This week in 24 - Season 7, Episodes 11 and 12

Sat, Mar 7th, 2009 | 1:48am | TV - 24

I'm late on this week's 24 because I was on vacation. But here at last, is the review for the double-episode! This week's episode was a mixed bag...equal parts action/suspense and glaring plot holes. Overall I enjoyed both episodes, but the episodes were quite predictable, and there were so many major problems with the whole White House situation that it was also kind of comical. An early sign of this came when Renee got on Juma's boat (that alone was like a Jack Bauer blooper reel, with her losing her gun in the water AND damaging her cell phone with water) and she starts flipping through the map Juma was looking at after Juma and Co. all conveniently left the boat. She flips through several more complex maps, and you knew she was going to figure out they were attacking the White House, so it seemed like she might recognize one of the diagrams. Instead, she flips the page and there's a gigantic drawing of the front of the White House. I cracked up at that. Then, Dubaku Jr. is somehow still on the boat but didn't hear her loudly shuffling through the map until after she got to that 5th page and stared at it. So of course he goes after her but he can't shoot for crap and she runs away and eventually finds a police officer. As she frantically explains the details, I couldn't help but think that Dubaku Jr. would appear and end up shooting the officer, and Renee would get away again. Sure enough, 10 seconds later that's exactly what happens.

On a similar note, the main theme of both episodes was extremely crappy security. The orederly in the hospital kills Dubaku with ease and gets away easily too. Renee chasing him down on her own was stupid, as was the fact that Larry and the FBI couldn't get to the warehouse for at least 10 minutes?!? Juma is the number one most wanted person in the country and they know the building he's in, and they can't get a supersonic jet to go after him? They can't track where they're going via satellite? This is their top freakin' priority! Instead he goes on a leisurely and scenic helicopter ride. Apparently they also can't radio in the SWAT team to swarm a warehouse that was a 5-minute boat ride from the White House. And Juma is wanted by everyone but he doesn't cover his face so Renee was able to recognize him. If she hadn't, they may not even have gone after him. And in a similar situation of dumb lack of urgency, the President suspects Jack might be right about Ryan being a traitor, but they can't just pull some call logs to verify if that was true or not? She's the President, and it would take Chloe 5 seconds to find out. Instead they turned the whole thing into more moral debate about torture (which by the way, is starting to get really annoying...first Renee, Jack and Larry debate it, then the President and Ethan, Jack and Bill, etc.).

Then, Juma breaks into some weird laser security tunnel, where they just hit a switch and the lasers turn off. And didn't they blow up a wall to access that tunnel? One would think that would have set off those lasers. So they basically get into the White House though there surely would have been more sensors to detect a break-in, and that is where things start getting really ridiculous. They manage to catch every security guard off-guard, none of the White House guards appear to have automatic weapons, Juma and Co. stroll down the freaking hallways and there's ZERO cameras seeing that?!? Aren't there dozens of people monitoring White House cameras (which are *everywhere*) at all times? And aren't the guards sharp shooters and always alert? Absurd. At any rate, Bill runs a distraction route by grabbing the president's tracker and running a different way with it (rather than making one of the few remaining useless guards do it, which would have been much smarter) and inevitably getting caught.

Janis comes to bother Chloe in Macintosh Central

Juma is somehow surprised to find that the President made it into the lockdown room. What about secret underground bunkers? That lockdown room didn't look secure at all. Conveniently, the prez's daughter is in the White House so Juma just has to find her and he'll have leverage to get the pres (and Jack) out of the room. Aaron tries to help her escape, but he gets shot in the shoulder, and she's supposed to be shining flashlight morse code out the window (which she was stupidly doing without moving the curtain out of the way) and she gets caught, seemingly before she can finish the signal. It also took the media way too long to report on the fact that the White House was under seige...surely there would have been reports something was going on as soon as all the agents poured out of the building. The President's message to the people earlier was also ridiculous, to say there was a threat and to remain calm. People are stupid, and saying there was any kind of threat would definitely create a panic, but the President doesn't want to "hide the truth". The people can't handle the truth! Also, we see the VP and it turns out he's a real douchebag.

Ultimately, Jack had to open the door because Juma was going to harm the President's daughter, so now he and Bill are going to have to conspire to overtake Juma's thugs somehow. Next week should be interesting!

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 10 and Episode 11. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

Submitted by niraj | 1 comment