patted him down or otherwise noticed the large explosives he had on under his clothing. But before that could happen, surprise! The super-slow FBI finally figured out where they were and arrive in a helicopter (seriously, they still can't bring in more people at once?!?) Suddenly Renee is taking down bad guys left and right, and oh, she knows how to disarm Jack's bomb too. Jack didn't know how and she did? B.S. Also, how did Tony (and to a lesser extent Alan) get so blindsided? Tony and Cara should have been checking in with the airport guy and would have figured out something had gone wrong, but instead somehow nobody knows about what happened or that the FBI were after them. Tony shoots Cara and beats up Alan a bit, explaining everything to him. But before he can kill him, Jack shoots Tony in the shoulder, and then the hand/arm despite the fact that he can't stop shaking. Back to Olivia, she can't believe Etahn is back and tells Aaron to take him away, to which Aaron gets to say, "No, maam." Boom! Aaron ignoring orders is awesome. However, once she heard the recording, I couldn't believe Aaron just left her and Ethan alone. She's a lunatic...who's to say she wouldn't attack Ethan? I was really disappointed with Ethan leaving the decision of what to do with the recording up to President Taylor. Mostly because I knew this would lead to a big "conflicted decision" for her and they'd go on and on about it.

Sure enough, they did just that. However, I didn't expect to see Henry there, on top of which he was being completely ridiculous with wanting the recording to get covered up to "save" their family and protect their daughter. Ultimately Allison decided she couldn't cover it up because it would be hypocritical. She explained all of this to Ethan and about how she had lost everyone close to her, to which Ethan responded, "not everyone," and he got his job back (though the way it was said, it sounded like he wanted to have an affair). He also claimed Henry would eventually come around, but the look on Henry's face made it obvious he wouldn't. Meanwhile, Jack was taken to the hospital and he's got a visitor...obviously this is Kim, returning to save her dad. But wait! It's actually that guy from the mosque again, and this time he and Jack have a discussion about doing bad things and forgiveness. And finally Kim does arrive, and Jack is conveniently in a coma so he can't prevent her from trying to save him. Meanwhile, Renee thinks she's the new Jack Bauer, handcuffing Janis so she can interrogate Alan on her own terms.

For some reason they didn't create much of a cliffhanger for next season, and there wasn't any preview to indicate what direction they might be going either. At any rate, thanks to everyone that's been reading these reviews and I'll post any new information about next season as I come across it. Also, for this season they're making the DVD available the day after the season ends, which is kind of cool...it's probably available by the time you're reading this!

This was a review of Season 7, Episodes 23 and 24 (6:00am-7:00am and 7:00am-8:00am). Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

dave submitted a link and the title of this post basically describes it. But it's still incredible (in both good and bad ways) to see the walkthrough of how to put it together. I wonder how bad just a single slice would be for you? I especially appreciate how they made sure to use a cheese-stuffed crust for the pizzas. (I didn't want to spoil the whole "making of" by just posting the final picture)

We're making up for having no episode last week by having a 25-minute podcast this week! This episode Dave and I discuss a 24 Recap, the swine flu, tech issues, pet peeves, answer Mailbag questions, and more.

Get the MP3 file directly here, or sign up for the feed to get new episodes automagically (In iTunes, you add it under the Advanced menu and entering the URL in the "Subscribe to Podcast" option).

The Tremendous Upside podcast is recorded via Skype.

This week's episode had a lot of action and was pretty good overall. There were plenty of plot holes and ridiculous moments, but there was enough going on that it was easy enough to overlook those things. But I'll call them out: the whole setup with the bomb made no sense. Why wouldn't they have just given Jibraan the bomb? They wanted to frame him and he couldn't have done anything with it anyways. And if they were putting it on the subway, why not put it in a different car? Then Jibraan would have no chance to find it. But nobody stayed on the train (apparently, according to the map Chloe had, the train ended at Washington Center, which was a stop somewhere in the middle of their Red Line...how does the train end in the middle of its route?!?) and the bomb was set to go off a while after the train was stopped, which also didn't make a lot of sense. Moving on, the Olivia storyline was full of problems again...she gets to "prepare" her phone and internet logs? What's the point of getting the logs if people can mess with them first? And the "voice-activated digital recorder" in the Chief of Staff's office was so ridiculously convenient. Chloe and Janis and all their back-and-forth banter was ridiculous, since it was all nonsense talk about sockets and channels.

Moving on to the awesome things about the episode...Jack catching Tony (though it was pretty lame how it took 10 seconds to pull him over) and beating him up a bit because he was mad Tony had betrayed him. Jack's last-second disposal of the canister in the Hazmat van. The couple in the airport and the guy taking out the FBI (or whatever) agent Jack had protecting Kim. Aaron investigating what Allison is up to. The plan to free Tony, and whatever is about to follow as a result.

