Karen and Erik

Let’s just do a big update to catch up on the last 3 episodes, shall we?

Dubaku had to cancel plans with his girlfriend, saying “Sorry baby, I’m holding the President’s husband as a hostage to force the President to stop invading my country to overthrow my mercinary regime HELD UP AT WORK.” Girlfriend’s sister says “something’s not right about him! He’s bad news!” and she confronts Dubaku to tell him “If I weren’t tragically in this wheelchair, I would beat your shifty ass, so leave my sister alone!”

Matobo is delivered safely to the White House, where he tells President Taylor that she can totally trust the people who saved him - a man under investigation for torture WHO WON’T YELL DAMNIT LIKE I NEED HIM TO, a gentleman who looks like Doogie Howser’s grandpa, a zombie, and a potato face/stay at home mom. Oh and some whiny agent named Not Karen. But since the President doesn’t know who she can trust in her now compromised regime, it’s better than nothing. Jack and Not Karen go to save the President’s husband. First they need to go kill the floppy-haired Secret Service dude and pretend to kill his baby. Not Karen is going to be all angst-y about this for the new few episodes. NO ONE ASKED YOU TO BE HERE, NOT KAREN. Suck it up, buttercup! Anyway, they go to rescue President’s husband from Dubaku’s men. There’s a shootout, Dubaku escapes, all of the men are dead, President’s husband gets shot OH NOES. End of episode, tick tock tick tock.

President’s husband goes to the hospital where he will be in surgery for a few hours. President Taylor goes to the hospital for a bit, and makes Bill/Doogie Sr. her new head of security or whatever. She asks him to have her estranged daughter brought to her, by “someone Bill can trust.” That man is AARON PIERCE, HECK YAH!!! What’s up, Red Delicious?

Dubaku asks his girlfriend to leave the country with him, telling her he has to leave because “oh, my visa expired, INS is on the way!” She agrees and goes home to pack, and BAM Jack and Not Karen bust in. They confront her about who Dubaku really is and tell her all about the magical mythical country of Sangala. She agrees to put a tracking device on her phone and go meet Dubaku so that Jack and Not Karen can capture him. Girlfriend’s sister tells Not Karen “PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY SISTER” which means she’s totally gonna die.

Jack and Not Karen get the help of Chloe (working at FBI now - so good to see her working at a desk and not in some random cave. Within 30 seconds of arrival, she gives Janeane the stink-eye and insults Moss. WELCOME HOME POTATO FACE!) to track Girlfriend. But they get stopped on the way because the mole in the FBI (who of course turned out to be that creepy dude who pretended to be Moss in order to land his wife’s plane, and the blonde chick he is having an affair with) issues federal warrants to arrest Jack and Not Karen. Also: Janeane calls Creepy Dude a little bitch, awesomely. That’s his name from now on.  Tick tock, tick tock.

Dubaku gets tipped off about his girlfriend from some suit dude who is working in the government and helping Dubaku escape. When his girlfriend arrives, Dubaku confronts her, smashes her phone and tells her “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.” Also, he wants her to come with him still. Girlfriend, believing Jack and Not Karen and hot on the trail, agrees.

Jack and Not Karen are finally released from police custody when Moss tells the cops that the federal warrants was a fake. Chloe uses traffic cameras to track Girlfriend, and they follow her. But Girlfriend grabs the wheel from Dubaku and the car crashes. WELL, THAT WAS STUPID. Dubaku, nearly dead, tells Jack that he has evidence ON HIM, but Jack Bauer hears “IN HIM” and naturally forces an EMT to slice him open and retrieve a memory card from his rib cage. Girlfriend is dead, and Not Karen feels super bad about it. At the hospital, Girlfriend’s sister tells Not Karen “YOU SUCK AT PROTECTING MY SISTER!” Not Karen agrees and suddenly pulls out this giant guilt trip on Jack, like SHE wasn’t sticking a gun in some dude’s wound tract a few hours ago under her own accord.

With the memory card at the FBI, Little Bitch and Blondie realize that their names are on that card, and they need to stop Chloe and Moss from reading it. The solution? Crash the entire FBI computer system. As soon as they do that, Little Bitch shoots Blondie, then himself (in the arm), and tells Moss and Chloe that he stopped her and she was the ONLY mole in the room. Too bad for him that Chloe is awesome and retrieves the data, and Little Bitch is arrested.

Bill tells President Taylor that “It’s over!” and everything was a success and PS please pardon Jack Bauer. Jack Bauer is reflecting on the day when Zombie Tony comes up to him and tells him “The show is not called ‘11′”. There’s totally going to be another high profile attack in DC, this time from Dubaku’s boss, General Juma. It’s CANDYMAN, BITCHES! He’s in DC because someone looked in the mirror and said his name five times.

The suit that Dubaku was talking to earlier is revealed to be the aide to the Senator who was in charge of the hearing that Jack Bauer was at this morning. It’s time for them to go to the White House! The suit looks really worried, so either he thinks the President herself will arrest him, or the White House is the next target. Tick tock, tick tock.

WHO KNEW THAT TODAY WAS FREE PANCAKE DAY AT IHOP AND DID NOT TELL ME? WORST DAY EVER!

You know why I have not updated “This week in 24″? Because my favorite Jack Bauer character trait is missing this season. And it upsets me. He’s just not the same. Sure, he’s been kicking ass left and right. Yes, he makes his own rules and his completely outlandish plans always seem to work out in the end, except for one little trailing plot device right at the end of each hour. But there’s something different about him. And it’s this:

JACK BAUER HAS NOT SAID “DAMNIT” ONCE THIS SEASON.

