- A double dose of Jack Bauer is a good way to spend a Monday night. Back-to-back episodes of 24 provided a lot of thrills and oh yeah, our first glance at this season’s uber-bad guy, Jon Voight (a.k.a. Jonas Hodges). But before we get to Hodges, we’ll start with the fact that Jack headed to the White House to question Ryan Burnett, Sen. Blaine Meyer’s chief of staff at one of the members of the conspiracy inside the U.S. government to undermine the Taylor administration’s foreign policy in Sangala. To ensure that he gets to Burnett and has a chance to make him talk, Jack calls Chloe back at the FBI field office and has Burnett’s name removed from the list of conspirators recovered from the memory device pulled from the body of Col. Ike Dubaku, right hand man of Gen. Benjamin Juma, the military thug who has been ruling Sangala with an iron fist. Deleting Burnett’s name ensures he won’t be arrested by the government before Jack can get to him and question him about the impending terrorist attack that Tony Almeida alerted Jack to last week. Unfortunately for Chloe, nosy FBI data dork Janis Gold doesn’t trust her and has been spying on her since Chloe arrived at the office. After listening in on the phone call between Jack and Chloe and seeing the traces of Chloe’s deletion of Burnett’s name from the list, Janis brings her findings to her boss, Larry Moss. Larry has Chloe taken into custody by security and shuts down the work she’s been doing in the conference room. Still, Jack gets the time he needs to get into the White House and he first stops to tell Bill Buchanan what he’s up to. Jack elected to keep Bill out of the loop because he wanted Bill to stay out of the illegal activities to come and to that end, Jack chokes Bill out and renders him unconscious before hacking into the White House computer system’s visitor log to find out where in the building Burnett is. Jack barges into the office where Burnett is waiting while Sen. Meyer, ironically enough, is meeting with President Taylor about her request for him to let Jack off the hook in his investigation of the now-defunct CTU in light of Jack’s invaluable contributions to saving lives in the terrorist attacks of the day. Jack manages to torpedo that meeting by being found torturing Burnett with a Taser when Larry Moss calls to tip off the president about what Janis has told him. The Secret Service immediately rushes to the office where Jack is and just as Jack is starting to coax information from Burnett, they blow the door down and prevent Jack from finding out the target of the terrorist attack. Jack is taken into custody and hauled off to a holding cell, leaving President Taylor with offering immunity to Burnett as her only means of negotiation. He rejects the offer with disdain and leaves a huge problem to deal with: no one knows the target still. Bill calls Tony and asks him to check back with his original source that steered him to Burnett in the first place, but the soruce has no idea what the target is. Out in the field, FBI agent Renee Walker is chasing her own lead, having been at the hospital with Dubaku following his horrific car crash and subsequent capture last week. When a new orderly slips into the room and administers a fatal dose of drugs into Dubaku, inciting a heart attack, Renee is able to track the man down by analyzing security footage and then following the man’s car via parking garage cameras and GPS once he fled the hospital. The chase leads her to a warehouse on the harbor where she is stunned to see Gen. Juma himself organizing a strike force of 12 men - his own personal guards - and loading everyone onto a boat. The boat leaves and Agent Walker leaps from the pier to latch onto the back of it. Doing so puts her cell phone in the water and renders it inoperable, meaning she can’t be tracked or located by it. Down the river, Juma and his men make final preparations and disembark, plunging under the water in scuba gear and swimming off. Renee slips inside the cabin, finds the diagrams Juma was looking at and is horrified to find that the White House is the target for the attack. However, she has more immediate problems because Luarent, one of Juma’s men and the son of the now-dead Dubaku, sees and pursues her. Renee jumps into the water and swims away, but Laurent purses in a small Zodiac boat. The