Smirky continues to shine (too lazy to change the photo)

So now there's two episodes left...no bioweapon but Tony's get Jack's daughter hostage and Jack will have to break some rules to free Tony. Also, doesn't Kim need to save his life at some point before the season ends, or will he still be dying going into next season?

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 22 (5:00am-6:00am). Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

This week's episode made me want to puke. It was so preachy, cheesy, and completely over-the-top, it was ridiculous. I usually save the best for last, but literally the only great moment was the SUV with Hodges in it exploding because that really caught me by surprise. Though even in that scene, I found it odd that they showed the wires that kept the doors attached to the vehicle once it was engulfed in flames.

So what was preachy/cheesy about it? Exhibit A: Jack's appeal to Janis to avoid racial profiling. The whole conversation was dumb, and they didn't even have an alternative (there's no choice!). Exhibit B: Chloe finding out Jack was dying...we already went through this nonsense with Renee, Kim, and Janis finding out about what had happened. Now Chloe gets to react. Awesome. Though at least this felt more genuine than the other reactions.

Exhibit C: The stupid Olivia storyline. This one really went off the deep end. She's planning this whole sabotage thing to get Hodges. Aaron seems to be onto everything that's going on. She isn't being subtle about any of it, using a laptop on the White House network to transfer funds to kill Hodges?!? I guess if they can't have security cameras in the hallways and they can't detect lookalikes, the security is so crappy they can't monitor the internet either. And the button with the word "Execute" on it was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head. Yes, if she transfers the funds, she's "executing" Hodges...we get it, no need for the excessive zoom on the word. And then, this stubborn moron who hasn't been thinking twice about how badly Hodges must go down, suddenly changes her mind? Give me a freakin' break. And for icing on the cake, Olivia's hanging out with mom and dad, laughing about how they're letting Hodges run free, hahaha.

Smirky continues to shine (too lazy to change the photo)

Which brings us, of course, to Exhibit D: Muslim terrorists. This one didn't even make sense, because Hodges himself had told Jack that they were trying to using Muslim extremists as scapegoats. So what could possibly explain Jack's behavior with the guy at the mosque, and his subsequent apology? I couldn't figure out why Jack didn't initially tell the guy that they were looking for Jibraan because he was being setup, and also why he was yelling at the guy. It wasn't until his apology that I realized that Jack supposedly didn't know Jibraan was innocent. But based on what he knew before from Hodges, he already knew he was innocent. What the hell? Was I smoking something or was there a huge plothole there? Maybe they ignored the fact that it created a huge plothole just so they could shoehorn in their whole stupid discussion about racial profiling, Jack apologizing, etc.

The preview showed some action ahead for next week, with the bioweapon in the subway, Jack and Tony finally having a showdown (which presumably will end in another Jack seizure), Olivia getting busted, and more. Only 3 episodes left, and I can only hope that none of them are like tonight's!

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 21 (4:00am-5:00am). Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

Get it while it's hot! This episode Dave, Brittany and I discuss swine flu, bread, Autopilot, Body and Soul Chicago, answer some listener questions from the Brownberry mailbag, and more.

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This week's episode was hilarious, and also had some action and setup as the finale quickly approaches. But first, the reasons I found it funny...both the FBI and the President acted incredulous when they heard that Tony had breached the perimeter. Apparently they're still not aware of the fact that the stupid perimeter always gets breached, and it's usually just 2 guys that are shot in about 2 seconds. So Tony escaped in an FBI SUV, and he tossed the tracking device out of the vehicle so they couldn't track him. Somehow they've lost their satellite image technology which has always let them track vehicles in real-time before.

The next hilarity came with Tony and the guy that had the canister. The guy tried to screw Tony over by putting a phonebook in the bag and hiding the canister, and then Tony used the phonebook/bag to knock the gun out of his hand. Then he strangled the guy with the clear shower curtain in the bathroom. I then literally laughed out loud when his girlfriend/accomplice showed up and while she was conducting the most ridiculous web conference ever, he was showering...and the clear shower curtain was back up! So he strangled the guy, had to drag his body off somewhere, then put the curtain back up so he could take a shower. The voting was ridiculous because they could easily have made it realistic by having a few people vote no instead of everyone voting yes after so many doubts and opposing opinions were raised.

Next, Jack told the President they had no leads and she filled him in on the developments with Hodges. He got to interrogate Hodges by offering witness protection and a death certificate in excahnge for a list of his co-conspirators. This could not possibly have worked. The "organization" is so huge they've infiltrated everything, and yet they can't figure out that Hodges is still alive? That's bullcrap. No way they would go, "Oh, there's an official death certificate? Well, that settles that...I don't even need to see Hodges body for proof!" They've gone to extreme lengths to maintain anonymity and they'd track down Hodges. But Jack gets Hodges to say that the attorney lookalike girl was the one coordinating everything. Which was stupid because they already knew she was involved and had her photo anyways. (I also loved the side comment that was made about finding out how the White House security was breached...it was by a wig and a plastic fingerprint - awesome security!!) Oh, and Hodges suggested they would deflect the blame to terrorists. So now, their leads are a girl they haven't identified, and everyone suspected of terrorism in any way. It's a good thing they've really narrowed it down.

