24: Taking a Bite Out of Terror

Jack bites a guy to death. Bites him. To death. Yeah. It's kind of like, when Jack Bauer is on the case, everyone is safe – and no one is safe. 24 is back for sure.

So this day starts in the middle of an 11-week string of terrorist attacks, when everyone is paranoid and blaming every vaguely Arab person they see (with good reason, because most of them are terrorists – it's the 24 Law of Averages). Their only lead to Assad, the man behind the attacks, is Fayed, who says he will lead them to Assad if they give him Jack, and that's how he gets sprung out of his Chinese prison. Jack is totally cool with dying to save millions of Americans, but if there's one thing he can't stand, it's dying for nothing. So when Fayed, with a typical villain's arrogance, tells Jack that he's actually the one behind the attacks and Assad's been suing for non-violent solutions, Jack gets mad. And that's when the biting occurs. Way to leave him alone with a redshirt, Fayed.

Jack tries to warn the brass, as he always does, and as they always do, the brass ignore him – instead, they decide to go ahead and launch an airstrike on Assad's position, which happens to be a house. In the middle of a residential neighborhood. That seems like a spectacularly bad idea to me, given the high probability of collateral damage, as well as the fact that it's bound to send the already frightened citizens into a panic. But the neighbors don't care. They don't panic, but neither do they come out waving little American flags and brandishing apple pies. If they're so blasé about airstrikes in their own backyards, what does that say about the Palmer II administration? Anyway, Jack gets Assad out of the house in time, and the two of them team up. Jack has finally met his match in Assad, who loves torture as much as he does (if not more – 20 months in a Chinese prison has sort of taken away Jack's appetite for it, which is a little sad, but at the same time - not so fun when it happens to you, is it?), and the two of them make a good team. Assad is certainly one of the few competent partners Jack has ever had, so that's a point in his favor.

Lest you think that all Muslims, except perhaps Assad, are bad, there's Kal Penn, as a teenager whose dad gets carted away for no reason – but who is totally, and obviously, a terrorist himself. But wait! We've also got Marisol Nichols as Nadia Yassir, an Arab-American woman in a leadership position at CTU – who has the whiff of incompetence about her, and, if patterns hold, will be summarily dismissed and/or die stupidly halfway through the season. How about Harry Lennix, as the head of the Islamic-American Alliance? There we go. Knew there was one good one – for now, anyway. It's nice to know that actors of Arab extraction, or who just look like it, will always be able to get roles on 24, either as terrorists or as the exceptions that prove the rule. Whatever happened to that PSA, Kiefer?

Wayne Palmer is now, inexplicably, president – I guess they needed someone who had a connection to Jack and William Devane was busy. He's awfully indecisive, but that's why he has Karen Hayes (now the National Security Adviser and Mrs. Buchanan) and Peter MacNicol to advise him – or, really, to bicker like the little angel and devil on his shoulders. Peter MacNicol is the devil in this metaphor, as he's advocating moving all Muslims to concentration camps. And yet, Muslims usually are terrorists on this show, so, in practice, he's right. But he's still the bad guy in the administration. There's always one.

And what else? Milo is back, and useless; another Palmer has crawled out of the woodwork, in the form of sister Sandra; and Morris is creepy, and not just because he calls Chloe a hottie and squeezes her ass. Does anyone else think he's up to something? Or that he's actually working for the terrorists? Because there's something about that middle-distance stare he's working as he hugs Chloe that I don't like. It's a stare that says, "I am totally a mole, and you will never suspect me, because I'm too obvious to be a mole, and yet I am anyway."

Tonight: two more hours!