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.
Posted by: dave on May 5th, 2009 | 9:55am
I can't remember, but I think Hodges said they would be using a terrorist as a scapegoat. So even though Jack knew that they were be set up for today's crimes, he thought they were actual terrorists.
But Jack should have known that the 2million from Starkwood/othermysteriousgroup wasn't actually legit.