Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.
But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.
One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer.
But does anyone really know anyone else on this show? Double-dealing and surprise betrayals have been "24" standards since its first season, but this year the switch-ups seem to have been kicked up a notch. Last week, Jack's dad (James Cromwell) revealed himself to be a bad guy when he killed Jack's shady brother Graem. Now it appears Jack's dad is also the mastermind behind a conspiracy to detonate suitcase nukes within the United States and to assassinate President Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside). At this point, the only person who seems not to have a secret agenda is CTU's computer expert Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub), whose relationship with fellow CTU computer whiz Morris O'Brian (Carlo Rota) appears to be disintegrating after he was tortured by Abu Fayed (Adoni Maropis) into helping him arm the remaining four nuclear bombs.
