24: It's Just a Drill! Walk It Off!

It's very rare, but it happens: occasionally you can believe that the events in 24 are taking place in the real L.A. Such is the case this week, when the two-hour event is bookended by two car chases. And while they're fairly tame by L.A. standards, involving no driving through a movie set, no PIT maneuvers, and no driving on the rims after the tires have been blown out so that sparks fly all over the road, they're car chases nonetheless. We'll just have to hope for that other stuff later.

Last week, when Fayed said he'd be able to convince Morris to cooperate, I was thinking maybe they had some dirt on him or something. You know, some nice blackmail. Yeah, turns out it was just a drill, and although they didn't go to the trepanning place I thought they would, it's still kind of a disappointment. Torture again? But we just had torture last week! Anyway, because torture always works, even when it's the bad guys doing it, Morris gives up – extremely easily, I might add – and helps Fayed arm the rest of his bombs. What this means is that Chloe has to talk Jack through disarming one of the nukes (I liked it better when Marshall did it), and Morris spends the rest of the night throwing himself a pity party, to which everyone is invited. And I'm wondering if this might not lead to his own death, in an "undoing the mistakes that he made" sort of way. There has to be some reason the writers made him cave so easily. (Look, I know a drill to the shoulder would really hurt. But by the standards set by this show, he's a total wuss. You know he is.)

Chad Lowe, meanwhile, is not Tom's minion after all. He's really the minion of some shadowy conspiracy guy who wants to take down the president. I assume they mean with lethal force, although they never get specific. It could be with the 25th amendment, which they've already invoked (although it's not inconceivable that they would recycle a plot point), but the 25th amendment would be a complete letdown after all of the sinister allusions of this episode.

And Philip Bauer is not just evil – he's really super seriously evil. He kidnaps his grandson to use as leverage and then orders the deaths of practically every character on the show, including Gredenko, Milo, a whole batch of CTU agents, and Jack. Oh, he's so evil, and I love it. At this point, he could only be more deliciously evil if he had sent the cougar to take out Kim – which I wouldn't put past him. Heck, I'd throw him a parade if he did.