first hour ends with Renee reaching the water’s edge and scrambling up some rocks to get away. Hour Two begins with the chase, as Laurent pursues her through the woods and shoots a park ranger who Renee encounters and tries to get to call for help on his radio. Renee keeps running and Laurent eventually catches her. She resorts to telling him that his father was killed in an attempt to stop him, but he doesn’t believe her and continues the attack. Fortunately, Larry Moss and a team of FBI agents have found Renee through after going to the scene of her encounter with the park ranger. She’s safe, but the White House isn’t so fortunate. Juma and his men drill in through a drainage pipe reaching into the water outside the White House, then work their way through a tunnel with some help from a conspirator inside the White House who turns off a laser grid at the end of the tunnel to allow them to pass through. That same conspirator then moves a cabinet covering a weak spot in the wall at the end of the tunnel and also kills a co-worker who comes into the room and would have been in the way of Juma and his men entering. Inside, the attack team begins taking out Secret Service agents left and right thanks to their ability to hack into the Secret Service’s deployment grid and know where everyone in the building is. They are just about to make it to the Oval Office when Larry Moss finds Renee, learns that the White House is the target and calls Bill Buchanan to let him know. Bill relays the message to the president, who is then herded toward the first-floor lockdown room, a panic room where Juma’s men can’t get to her. Bill takes her Secret Service tracking bracelet, which Juma’s men were using to find her location, and he runs as a decoy. That leaves Jack, whom Bill has freed to help with the crisis rather than having Jack transported into the Attorney General’s custody for prosecution just yet, to help the president get to safety. They make it to the lockdown just in time, slipping inside at the last possible moment. The problem is that the presidents’ daughter Olivia is still in the White House, having been brought in by retired Secret Service agent Aaron Pierce last episode after her father was shot. Olivia still wants to go be with her dad at the hospital, but when the invasion comes the priority is getting her to the lockdown room. When that becomes impossible, Agent Pierce hides with her until it becomes clear that Juma has lied to the Secret Service agents attempting to take him down and told them that he has the president in his custody. Pierce and Olivia know otherwise, so they attempt to send out a Morse code signal from a second-floor window telling the FBI and other assembled forces that it’s okay to resume their attack on Juma. Olivia starts to send the signal with a flashlight, but by this point Juma has placed a call to Jonas Hodges and asked for help in drawing President Taylor out of the safe room. Hodges counters with the revelation that Olivia is in the building and that the president will come out to save her daughter, so Juma’s men scour the White House and find Olivia as she’s attempting to send the Morse code message. She and Pierce are dragged to the corridor outside of the safe room (the Roosevelt Room) with the other hostages, which includes anyone in the building when the invasion began. The Vice President, who is in charge of the nation until the President Taylor is safe again, refuses to authorize any attack on the building until he knows that the President is not in Juma’s custody, as the general claims. In the interim, Juma and his men have been trying to override the locking mechanism on the safe room doors with a code they got from Hodges, but Jack is able to short-circuit the locking system and stop those attempts. Juma’s next ploy is the threaten to kill Olivia in clear view of the security cameras in the corridor so that the president must watch her daughter die. That’s enough for President Taylor to cave and she opens the door, surrendering herself into Juma’s custody. The episode ends with Juma ordering his men to “set up the camera” and telling a befuddled President Taylor that it’s for an address to the nation, “the last one you will ever give.” Ominous words and a freaking awesome cliffhanger to end the week on, can’t wait until next week………..
