24
Fox
Tuesday, 9 p.m / 8 p.m. CST

Fox's "24" is an action-espionage drama that unfolds in real time — meaning that the hour it takes you to watch it corresponds to an hour in the lives of the characters. Correspondingly, Flak will be providing a written-in-real- time-alongside-the- show review of "24" each week for the duration of the series or until the gimmick of the review becomes tiresome.

Episode 17: 4 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Many people have complained to me about the developments of the last episode — namely, the car wreck that (a) Kim leapt out of but that (b) nevertheless exploded like a Pinto which (c) gave the beleaguered Teri amnesia. And there's no question that those are three credibility busters, three bad ways to arrive at two interesting places: One, Kim is abandoned on a twisty piece of California back road; two, Teri is missing but not kidnapped. But it's a means/ends problem — it's clear why the writers would find these ends interesting, but the means are so painfully contrived.

This first scene with the amnesiac Teri and the woman taking her to the hospital is particularly sore; amnesiac plotlines really only work as ends unto themselves — devices through which a storyteller can build a compelling superstructure — but that only flies when the amnesia development is the driving force behind the whole story. Amnesia like this is so rare in the real world that audiences can only swallow it as part of the initial buy-in, the initial suspension of disbelief, that viewers extend when first entering any fictional world. This is complicated for "24" because we're in the 17th hour; we've already accepted and become ingrained into the show's particular fantasy world, and there's no room in it for such an incredulous new layer.

And while the topic is bad developments, the whole disintegration of the political conspiracy into a straightforward Inigo Montoya revenge plot is disheartening. Conspiracies should combine the personal and the political intimately; this is all personal (that happens to be shipped in from a foreign country). Earlier in these write-ups, I bemoaned the fate of "Nowhere Man," an earlier series by "24" producer Joel Surnow that had a similarly involved political-conspiracy set-up but that was cancelled before things were resolved. For "24's" mastermindfulness to end up this small makes me less upset that I never found out what happened in "Nowhere Man."

Also, the obvious set-up of George, the new interim CTU lead, as another mole/traitor is so bald-faced that it barely even qualifies as a "surprise" in the making.

Is that Yo La Tengo?

Yes, it is. Off of and then nothing turned itself inside-out. Cool.

Ah, the David/Keith scene where Keith presents the evidence against Karl. … And Keith does choose to give his dad what is apparently the only copy of the recording. It is the series' saving grace, and biggest miscalculation, that the Palmer storyline works so well. The Palmer stuff is great, and has always been great, but it was so disconnected from the Jack Bauer narrative that drove the early episodes that it seemed like filler. But the real purpose is now clear: The Palmer stuff is the arc that's going to last all 24 episodes (as opposed to Jack's series of smaller arcs), the emotional mortar that holds the show together. What has to happen to really make this work is for the psychiatrist's violation of Keith's confidentiality to be somehow linked to the attempt on David's life.

It's a development the writers have set up … sort of; we don't know why the psychiatrist broke his confidence to the media, and we don't know who David's financiers are, but they might be a counterpoint to the Drazen assassination squad from Kosovo. If the minds behind "24" can follow through on that possibility, then the subplot gains that cosmic higher plane that can make a conspiracy story dizzying. Otherwise, the whole thing is going to collapse in its final hours. What will that be like? It'll be similar to everyone's justified dissatisfaction in the amnesia/car-escape development, magnified many times. Teri and Kim's current predicaments are exactly what everyone has been worried that the show is going to devolve into.

So wait. What's this this doctor that Teri has met by virtue of her decision to cool her heels at a "familiar" restaurant she semi-remembers? (Which, by the way, is another ridiculous development.) Is a fourth party how they're going to inflame the love triangle? It's true, the undercurrent of tension between Nina and Teri has been the only real electricity running through the Jack half of the story … and now Nina spilling the news to Jack that their old affair is now known to Teri. I hope that the storytellers don't lose their momentum with this emotional thread now that things are above-table; they need its spark.

So here we are as the episode's central setpiece gets rolling: the attempted planting of a tracking device on the assassin by the senator's aide whom he'd been covertly sleeping with. The complication: The aide is an old family friend of David's, and David doesn't like that Jack's exposing her to harm. … Ah, and she can't fake the funk now that she's supposed to be reacting amorously to the assassin! A nice twist, a little Mata Hari shading, made even more uncomfortable by the voyeurism of CTU's ever-present fiber-optics. And she's found the wallet she has to plant the bug in, but has dropped the wallet. Standard fake-out tension-racheting, but it is indeed tense, anchored by Kara Zediker's performance as Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Jack has to make the difficult decision about when, if ever, to intervene — because doing so would invalidate the bug plant.

Wow, this is sharp. Elizabeth's really gotten a cold, jealous, angry streak up her spine about how badly the assassin has treated her, and she's playing him. It's harsh and primally emotional — and she's got a knife! Obviously, it fouls what Jack needed him for, but it's nevertheless pretty good TV, and Zediker sells the difficulty of choosing between her character's wounded pride and her loyalty to David (which mandates that she let the assassin go on his way). Of course, no one on Jack's team knows that the assassin was instructed to kill Elizabeth before she could leave this tryst, so either she was going to be killed or CTU was going to have to bust in and detain/kill the assassin anyway — but because we know that, it makes us easier to align ourselves with Elizabeth's righteous rage (particularly when we hear the assassin twist the knife, saying he's realized he loves her).

It went unmentioned earlier that Kim called for a taxi to take her to her kidnapper … and did so at the same restaurant at which Teri is chilling, waiting for her memories to be jogged. They missed each other, which I guess is the right way for such a potential longshot set-up to resolve/dissolve, and now she's at Rick's place, being sniped at by his girlfriend. Is this going to turn out well? Prrrobably not.

And now there's this "doctor" with Teri. This is a wiggy set-up; Teri, seated, being towered over by these two imposing men. What's up? This is strange. Are they going to bring in, like, some kind of Scientology thing? Weird indeed.

Elizabeth's stabbing of the assassin is working well to strain things between Jack and David. But that's good for the show, a potentially rewarding twist on that dynamic.

And at the 11th hour (or 59th minute), the means by which Jack's team is going to recover from the death of the assassin becomes apparent when the assassin's phone rings. Pretty convenient, but there's been enough quibbling in this piece. We'll let it go for another week.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)