Spoilers for this episode below.

Things that happened

Jack and his dad (who is like two feet taller than both his sons, by the way — weird genetics!) manage to escape the elaborate death trap engineered by Graem. He (seriously) wanted to bury them in cement. That’s only a step or two below laser beams and man-eating sharks. Jack and Phil escape by shooting both of the evil henchman, though Phil does seem suspiciously eager to pull the trigger on one of them. Does that make you go hmmm? Because it totally should.

While the viewers are being all suspicious, we get some B and C plots. In the B plot, CTU intercepts a transmission between Fayed and Darren McCarthy, the evil nuclear bomb procurer with the blonde girlfriend who has yet to figure into things too extensively but most assuredly will soon. The transmission indicates that Darren has found someone who can activate the triggers on the remaining four nuclear bombs. CTU also intercepts a corrupted photo of the guy Darren has identified as able to fix his bombs.

If you’re thinking “that seems like way too much competent forensic investigation for the bumbling agency of psychopaths, double agents and irradiated men we know as CTU” you’re entirely right. It’s all some sort of elaborate path, because the guy Darren and Fayed are looking for is Morris O’Brien, Chloe’s bizarrely dashing ex-husband. After he’s tricked into leaving CTU to go after his supposedly dying brother, Morris is captured. Oh man, do you think he’ll get to be the tragic death this season?

Our C plot, meanwhile, is more presidential stuff that makes me want to die. The corrupt priest from Sin City stops by and is the Vice President of the United States, who sure hates that the president won’t declare martial law or whatever. I swear if I hear the words “25th amendment” this season I will break someone.

Say, do you think Phillip Bauer might be evil? I do! But Jack is still in the dark. He uses some sort of hug torture on Graem in an attempt to get some information, but gets nothing except that Graem was the guy behind the deaths of Palmer, Tony, Michelle and Jack’s other pals last season. Jack gets really angry and screams and both men pant way too much and it’s all kind of disturbing, to be honest. But after Jack leaves, thinking Graem has told him all he knows, we learn that Phillip Bauer *IS* evil, surprising no one, except perhaps those who still associate James Cromwell only with Babe. After explaining the machinations behind his evil-doing for a bit, Phillip injects some deadly things into Graem, killing him, and then leaves, presumably to go cackle a little bit.

Things that were good

• Things were happening! That’s always a plus.
• Sutherland and Paul McCrane, despite their heavy breathing, put in some great performances in the interrogation scene. One of the few really tense moments of the last few episodes.
• The Morris reveal took me by surprise, and was well-executed. I like both the actor and the character, so it should be good to see him get more screen time in the next couple of weeks. Maybe we’ll even get to see Chloe shoot a gun again!
• Hug Torture is genius and is perhaps the only kind of torture I would be able to back ethically in a real world scenario. There’s just something sort of sweet about the whole idea.

Things that were not so good

• I can’t help but feel that they’re wasting potential with the Phillip Bauer plot line. Jack Bauer versus dad is the kind of plot that just sounds awesome, but the execution has been sorely disappointing. And killing Graem already, after effortlessly destroying all the scenes that made him appear to be a real bad ass last season, was just the wrong move.
• I know James Cromwell can be a good actor, and maybe we just haven’t seen the right scenes yet, but there’s nothing in the interaction between Jack and Phillip to make me think this will be a perfectly emotionally charged relationship. Jack’s done nothing really to indicate any feelings, negative or positive, toward his dad, and Phil’s done nothing except walk around and glare at things passively. Make me care.
• I’m serious about that 25th amendment thing. They already did that plot and it was the absolute worst part of season two. (Even worse than the cougar!) If they do it again, with the president going up against Peter MacNicol (Ghostbusters II), Powers Boothe (Sin City) and Chad Lowe (Hillary Swank’s vagina), I will be so incredibly disappointed.

Worth watching if…

This season is mostly going off the rails. That’s not to say they can’t turn it around, but they need to find their central theme and stick to it. 24 lives and dies by the bad guys, and there’s been nobody this season who stands out as someone we want Jack Bauer to come and kick in the head repeatedly.

In Five Words

It Hugged Me to Death

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