Misdirection Rules on "24"

Not that 24 ever really had sensibilities since season 3... In this past episode of 24, Jack Bauer learned that Audrey Raines - a very popular character, played by an actress that everyone loved and Keifer especially loved working with - died an off screen dead and that her remains were apparently identified through DNA. I mean, Jack Bauer's died enough times where even he should be able to see through this...

And Nadia is the "mole" for the season. That's right, CTU's hard-working, loyal, registered-Republican, Muslim right-hand woman is thought to be a mole, responsible for helping the Russians set off a drone carrying a nuclear bomb. But, Nadia is using a work station that's under Milo's access codes. And, the rule of moles in 24 is that they always, ALWAYS interrogate the wrong suspect. ALWAYS. So either Mike Doyle's incident in Denver was that he helped mob members infiltrate CTU Denver, or, Milo's a mole. (I guess Nadia could actually be a mole, but, that doesn't fit the story to-date. Her only crime so far has been standing around, looking pretty and getting discriminated against by the government for being born Middle-Eastern. My money's on Milo.)

Wayne Palmer is in a coma, by the way. The President of the United States is in a coma. And who said this show wasn't a soap opera? It minus well have Marc and Amanda in it from Ugly Betty. At least then the show would be fun! Vice-President Daniels is hellbent on dropping a nuke on a non-specified (to us) middle-eastern country in retaliation for today's attacks. (And, I presume, the weeks of previous terrorist attacks on the country as well.) The problem is, the evidence he has is very, very shaky at best. But, that doesn't matter to him, he's going ahead with the plan. (Just like Season 2's Veep, who was this close to nuking middle-eastern countries based on one single piece of shaky evidence.)

Enter Karen Hayes. Having taken a few episodes off, Hayes returns as acting National Security Advisor and pretty much tells Daniels that he's just plain stupid. Man, I missed her... She's such a voice of reason on the show, it's amazing that they wrote her character in the first place! Hayes and Lennox, bitter rivals at the beginning of the season, now realize that they must team up to stop a greater evil. (This is very similar to how Hayes and Bucchanan's relationship started out.) But their biggest adversary would seem to be Lisa, who is, by all appearances, not a human, but some sort of robot or alien, capable of setting up 300 meetings simultaneously while giving bone-chilling stares in the process. That lady is creepy! If she doesn't turn out to be a second mole, I will be disappointed.

In order to stop Vice-President Daniels, Karen Hayes will have to talk to the annoying Sandra Palmer and get consent for waking Wayne up, something that will almost definitely result in permanent brain damage. The one doctor overseeing Wayne talked to Karen about talking to Sandra but said, quote, "I would advise against it." I know he was talking about waking Wayne up, but I like to think that he was talking about seeing Sandra in general, considering how much energy she has already sucked out of this lackluster season.

Abu Fayed and Dmitri Gredenko still don't like each other. They set off a drone, but then decided that they needed to stretch out the nuke plotline even further, so they packed up camp and went to a new hiding place. Gredenko is still, presumably, hoping to restore the USSR to power, which never ceases to be hilarious. It's like having a neo-Nazi as a villian... You know they're deranged, you know they'll never win, you just enjoy watching whatever it is they're doing on-screen.

Which brings us back to Jack Bauer... He's at CTU, presumably so the actors there can finally tell interviewers that YES, I've seen Keifer on set this season. And what was up with Marylin Bauer? She was waiting in the hallway for Keifer in some awkward closet of a room, like some strange video game nymph waiting to introduce a cut scene. She then gave Keifer new plot objectives, informing him that Audrey had died. And, being a video-game nymph, she promptly disappeared for the rest of the episode, having given out crucial details to the plot. We also had the obligatory shirtless Keifer Sutherland scene, as if it's necessary to include such a scene every six hours to remind us that actors work out. Vanity, you confuse me.

Charles Logan turned into a flesh-eating zombie and has teamed up with undead Sherry Palmer to raise an army to attack San Francisco. This could very well be true, considering we have yet to find out what happened to Logan after he was stabbed in an artery last week.

Next week it's all about trying to wake Wayne Palmer up to stop WWIII. But since it's still nowhere near the May finale, I'm not sure what can happen... If they end it, they still need something to occupy themselves with for another eight hours or so. But if they can't stop the war, then they need to end that in eight hours, which could be even more difficult.