- Am I the only one who wonders why interesting characters like Bruce Windsor of Greenville, South Carolina, are never people I know? Who doesn’t wish they knew a guy who masqueraded as a good guy, a
church deacon, soccer coach and devoted father of four but also robs banks? Yes, times are tough and people are going to extreme lengths to support their families, but not everyone is allegedly walking into the Carolina First Bank in with a mask and a handgun. The living Windsor was making as the owner of a real estate company must not have been all that good, otherwise he would not have been strolling into that bank, forcing
two bank employees into an office at gunpoint and demanding money. You can tell Windsor isn’t an experienced, veteran bank robber because he didn’t get very far into his plan, with police arriving minutes later with Windsor still inside and only needing 90 minutes to get him to cave in, release the hostages and surrender. Family members seem genuinely shocked by his actions and Windsor himself clearly was shell-shocked and rattled when he made his initial appearance for a bond hearing. Dude just stood their in his sweet orange jail jumpsuit, shackled and answering the judge in a quiet, barely audible voice. Of course, being hit with two counts of kidnapping, one count of robbery and two counts of pointing firearms at a person, charges that could carry more than 30 years in prison if convicted, tends to do that to a person. A detective who testified at the hearing told the judge that Windsor claimed that financial stuggles were the cause for his actions, but that has yet to be verified. What’s not in question is that Windsor has been married for 16 years and is the father of four children, all under the age of 11. Not a banner day for Windsor, his family or Brushy Creek Baptist Church, where Windsor is a deacon. Don’t expect Windsor to be going anywhere any time soon, either; the judge set his bail at just over $1.5 million. Can't say I feel too sorry for Windsor, not when you realize he held these people at gunpoint for over an hour. Lots of people are in desperate financial straights right now, but clearly not everyone is robbing banks to help themselves out. Might be a more interesting country if they were, but even so…….
- Good times or bad, one thing the people of Pakistan clearly love is the game of cricket. It’s not even a blip on the radar in the United States, but in places like Pakistan, India and Australia, the sport is huge, as big as any major sport here in the U.S. Cricket has many big matches in Pakistan, with the country slated to be co-host of the 2011 World Cup. That and much more may change because of the horrific terror attacks that took place in the city of Lahore this week. Sri Lankan cricketers were playing a Test series match in Lahore and were on their way to the Gadaffi stadium when they were attacked by terrorists. Six policemen were reportedly killed when terrorists opened fire on the team’s bus and seven players were injured, all of this coming after the Sri Lankan team manager had expressed concerns over security for his team’s tour through Pakistan. In the aftermath of the incident, Australia and New Zealand have spoken publicly about moving scheduled Tests series away from Pakistan over the next two years. One team openly looking to bail from commitments to play in Pakistan is Cricket Australia, which revealed it was exploring the option of shifting its three-Test series against Pakistan, scheduled for 2010, to the neutral venue of England. CA is more than willing to keep Pakistan as an opponent, they just want no part of going to Pakistan to play Test cricket. "One option we have discussed with them is playing three Tests in England in mid-2010 or thereabouts after the ODIs we are due to play against England in England," CA spokesman Peter Young told PA. "I understand that England is, in principle, aware of and comfortable with that possibility, subject to details that might develop. The decision puts the Aussies among a growing list of nations - including India, New Zealand and the West Indies - to have postponed or cancelled tours to Pakistan in recent years. The Black Caps experienced of New Zealand know all too well the dangers of traveling to Pakistan for competitions, having seen first-hand the dangers of touring Pakistan in 2002, when a bomb exploded outside their Karachi hotel. However, the incident involving the Sri Lankan squad is different because the team was targeted directly and not just caught up in violence not directed at them. Like I said, I realize that different sports mean different things in different countries around the globe, but sports fans in many nations have just as much passion for their teams as Pakistanis have for cricket, yet I don’t see any terrorist attacks on the Cubs when they visit St. Louis or the Lakers when they travel to Boston. Even in soccer-loving nations in South America and Europe, fans just riot at the stadium, rush the field and throw lit road flares at players. Even soccer fan isn’t lodging terrorist attacks on visiting teams, that’s just you, cricket. Those of you launching these terrorist attacks aren’t helping the long-suffering supporters of Pakistan cricket who now that now can be certain that touring team will cross their borders for years to come. That likely means no shot at hosting
