- Tonight’s 24 threw in an explosion, a few more plot twists and even more of the single most retarded and pointless storyline in show history. The hour kicked off with Kayla Hassan in the bathroom of suite 514 at the Theodore Hotel in Manhattan, trying to stall and not leave with boyfriend Tarin Farush, whom she now knows is part of the plot to overthrow her father and blow up a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. While he waits for Kayla to get ready for what he has told her is a meeting with a contact who will help them apply for asylum, Tarin receives a call from Samir Mehran, Kayla in bathroom, who is directly leading the bomb plot that Tarin is involved with. Samir orders Tarin to kidnap Kayla immediately and says a car will soon be at the hotel to pick them up. At CTU, the team assesses the situation now that they know where Kayla and Tarin are. Jack and Cole are en route to the hotel but still eight minutes out. Chloe patches Jack through to Sgt. Amos of the NYPD who is leading the S.W.A.T. team that is already on the scene at the hotel. Jack directs Sgt. Amos to wait for CTU to arrive before entering the building, but Amos goes in anyhow. In suite 514, Kayla works feverishly to open the bathroom window so she can escape, but the window doesn’t open more than a few inches (to prevent people from leaping to their deaths) and an angry Tarin eventually breaks down the door and grabs her. He tells her he doesn’t want to hurt her but will if he has to and drags her out into the hall. The CTU team watches via the hotel video feed and sees the scene unfold, but by the time Amos’ team makes it to the fifth floor, Tarin has found a hiding spot near a stairwell and ambushes the officers. He shoots both of them, then grabs one of their radios and impersonates an officer in an attempt to misdirect the rest of the S.W.A.T. team. Listening over the airwaves, Jack realizes what’s going on and puts out a call to ignore Tarin’s orders. Tarin and Kayla flee down the stairs and into an alley behind the hotel, where two more officers confront them. A cab pulls up behind the officers and another terrorist jumps out. Using the distraction, Tarin and his cohort kill both officers and get into the cab. They flee the scene while CTU tracks them via aerial drone. Jack and Cole alter their route to pursue, but ultimately arrive too late and find the cab abandoned inside a tunnel. While Chloe, Dana and Arlo run the operation back at CTU, Jack orders a kidnap and electronic intercept package to be delivered to U.N. because he knows the terrorists will want to contact President Omar Hassan after kidnapping his daughter. In underground lair where Samir and his crew have set up shop, they have a flag set up for some sort of broadcast and a chair in front of the flag. Samir also talks on the phone to a scientist who is feverishly working and wondering when he will have the nuclear fuel rods to build the bomb. Over at CTU, the most annoying storyline ever rolls on as Arkansas Department of Corrections parole officer Bill Prady arrives at CTU to speak with Dana about the sudden disappearance of Kevin Wade. When the CTU front desk officer pulls her aside, Dana goes to a meeting room to speak to Prady and lies right away, saying she met Kevin at a bar a couple nights ago, got drunk because she was nervous about her impending wedding and had sex with him. She lies again when she says she didn’t see Kevin’s cohort Nick Coughlin. Prady then brings up the NYPD storage locker robbery Nick and Kevin forced her to help them with and the fact that Nick’s prints were found at the scene. When Dana insists that she needs to get back to work because of the bomb crisis, Prady says he’ll hang around until she has more time to talk. Jack and his team arrive at the U.N., where Dalia Hassan is angry her daughter is missing and blames CTU for not finding her. Jack has no time for her second-guessing and the CTU team immediately sets up a command center in the Hassans’ suite. At the terrorists’ bunker, Tarin arrives with Kayla and she is immediately placed on the chair in front of the flag and camera that have been set up. Tarin tells her that if she obeys “his” orders, she won't be harmed. He turns out to be Samir, who tersely tells Kayla that her father is a traitor to their country. Samir then calls President Hassan and asks for something called file 33 in exchange for his daughter’s life. Samir also provides an IP address to a video link that allows President Hassan and the CTU team they see Kayla on camera in front of an IRK flag. When both Jack and CTU director Bryan Hastings have no idea what file 33 is, they turn to President Hassan, who asks his chief of security, Nabil, to bring it up on the computer. The