24, 8.10 - "1:00AM - 2:00AM"

WRITERS: Manny Coto & Brannon Braga
DIRECTOR: Brad Turner
GUEST CAST: John Boyd, Mare Winningham, Nazneen Contractor, Mido Hamada, Akbar Kurtha, Julian Morris, Necar Zadegan, T.J. Ramini, Rami Malek, Ethan Rains, Ryan Cutrona, Scott Lawrence & Hrach Titizian

[SPOILERS] There was one positive this week, and one negative. The positive was seeing characters behave more realistically, or at least feel more plausible in their roles -- particularly potential "red shirt" Agent Owen (Julian Morris), who had to handle a suicide bomber at a hospital; and Hastings (Mykelti Williamson), who asserted his authority over Rob Weiss at the White House. The downside? This was one of those episodes where supporting characters did the heavy lifting (which is tedious if the writers have done a bad job making them interesting), and we were expected to care about minor characters we've never met before. The worst example was being asked to find suicide bomber Marcos (Rami Malek) "sympathetic" just because he took the time to call his mom and get her to safety. Oh, and he can't be all bad because, hey, he's half-American.

A brief recap: innocent Tarin (T.J. Ramini) escaped custody and fled to be with his lover Kayla (Nazneen Contractor) to seek political asylum from her father; Dana (Katee Sackhoff) and Cole (Freddie Prinze Jr.) cleaned up what's become a crime scene, by submerging Wade's body and van in the lake; turncoat Farhad (Akbar Kurtha) was shot dead as CTU tried to extract him to safety, but they leaked false news of his survival to draw out Samir's men; and President Hassan (Anil Kapoor) was forced to help President Taylor by releasing intel on the covert operatives his country has on US soil.

When you write it out like that, it sounds like a lot happened. I guess that's true, but there wasn't much to engage with until the final 10-minutes -- which saw Jack trying to stop Marcos get to Farhad at a hospital. And even that highlight ended on a weird scene with the injured bomber escaping inside a pressure chamber and sealing the door, waiting for instructions on how to manually detonate his vest of explosives that Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) had somehow disarmed remotely.

Asides

-- Did you spot Betty Draper's father from Mad Men on President Taylor's video-conferencing screen as an Admiral?

-- I didn't mind Cherry Jones' portrayal of President Taylor last season, perhaps because she was at least a fresh face who had an important role to play and a few interesting moments to tackle. But her character's been completely wasted this year, and Jones' reactions whenever she's told bad news is hilariously similar every single time. A kind of brief exasperation followed by unconvincing consternation.

-- Is it really possible you can disarm explosives by broadcasting a specific signal over comms?

-- To everyone who says Dana's storyline has been terrible this year, are you saying that Tarin/Kayla's is better?

-- How the hell are Dana and Cole (the supposed backbones of CTU's inhouse/field ops) going to explain their absences over the past few hours?

7 MARCH 2010: SKY1 (HD), 9PM