the World Cup in 2011or the Champions Trophy event. I’m not sure what the aims were for this attack, but if helping the sport of cricket in Pakistan was one of them, then you have to categorize the attack as an absolute failure……
- F&*#&*@^*^*! This is absolute %#%@#&%$%^$!^&*O! I cannot begin to tell you how %$#^&*%$^&* pissed I am to hear that it’s "No Cussing Week" in Los Angeles. This week came about because some loser kid (15-year-old McKay Hatch of South Pasadena) who clearly has a desire to be openly mocked by friends and classmates, because otherwise he would not have founded the "No Cussing Club" at his school. Don’t confuse the fact that your group now has 10,000 members with it being cool, McKay. You may have even talked the *O&^%^&%$!&%*$%## Los Angeles board of Supervisors into making the first week in March "No Cussing Week,” but given the fact that there are no penalties if you slip up and the fact that no one is actually going to make any real effort to abide by your “rule,” I’m going to do you a favor and forget that you ever came up with this &*^&(*@%^%$! idea. This concept may have worked last March when your hometown of South Pasadena declared itself a cuss-free zone for a week, but this is a trend that I don’t see catching much momentum on a bigger scale. I do get a good laugh out of hearing that you hope "no cussing" will expand beyond his hometown and across the globe, because if you weren’t a naïve kid in the sheltered high school setting and were out in the real *(^@&%^&%&!( world every day, you’d’ realize how impossible it would be to get what you’re asking for. "Next year I want to try to get California to have a cuss-free week. And then, who knows, maybe worldwide," said Hatch. Mmmhmm, sure. Look kid, I realize your family doesn’t allow swearing and that’s cool, because your family has the right to establish that sort of standard if they want to. Just don’t go around trying to restrict others’ right to free speech, little man. Keep your cute little "No Cussing Club" to yourself. Shut down your *)(&#^&*^^&*^!%^ website, burn those &*(^@%^&*%(&!*%!$%^#$$@ orange T-shirts you all rock and burn all recordings of that (*@^&*%%^(&!%$^& lame hip hop theme song your group has. Shut the @^%&$%^#*$@&% up and go away, %^*$$&%*&^6&* punk……..
- Judge for yourself which is the more depressing movie news for the weekend: that Tyler Perry’s bomb of a comedy (again, making a lot of money doesn’t make a movie or album good, just popular) Madea Goes to Jail, staying in the No. 1 spot for the second straight weekend or the fact that their closest competition was from a 3-D concert film by teeny boppers Hanson 2.0 (a.k.a. the Jonas Brothers). Yes, the take for Madea was a meager $16.5 million, so it didn’t exactly set any records, but the fact remains that idiot moviegoers have now forked over $64.9 million to Perry and made his movie the top earner two weekends in a row. As for The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience coming in second…..even pre-teen girls have less money in their piggy banks in this bad economy, it’s the sad truth. Of course, the $12.7 million that the brothers Jonas grossed at the box office gave them a much better debut weekend than the World’s Best Mullet’s (Billy Ray Cyrus, of course) daughter had last year with her own concert movie. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds really fell flat at the box office, so at least the Jonas Brothers can say they bettered that steaming, stinking pile of cinematic monkey crap. Oh, and the idiotic trend of people going to see movies only after they win a pointless, self-congratulatory award like an Oscar continues, as Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire grossed $12.2 million to finish third on the weekend. Standing strong in fourth place was Liam Neeson's Taken, which grossed $10 million to cross the $100 million mark in its fifth week of release. What’s amazing is that this film’s take declined just 12 percent, showing that quality movies can find a home at the top of this list from time to time. Rounding out the top five is the uber-chick flick He's Just Not That Into You, which a) I am ecstatic to have still not seen and b) grossed $5.9 million to put its total at $78.5 million. One new release that didn’t fare very well was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. The alleged action thriller brought in $4.6 million for an eighth spot in the earnings race. Overall, box office earnings were up 11 percent over the same weekend last year, although this weekend’s debut of Watchmen should blow all of the above-listed movies out of the water……..
No comments:
Post a Comment