file turns out to be classified intelligence on U.S. nuclear defenses and weaknesses, gained through espionage in order to protect the IRK against American threats. Jack realizes immediately that with the file, the terrorists could take out the radiation detectors in Manhattan and smuggle in the nuclear rods, so turning over the file to them is out of the question. Meanwhile, back at CTU Arlo isolates a subway train noise from the video feed of Kayla Hassan and using subway schedules from that time of night (3:00 a.m.) along with the general area where Tarin could have fled on foot from where he ditched the cab, he determines that the sound came from a train near the Williamsburg Bridge. Jack orders a CTU tactical team to be sent there and informs President Hassan that he cannot turn over the files and must send a dummy file instead to buy them time to rescue his daughter. In the terrorists’ lair, Tarin takes Kayla to side room to wait until the 15-minute deadline her father has been given is up. He is clearly torn on hurting her to the point that Samir asks if he needs someone else to take care of her. Tarin says no and Samir encourages him hang tough because they are “almost there.” At CTU, the über-annoying storyline with Dana and her redneck past continues as Bill Prady saunters into the CTU command center to get her attention. She ushers him back to the meeting room, where he informs her that he knows about cameras going down during evidence locker robbery and has an inter-agency data request form for the raw video feed from the facility, which will also explain why the cameras went down. Confronted with this information, Dana decides to give up fight and turn over the footage which will be damning to herself and send her back to jail most likely. She calls Cole and dejectedly explains what she’s going to do, but he says to wait until he gets back to CTU so they can figure something else out. She says no and hangs up. At the U.N., Dalia Hassan urges her husband to stall the terrorists and find a way to save their daughter because sending the fake file won't work. At the same time, Jack and Cole are headed toward the Williamsburg Bridge. In the terrorist lair/bunker, Tarin escorts Kayla back to room with the camera and as they walk, she pleads for her life. Tarin appears to have a change of heart and together they flee. Gunshots ring out behind them, but they are able get out of the building to an alley and into a car. Before they can drive off, one of Samir’s men catches up to them and Tarin gets out to fight. He subdues the first man, but Samir rushes out and shoots him, leaving a panicked Kayla to get behind the wheel and speed off as shots continue to hit the car from behind. She follows Tarin’s instructions to call CTU and is patched through to Chloe and Hastings, who in turn put her in touch with Jack. She provides as much information on the place she was being held as possible and Chloe is able to determine that it was the abandoned Republic Commerce Bank. Jack and Cole change their route again (lots of driving without actually reaching any destination for them this episode) and make it to the bank. They descend to the basement and find the vault where Kayla was held, but it’s empty. Chloe pulls up the schematics and finds that three tunnels lead out of the lower level of the bank and Arlo tasks drones to cover the exits for all three. Samir and his men appear at the exit to one tunnel and Jack and Arlo spots them. At his direction, Cole turn around to rush back to their vehicle and pursue. One face is clearly visible on the drone feed and facial-recognition software identifies it as Tarin. When Jack gets this information and realizes that contrary to what Kayla told CTU, Tarin is not dead, he knows that it was all a ruse. The terrorists knew file 33 wouldn’t be turned over and they staged Kayla’s escape to equip the car she was in with a bomb, knowing she would go right to CTU. Unfortunately, it’s too late because Kayla has already followed Chloe’s directions to CTU and pulls up right in front of the entrance. Jack alerts Hastings, who says there isn’t time to stop the car. Kayla gets out of the car and Hastings spots a wire, folds down the back seat and finds an electromagnetic pulse bomb in the trunk. Jack pleads with him to shut down all of CTU’s systems to prevent them from being fried by the EMP, but it’s too late. A CTU security guard tries to get in the car and drive it away from the entrance to minimize damage, but it goes off before he can do so, knocking out all of CTU’s systems, sending off a shockwave that shatters glass and causes all sorts of structural damage and leaving the entire building in a dark, confused state of shock. Hearing all of this on the radio, Jack tries to tell Chloe to shift monitoring of the drones to the NSA to avoid losing Samir’s vehicle, but she can’t hear him. Jack tells Cole to call the NSA instead, but is it too late? Tune in next week for that answer…………