Smirky continues to shine (too lazy to change the photo)

So of course, the only way they can track down people that fit their "suspicious activities" criteria is to bust out the old CTU servers that presumably have been sealed for months and don't have current data. And that inevitably means that they must bring in Chloe because she is the only person in the world smart enough to use them. This led to some awesomely stupid Janis situations. First she complained that it was illegal and "big brother" and then she was offended by Chloe telling her she was doing everything wrong. And then came the finest moment of this season...one that made it worth it to have had to suffer through having Janis on so far. Jack had enough of Janis's guff about "big brother" and he walked right up to her and screamed in her face for a full minute about how she was an idiot and this was to save the country and the freakin' president had authorized it (and he mentioned President Palmer twice instead of Taylor, causing Chloe to realize his head was messed up). That shut Janis up real good. I plan to rewatch that scene many times - I don't believe I've hidden my extreme hatred of the Janis character. The other awesome Janis moment was shortly before that, when she was commenting on the CTU servers being brought up and she said, "What does that make us? CTU Light?" Actually, Janis, the FBI has been CTU Retarded. At that point Renee shut her up by saying to work or she would find someone else.

And finally, I'll blow through the actual plot setup...the Allison storyline was idiotic as usual. She disagreed with the decision to give protection to Hodges so she's trying to get him killed. But in the process she had some excruciating conversations with her mom, Aaron, and the reporter dude she slept with earlier. More interesting was the attempt by Tony and the lookalike to get to the guy that "the organization" had picked as their terrorist fall guy. They broke in his house and got him and his brother. Things are getting exciting and intense! Hopefully they manage to pull of the next episode without being nearly so ridiculous as this one.

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 20. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

This episode Dave and I discuss barbecue, car troubles, the NFL draft, answer some listener questions from the Brownberry mailbag, and more.

Get the MP3 file directly here, or sign up for the feed to get new episodes automatically (In iTunes, you add it under the Advanced menu and entering the URL in the "Subscribe to Podcast" option).

What do you get when you capture HD video at 1000 frames per second? Incredibly sharp slow-motion shots. This is a demo reel from a company called I-Movix for their SprintCam product (this is the same company that captured the slow motion finish of Michael Phelps during the Olympics with an 8,000 fps camera!).


Via Engadget.

This week's episode was craziness, in a good way. They didn't revisit the Kim/Jack thing too much, Janis was still pretty useless, and Larry's dead. I consider all of those good things. That meant the focus was on the action and the main plot, which had a couple of interesting twists. The secondary plot involved Jonas Hodges, now in a jail cell in the White House. He was supposed to get to see his attorney, who got replaced by a Starkwood-employed lookalike (or whatever company/organization is running things for the bad guys). Apparently all you need to fake your way into the White House is a wig and plastic fingerprint. And you can carry whatever you want to prisoners as well, because the lookalike brought a suicide capsule for Jonas to take. She basically threatened to harm his family if he didn't take it and kill himself to protect her employers. She also took a phone call (while casually leaving the White House, of course) which established that Tony was working for her employer too. He was then getting escorted to FBI for questioning (probably because security is so great there) and supposedly took the pill while in the van transporting him. I thought it was pretty obvious he wouldn't actually take the pill, but would fake he had to make an escape.

Back to the main plot, Tony tried to setup the scene where he shot Larry to make it look like they were ambushed by shooting himself too. But somehow he slipped up on what gun to use? I thought it was pretty ridiculous that he'd overlook something so obvious. Or why couldn't the guy with the canister have had 2 guns? And how did Jack and Co. originally believe there was only one guy loose if Tony said they were ambushed? None of that made a lot of sense. At any rate, Tony was relaying info to the guy with the canister (along with his best line: "Do you have the C4 I gave you earlier?") about where the search sweep was so he could setup a diversion (using the C4) to escape.

But Jack showed up with Renee throwing Tony off, especially as Jack got nosy and started discovering discrepancies. But the guy with the canister was able to blow up the building and escape in an ambulance with Tony's help. But just after that, Jack caught up with Tony after piecing things together (though a whole lot of it was just speculation and irregularities that could have been explained) and he was certain that Tony was bad. But then he suddenly and conveniently had a seizure and couldn't capture Tony. However, in the dumbest move ever, Tony showed Jack that he was right. Sure, Jack couldn't do anything right now because of the seizure, but obviously when he's healthier he's going after Tony.

It's Smirky Smirkmeida's time to shine!

The preview for next week looks like continued craziness with more Tony (shown attacking the guy with the canister and later kissing the lookalike girl), Jack saying he's Jonas's only chance to save his family, and more! The clock's winding down so hopefully it keeps getting crazier up to the finale!

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 19. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.