24: Season 8 Hour 3 & 4 Review and Discussion

The last 24 hours of my life have been interesting. I have been responding to comments and Emails of all kinds regarding my initial review discussion of last nights first 2 hours of the 4 hour gauntlet of 24′s Day 8 launch. Last night’s offerings featured clear detail. A new season. A cast comprised of both new and familiar characters and even more familiar goings-on inside the first 88 minutes. Would the second offering tonight provide us with something more filling or were we locked into an all too familiar Jack-based fate? The answer came shortly after tonight’s second hour ended in the way of a fan Twitter message. It read elequently…

“Mike (& Tony). I give tonight’s second episode Five Whirring, Bloody Buzzsaws Out of Five!”

Once again it’s time to don the manpurse, load your H&K, and strap in for a spoiler-ridden review of the third and fourth hours of Season 8 of the hit Fox show, 24 here at Screen Rant!

These reviews are, as stated above, filled with story-decimating spoilers. Readers beware…

Last hour we left the venerable and determined Jack Bauer with a new but somehow familiar free reign with Chloe at his side, with one goal – find the foreign Presidential assassin at all costs! Jack heads to one of the man neighborhoods of New York on a lead that Chloe brandishes from one of the man traffic cams that create an urban-textured map of past events to follow. After forsaking the traffic cam-based technology, Jack does some real detective work, by paying off one of the many basketball-playing youths who have seen the man he’s looking for who recently arrived by cab.  The young lad directs jack to a blue house across the the court where he saw the man go. As Jack investigates, he sees the ghastly corpse of a semi-dressed police officer who’s been shot in the head. Jack draws his weapon and clears the house and calls Chloe to get more intel.

Jack suddenly realizes that the police have been dispatched to the house with dead bodies (one of them a cop) and only one man alive in the house with a gun – him. A partial explanation and tazer gun later, Jack awakens strapped to a chair getting the first beating of 2010 from a justice-seeking policeman. Eventually, the policeman’s partner assists Jack to putting a stop to the vengeful beating and the two of them are able to get the vital intel about the now dead officer to the powers at CTUNY who piece together where the now dead cop was supposed to be. This, along with the specter of a bomb threat inside the UN eventually reveal that the bomb is not actually in the UN building itself, but somewhere in the actual road/path that is being cleared for President Hassan’s emergency exit.

As the second hour of this evening’s offering ignites, the Russian mobster who has set the lethal trap arms the bomb hidden under a manhole cover and prepares to push the button to kill President Hassan. Agent Cole is able use his vehicle to ram the presidential vehicle out of the impact zone and ends up saving the life of President Hassan.

Meanwhile, Cole extracts himself from the car, ensures that President Hassan is in a new able-to-escape vehicle, and notices a frumpy, out of place police officer and realizes that this is the man they’ve been looking for. The Russian mobster realizes that the plan has been foiled and runs into one of New York’s many abandoned, yet exceptionally dramatically lit buildings and receives a  call from President Hassan’s brother Omar who inquires as to his brothers status. “He survived,” he states, “and soon they’ll know it was you that was involved.” Realizing that the walls of justice are quickly closing around him, Omar takes advantage of the pen he usually signs brotherly checks with and stabs one of the many in-proximity guards in the neck and makes his escape.

Back at CTU, Dana receives a call from her former manlover, Kevin, and they engage in conversation that completely details the moment and pace of the program. I didn’t see nor will I see any value to this wayward interaction so I shant share anything else about it.

Jack has now traveled halfway across New York to arrive at the  blast scene in just 4 minutes, and takes up arms with Cole to hunt for the errant cop inside the aforementioned abandoned building. The Russian mobster gets the drop on Cole who clearly doesn’t watch enough 24, and orders Cole to his knees. Jack gets the drop on The Russian mobster who clearly has missed the syndicated repeats of 24 in his motherland, creating yet another dead Russian mobster for this 8th season of 24. Jack is able to capture the ornate tattoos from the most-recent dead body and sends it along to CTUNY for posterity and research.

President Hassan is brought to CTUNY where not only have they discovered that the dead Russian mobster Jack killed was exposed to weapons-grade plutonium, they are also feverishly going over the tattoos that Jack has sent across his Sprint-provided cell connection. Thankfully, Dana has run the tattoos by the folks over at the FBI who have sent over detail about an undercover operation they had going years ago. It’s main operative? One particularly and still Sexy Agent Walker, who thankfully is only 9 minutes away via CTU helicopter. Yes!

Being the “only one that ever got close” to the Russian mobsters, it’s almost fate that they’ve used Jack’s videoed tattoo intel, and found the person that can best help them solve this next leg of the case in less than 4 minutes. Outstanding work, CTUNY!

The next Russian-accented gravely voice takes a phone call from the ball-pen wielding murderer and ensures that not only will he have a nice meal ready, but he’ll be ready to sell off the weapons-grade nuclear rods!

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