- New York Jets coach Rex Ryan has had a busy offseason. After leading his team to the brink of the Super Bowl, Ryan has talked junk to Miami Dolphins fans during an in-arena interview at a UFC event, flipped the bird to those same fans, shown up at a Carolina Hurricanes NHL game and appeared on the video board, added several key players to his team via trade and free agency and oh yeah, decided that he no longer wants to be FAT. Ryan weighed 340 pounds at the start of last season after attempting some sort of bizarre liquid diet during training camp, losing 20 pounds and quickly gaining them right back. At his FAT-est, he was actually 30 pounds heavier than he was when he was hired by the Jets in January 2009. He gained that weight despite pointing at his girth for him not getting the head coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons after the 2007 season. Ryan felt he was a cinch to get the gig but the job eventually went to Mike Smith, who is still the Falcons’ head coach. "I think I was too fat," Ryan stated. For whatever reason, Ryan decided now, even though he already has a head coaching job, to do something about his weight. He had lap-band surgery Saturday at NYU Medical Center and also had a hernia repaired. The weight-loss surgery is an outpatient procedure and Ryan and was relaxing at his home Saturday night in New Jersey. The procedure has been a huge (pardon the pun) success for many others, including professional golfer John Daly. Daly has shed some 150 pounds after lap-band surgery and Ryan is undoubtedly hoping for similar results. Even though he has often joked about his portly physique, you know inside he could not have been happy with how he looked. After disgusting belly-baring photos of him changing into a Hurricanes jersey during a Florida-Carolina NHL game last month hit the Internet, Ryan made fun of his weight in his typical cocky, self-assured way. "I'm watching ESPN and I'm like, 'Whoa, that's not a real good shot,' " Ryan said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I get hit on all the time by women." Well, perhaps now even more women will hit on Ryan once he drops the rolls of FAT that have been encircling his waistline for years now. For those who don’t know, the lap-band procedure involves the insertion of a plastic band that encircles a patient's stomach, shrinking its capacity and curbing the person’s appetite. Best of success to you, Rex, hope you are able to lose the weight and get healthy…………
- Boy, there are few things I hate more than those who oppress the little guy. Take, for example, my man Gee. Gee is a shoe shiner in Sacramento who has recently found himself on the wrong end of a bunch of legalistic knobs who are hell-bent on running their city by strict adherence to some of its most moronic laws and ordinances. A month ago, Gee was told by Sacramento code enforcement officials that his sidewalk shoe shining service was illegal street vending. Basically, he owns a small storefront and while he could operate from inside, doing so resulted in a sharp decline in business. Being outside and in direct view of potential customers is key to Gee’s business and profits went downhill fast when he was banned from the sidewalk because he didn’t have a permit. Officials also told him that permits are only issued to food carts and florists. Gee petitioned the city council on Tuesday, appealing to Mayor Kevin Johnson to help him get back on the streets and into business. It was then city officials realized that they had made a bit of a mistake. The city manager’s office had realized that it was a mistake to tell Gee that he needed a vendor’s permit to operate his shoe-shine business on the sidewalk because he's selling a service, and he technically wasn't operating on the sidewalk -- his shoe-shine stand was in what the city deems an alcove. An email to that effect was circulating through the city manager’s office, but it took four days to inform Gee of the decision. "It wasn't until late Friday night I was told apparently there was a mistake made," he said. Once he was informed of the decision, Gee wasted no time getting back to the sidewalk to ply his trade. "It's a beautiful morning," Gee beamed as he got back to work. "It's all about being outside and having visibility.” What I love about his attitude is that Gee is not merely content to take his good fortune and keep on moving. He is also continuing the fight for shoe shiners' rights to work on city streets as legitimate vendors. "Why not? It's a legitimate business," he said. So as of this morning, Gee is back in business at 810 H Street, shining shoes and making people’s days better…………
