- Gotta like it when 24 makes an episode easy to follow. Not a ton of locations and changes of location last night, but good action. First, Jack and Tony arrived with Emerson and the rest of his team at an abandoned hangar at an unidentified airport with Prime Minister Ule Motobu and his wife as their prisoners. While they waited for Emerson’s boss and intermediary with Col. Ike Dubaku to arrive, things got tense. After Jack asked some pointed questions about how Emerson got Tony out CTU and kept him alive, Emerson figured out that something was up with Jack and Tony and their involvement in Motobu’s kidnapping. When Emerson grabs Jack from behind and puts a gun to his head, Tony shoots him and shoots the other member of the crew at the hangar, leaving both to bleed out and die and Jack and Tony the only ones alive on the scene for the moment. On their way are Bill Buchanan and Chloe, who have stopped first to dig up FBI Agent Renee Walker, whom Jack pretended to shoot and buried alive last episode in order to make Emerson believe she really was dead. Bill and Chloe dig up Agent Walker and have to go Pulp Fiction on her with an adrenaline shot to get her heart going again before heading to the hangar. Once there, they find that Jack has been able to talk Motobu and his wife into being a part of their plan to find Dubaku. The plan is to place a transmitter on Motobu and allow the men coming to pick him up to lead Jack and his crew right to Dubaku. The plan nearly backfires because the men who show up have orders to kill anyone still alive from Emerson’s crew once they have Motobu. Fortunately, Jack and Tony anticipate the move and Jack is hiding on a catwalk with a rifle, saving Tony from being shot. However, Tony is able to talk the men who tried to kill him into taking the Motobus and leaving, just as they had planned to do after killing him. The loss of life at the hangar was nothing compared to what Dubaku unleashed when the deadline for President Taylor to withdraw American troops from the waters off the coast of Sangala passes with no action. Dubaku uses the CIP device to crash two planes, one a commercial airliner out of Chicago and the other a small private charter plane, killing 270 people in a crash that occurs not far from the White House and is visible out the window of the Oval Office. Yet President Taylor refuses to give in and order the troop pull-out, even when Dubaku promises 10,000 more deaths within the hour if she doesn’t comply. Members of her own administration are adamant that she should accept the demands and order the withdrawal, especially the Secretary of State, who is so angry at the President’s refusal that he resigns. Ethan Kanan (or Warden Norton from Shawshank Redemption, as I like to call him), one of the president’s chief advisors, also supports a pull-out but isn’t resigning when it doesn’t come. Instead, he decides to try and call in President Taylor’s husband Henry to convince her to authorize the withdrawal. Unfortunately, Henry is still at the apartment of Samantha Roth, former fiancée of his late son Roger, with whom he has been looking into Roger’s death with the belief that it was murder, not suicide. Last week, Secret Service Agent Brian Gedge took Henry to the apartment after Henry received a flash drive with information about what led to Roger’s murder from Samantha on the ruse that the apartment belonged to a friend of Gedge’s who could get the encrypted data off the drive. Once there, Gedge revealed he had poisoned Henry via his coffee with a muscular paralytic, rendering him unable to move or speak. Once another agent in on the conspiracy brings Samantha to the apartment, Gedge jumps her from behind, stabs her to death and places the knife in Taylor’s hand to set him up for the murder. With what done, he readies a noose on the second floor balcony of the apartment and as he’s about to hang Henry and finish the job, Henry regains enough muscle control to fight back and send Gedge over the railing, crashing through a table and to the floor below. Unfortunately, Henry falls with him and lands on top of Gedge, with both ending up flat on the floor. The only difference is that Henry is still alive, while Gedge appears dead. Like I said, not a complicated episode but an exciting one, setting up next week’s requisite first big breakthrough of the season that’s just the set-up for the next, bigger part of the evil plot to take over the world. In other words, next week Jack and Co. find Dubaku, who has since launched a plan to take out a nuclear plant in Kidron, Ohio and release nuclear material into the air, killing an entire town of 30,000 people. The problem? Dubaku isn’t the chief bad guy for the season, not even close. But that’s what makes the show interesting, layer after layer of complicated plots and deceit, so tune in next week for more of it…..