How the heck am I supposed to do a Jack Bauer impression without a “DAMNIT”? As in, “DAMNIT CHLOE, THERE’S NO TIME!” “DAMNIT BILL, THIS IS THE ONLY WAY!” “DAMNIT TONY I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!” and “DAMNIT KIM, STOP SUCKING AT LIKFE AND LEAVE THAT MOUNTAIN LION ALONE!”

I have lost the love spark.

Once again, I have waited until the last minute to do my 24 recap. This time, my only excuse is watching it when I was drugged out of my mind (see previous post), then trying to come out of my purple haze, then getting addicted to Mafia Wars on Facebook. So, get over it.

So last week, Colonel Dubaku was trying to bomb a Skyline Chili in Ohio or something. Turns out it was really a nuclear plant in a probably fake town in Ohio. Everybody in that town is about to die, except for two things. 1) The guy who was the dad in My So-Called Life (aka plant manager) risks his own life to redirect the overflow, or whatever. He dies from… I guess, radiation poisoning? This makes Janeane Garafaolo super sad.

Also, 2) Jack and Soulpatch sneak into Colonel Dubaku’s Bad Guy Hideout and screw up his chili-hating plans. In fact, Dubaku is pretty pissed at some other anonymous henchman who was supposed to kill Soulpatch and Jack in the previous episode. But because he failed, Jack and Soulpatch are now able to bust the Motobos out of the hideout. The CIP gets destroyed (it seems) and Dubaku runs away to his crappy DC apartment. Where we meet his adorable, naive girlfriend. Looks like Colonel Dubaku is going to have to take a break from his world domination plans tonight - his girlfriend made dinner plans!

OH. And most of the episode is spent trying to call the First Gentleman’s now dead Secret Service dude. Finally, the other bad Secret Service agent comes in to dead girlfriend’s apartment and takes the First gentleman away in his car. Madame President is like, man who would have thought being a president was so HARD?

1. No matter how quiet you think you are being when you have to cough or clear your throat in the middle of the night, you’re wrong. This will be made clear when your husband complains repeatedly that he did not get any sleep because SOMEONE kept him up with her post-nasal drip noises.

2. In order to make sure that you both sleep, you decide to try Nyquil even though the last time you took it (at least 3 years ago), it only put you to sleep for two hours and kept you wide awake for the rest of the night.

3. This time when you take Nyquil, it will totally knock you off your feet, give you a migraine, and make it hard for you to form coherant words or thoughts. Fun examples include: taking 20 minutes to figure out how to get the milk into your cereal bowl, forgetting the command to make the dog “sit”.

4. Eventually you call your pharmacist, who tells you that you should not mix Nyquil with one of your medicines (the one you started since your last experience with Nyquil). And it will take 24-48 hours to wear off. And don’t take it again, because didn’t you know that it could have killed you? (Thanks for that, pharmacist dude.)

5. Oh well, maybe there’s something on TV that will get your mind together. OH MY GOD THERE’S A SHOW ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL ABOUT TRUE CRIME THAT IS HOSTED BY MY IMAGINARY BOYFRIEND, MIKE ROWE!!! The only way it could be better is if I were also eating bacon.

6. I HAVE BACON IN THE FRIDGE!

7. This post may not seem like much, but it took me over an hour to type. If there are typos in it, I am leaving them in for posterity.

8. BACON!

This is late, and I am sick, so this recap of last week’s episode is going to be short so I can go back to the sofa and cough up my lung.

Agent Not Karen is saved from certain burial death by Chloe and Bill (by the way, doesn’t Bill look like Neil Patrick Harris in 30 years?) and they tell her what’s going on. She wants to call Boss Moss, but they tell her she has to stay “dead” (zombie) so that whoever the mole(s) is/are in FBI won’t give the news to the bad guys.

When Jack, Tony, Emerson and President/First Lady of Sangala (the Matobos) arrive at their destination, all sorts of shit starts going down. Emerson tries to shoot Jack, Tony shoots Emerson in the neck and is all boo-hoo about it. Then Jack and Tony talk to the Matobos about letting themselves be turned over to the bad guys, and they reluctantly agree. Chloe puts a tracking device on Pres. Matobo’s tooth. The bad guys come in and take the Matobos, and try to shoot Tony BUT HOW DO YOU KILL SOMEONE WHO IS ALREADY DEAD? You can’t.

The First Gentleman is still chillin’ (read: paralyzed) while the Secret Service dude has found some hair coloring gloves with which to kill the First Son’s girlfriend. She comes in and gets stabbed (meh) and Secret Service dude gets no blood on him. As someone who is uneasily fascinated with forensics, I call shenanigans on this. I can believe that someone can drive across L.A. or D.C. in 5 minutes during rush hour, I can believe that Jack’s phone can seriously do anything in the world, but I can not believe that blood pattern, ok 24 Producers? ANyway, Secret Service tries to hang the First Gentleman to make it look like a murder-suicide, but the First Gentleman gets enough feeling in his limbs to fight him off. They (of course) both fall off a balcony, and it looks like Secret Service/Miss Clairol is dead.

At the White House, Pres. Taylor is continuing with the attack, even after bad guys (Dubaku is the dude’s name, I now know) bust into the swiss cheese known as the FAA firewall and make two planes crash into each other in mid-air right over D.C. Her Secretary of State quits in protest of her decision to continue, seeing (as we do at home) that her decision will not end well. Since she refuses to pull troops out, Dubaku plans his next attack - some town in Ohio. IF HE BOMBS SKYLINE CHILI, I’LL BE PISSED.