- Well that didn’t take long. You knew that once Apple introduced the iPad, there would be a certain crowd of tech dorks who would rush to pre-order the new tablet PC/glorified iPod touch. That rush materialized, but after the first burst, when iPad pre-orders were coming in at the rate of 25,000 per hour, there was a dramatic drop-off over the weekend. By Sunday night, orders had slowed to an estimated 1,000 per hour. The dorks who had to have an iPad because they love everything apple and would buy a rusted-out1970 Ford Pinto if Steve Jobs told them to all piled on right away and comprised a huge chunk of the estimated 120,000 first-day sales. However, once that initial wave came and went, sales fell quickly and swiftly. As the iPad’s April 3 release date nears, analysts expect that orders will be nowhere near the levels they reached initially. What we know from the orders that have already come in is that customers prefer iPads with Wi-Fi over Wi-Fi+3G by more than 2 to 1 and that orders of the 64 GB iPad model make up 35 of the total orders. As someone who is an Apple guy, it might surprise you to hear me make such negative remarks about the iPad, but I’ve said from the day this overhyped gadget was announced that it was an overrated piece of technology and that its lack of ability to multitask and other limited features make it worth much less than what Apple is asking for it. My position on that is not going to change, but I am interested to hear how those who do purchase an iPad feel about their acquisition once they have it in their hands……….
- There’s no question I loves me some riot action. Takin’ it to the streets and sticking it to The Man are what I am all about. However, my love for those things is matched by my squeamishness and lack of tolerance for the sight of blood. Simply put, copious amounts of blood in places blood should not be (i.e. outside of someone’s body) just make me nauseous. Bearing all of this in mind, I’m just not sure how to react to the actions of a group of anti-government protesters in Bangkok, Thailand who poured a small amount of blood at the headquarters of the government in Bangkok on Tuesday. Their initial plan was to douse the ministers' offices in blood, but that threat never materialized. They even launched a blood drive earlier to collect enough samples for the demonstration, but to no avail. Thousands upon thousands of “red shirts” - named after their trademark red t-shirts, showed up to donate blood, but for some reason, the quest to collect 1,000 liters of blood unload it on the grounds of the Government House, which houses ministerial offices, at 6 p.m. didn’t materialize. I’d love to say that I hold out hope that these same anti-government dissidents will make good on their threat to collect another 1,000 liters of blood Wednesday and splash it on the headquarters of the ruling party if Abhisit still refuses to dissolve parliament, but these people aren’t exactly inspiring confidence in me at this point. They also vow to collect 1,000 more liters and target the prime minister's residence Thursday, but I think they need to stop issuing new threats until they make good on the ones they’ve already thrown down. Abhisit has repeatedly said he will placate the protestors, er, listen to them but will not accede to their demands. He should reconsider that decision and he might actually do so - if these people would man up and cover government offices and residences in blood like they promise to. I love the fact that tens of thousands of protestors flocked to the streets of Bangkok over the weekend, but peaceful rallies and pouring out a small container of blood when you threatened much more and assembling peacefully isn’t going to change anything. The fact that Abhisit has said his government will not use force to quell the demonstrations should be an open invitation to opposition groups to step their game up. Yes, the nation's tourism minister estimated the demonstrations might have resulted in a 20 percent drop in tourists, but the government needs to be hit harder if it’s going to be spurred into responding. So to all of the supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who are staging these protests, I have simple advice: When you make a threat, make good on it. If anything, go above and beyond what you said you would do. Threatening to douse an entire office in blood? Mix in some ground-up internal organs and pig’s blood! If you really want your government overthrown and new elections held, you need to think big, talk big and act big…………
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