- Is it bluster and hype to sell a book or is current L.A. Dodgers and former New York Yankees manager Joe Torre really taking aim at the Yankees by calling many of his former players prima donnas, saying he lost faith in the team’s top executives long before leaving New York and accusing general manager Brian Cashman of betraying him? The book is the result of Torre’s work with co-author Tom Verducci, a longtime Sports Illustrated reporter who tells Torre’s tale through interviews. The book is called The Yankee Years, and early buzz has Torre attacking, among others, star third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who Torre says was called "A-Fraud" by his teammates. Torre claims those criticisms came after Rodriguez developed a "Single White Female"-like obsession with team captain Derek Jeter and asked for a personal clubhouse assistant to run errands for him. In other portions of the book, Torre also take’s issue with Cashman’s handling of the manager’s 2007 departure from the team. Central to Torre’s beef is that Cashman never told the team’s executives that the manager wanted a two-year deal and elected to remain silent during Torre's final meeting with the bosses. In all, the book is 477 pages, published by Doubleday and if it turns out to be as harsh in tone as advertised, would be totally out of character for Torre, known for being a class act. Not at all what you’d expect after he managed the Yankees for 12 successful seasons from 1996 to 2007, winning four world championships, which wasn’t enough for demanding, unreasonable owner George Steinbrenner. Because he dared to go more than 3-4 seasons without winning a world championship, Torre was shown the door in the fall of 2007 after a 20-minute meeting over his contract with Steinbrenner and other Yankee officials at the team's Tampa, Fla., office. Torre went in seeking a two-year contract with the possibility of a buyout, but all the team would offer him was a one-year deal at a 30 percent pay cut. Now that George Steinbrenner has stepped down as owner because of health issues and left the team to his sons, Hank and Hal, Torre is apparently willing to share some of the dirt he’s accumulated on the Yankees for the sake of making a few extra bucks on a book. Now we just have to wait and see if this book turns out to be as vitriolic and mean-spirited as it’s being alleged to be……..
- Other than removing a lying, bribe-taking, corrupt political official from office, the impeachment proceedings against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich may have some unintended-but-hilarious side benefits. The hearings began Monday in the state Senate, but my man Blago is apparently following through on his plans to skip the trial and instead appear on several television programs. Because he deems the impeachment proceedings unfair, unjust and politically motivated, Blagojevich seems to think he’s making a point by now showing up for the hearings even as he is staring down federal corruption allegations, including trying to trade or sell the Senate seat that became vacant after Barack Obama was elected president. Rather than show up for hearings which could remove him from office, he made the first TV appearance of his personal press tour Monday morning on ABC's "Good Morning America" before moving on to "The View," where he appeared with his wife in a shameless ploy to portray himself as a solid family man before wrapping up the day on CNN's "Larry King Live." Among the gems Blagojevich dropped on the day was that he actually considered appointing Oprah Winfrey as Obama's Senate replacement. I can see that, because after all, Oprah is one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in America, so she could have offered Blagojevich some sweet bribes, fo’ sho. Plus, who wouldn’t love seeing Oprah on the Senate floor? “And now, a bill……ON URBAN DEVELOPMENT!!! AND YOU GET A NEW HOUSING DEVELOPMENT! AND YOU GET A NEW HOUSING DEVELOPMENT! EVERYBODY GETS A NEW HOUSING DEVELOPMENT!” Yes, what an era in U.S. history that would have been. So how did Blagojevich attempt to justify his notion to appoint a talk show how with no political experience even though it’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t have an actual reason? Glad you asked. "She seemed to be someone who had helped Barack Obama in a significant way become president," he said. "She was obviously someone with a much broader bully pulpit than other senators." So she has influence and can reach a wide range of people? Why not Bono, in that case? Brian Urlacher is an Illinois resident, why not him? Lovie Smith coaches the Bears, so he definitely reaches a lot people with his messages, why not him? Good thing you sold the seat to, er, um, appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris instead, because as bad as your legacy is going to be once you’re impeached, having appointed Oprah Winfrey as a senator would have made it that much worse. Oh, and thanks for the good chuckle I got from your complaints about the "unconstitutional" impeachment trial, which "denies me the right to call witnesses to defend myself and prove my innocence." Impeachment is constitutional in its very nature by way of it being in your state’s constitution. Your state’s legislature follow the procedure, impeached you and you can’t deal with it, so you’re crying, “No fair!” like an angry first grader on the playground. At least you got one thing right, Governor: the Illinois Senate will vote to remove you from office and they will demand you step down "relatively soon." Sooner or later, you’re going to have to own what you did and accept responsibility or you’ll always be nothing more than a punchline…..
- For almost as long as it’s been on the air, ABC’s Ugly Betty has been the prototypical cult favorite; a show with a decent, not overwhelming, following but never a ratings darling. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it and while it’s not a show I’d personally watch on a regular basis, it also seems to be a pretty decent show that would definitely appeal to a certain demographic. In other words, it’s not nearly as bad as a lot of the garbage networks like ABC tend to throw up on their airwaves. However, as often happens with really good shows that just don’t click with a ginormous number of viewers and thus allow networks to rake in the maximum amount of advertising dollars, Betty appears to be in danger of extinction very soon. In a just-announced Thursday night scheduling change, ABC is pulling the show from its normal time slot beginning March 26 and replacing it with episodes of Samantha Who? and the new Megan Mullally-Cheryl Hines comedy In the Motherhood. In other words, they’re yanking it for the very kind of abysmal, nauseatingly bad sh*t I was referring to just a few sentences ago. Samantha Who? has been a terrible show ever since it’s been on the air, but being a bad show is rarely occasion to be canceled in the land of network TV. In a release from the network, ABC’s suits state that, "Ugly Betty will return to Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m. following the run of In the Motherhood and Samantha Who?". Estimates would place that return some time during the month of June, which is typically the time of year reserved for shows that the network is looking to kill off while not interfering with its normal schedule. In trying to put a positive spin on a bad decision, an ABC spokesperson labeled Ugly Betty “a solid performer” and said “there is no question that it will definitely be back to complete its season, just without repeats.” Not that I’m tuning in to your crap-tacular network for anything but Lost, but a big thumbs down on this decision for ABC, showing why it has no real shot to be America’s top network any time soon, by anyone’s standard……..
- When is a beatdown too much of a beatdown? It’s a subjective matter, but I think we can all agree that when you throw up a 100-0 whitewash in a high school basketball game, you’ve crossed the line. In that respect, I can see where the Covenant School of Dallas, a private Christian school, might be upset with coach Micah Grimes. He was the one leasding the charge as Covenant continued to hoist and make 3-pointers deep into the fourth quarter even after being up 59-0 at halftime. Grimes also did nothing while spectators and an assistant coach were cheering wildly as their team edged closer to 100 points, electing to keep coaching as if the game were still being hotly contested. When you are the coach of a good team taking on a very bad team with only eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school, that sort of coaching behavior could rightly be construed as inappropriate and insensitive. Dallas Academy hasn’t won a game the last four seasons and admirably, it specializes in teaching students struggling with "learning differences," such as short attention spans or dyslexia. In other words, it takes on the challenge of teaching students most other schools would prefer not to deal with. They clearly don’t place a high emphasis on having successful athletic programs, but that doesn’t mean you need to crush their spirits and pour it on by a 100-point margin. That being said, I don’t agree with the decision by officials at the Covenant School to fire Grimes because of the lopsided win. Yes, Grimes is on the record as saying he will not apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity." Also, the school does appear legitimately embarrassed by the rout, posting a statement on its Web site last week lamenting the outcome of its Jan. 13 shutout win over Dallas Academy. "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition," said the statement, signed the head of the school and its board chair. Again, I agree with the school on this one as it pertains to the game and its outcome being just plain wrong. However, Grimes’ actions and subsequent response don’t merit a firing - unless there’s more to the story. If he’s done this sort of thing before or was already on thin ice because of past mistakes and indiscretions, then fine. This could be the sort of last straw to push him out the door. But if there’s nothing else against him, then a 100-0 rout should earn him a suspension and nothing more. Suspend him for five games, eight games, whatever. Tell him he must apologize and serve the suspension or he’ll be fired, but don’t can him immediately. Unless there is some sort of criminal conduct or blatant violation committed, a coach shouldn’t be fired for something like this. You’re firing him for something very much subjective and that’s not right. Of course, neither is Grimes insisting that “my values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent.” Umm, that’s exactly what you did, M. Now it’s cost you your coaching gig and even though the punishment may not fit the crime, you didn’t do anything to help your case…..
No comments:
Post a Comment