Spoilers for “4 a.m. to 5 a.m.” and “5 a.m. to 6 a.m.” below.

Things that happened

The parade of mediocrity continues well into this final two-hour episode, as we get a whole lot of slow-moving plot designed to pad things out. And then the season climaxes at about 15-minutes into the second hour. And then we spend the last three-quarters of the episode afloat in a land of dramatic…. pauses. Then, finally, the sun rises, capping off what can only be called a season of terrifically bad television.

Here are the details.

When we last left 24, Doyle had taken Josh Bauer away from Jack, sending Jack into a blind rage. Doyle’s under orders from the White House, who feel that trading Josh to Phillip Bauer in exchange for the magical nuclear component is their only shot at averting crisis. Because the Russians are still bound and determine to attack the American military base if CTU doesn’t recover their component from Cheng.

Meanwhile, the viewers do their best to avoid thinking too much about the illogical nature of this storyline.

As Doyle takes Josh to Phillip’s ordered exchange spot — an oceanside park — Jack’s doing everything he can to subvert the government and CTU’s plan. He calls Karen Hayes, who immediately agrees with Jack that, given Phillip’s high level of insanity, the Americans are likely to lose both Josh and the nuclear component if they go through with this swap.

Karen puts a call into her slightly estranged husband Bill Buchanan, who is hanging around his living room in a sweater at 4 a.m. as a bunch of government agents poke through his stuff for some reason. It’s kind of weird. But the scene does confirm again for us that which we learned a couple of seasons back: Bill Buchanan has a sweet-ass house. I’d like to live there. Karen’s appeal to Bill is that he help Jack out because, well, Jack is right. Jack is always right. After a little bit of your typical “Remember how you got me fired?”-fueled scorn, Bill agrees to help Jack out.

During all of this, Jack’s being held and taken back to CTU by a couple of those expendable low-level CTU field agents. All it takes is some creative driving and a little bit of nostalgia-tinged sweet talking for Bill to free Jack. Those CTU field agents are useless. But regardless, the end result is that Jack and Bill are in the wild. They’ve also got Karen Hayes playing the role of their Chloe from the White House, as Karen lets them know — using satellite surveillance — where Doyle has taken Josh to do the exchange with Phillip.

The exchange takes a while to set up, as Phillip is apparently a bit of a control freak. He somehow has access to CTU’s satellite feed, which is pretty odd. Especially considering it’s never explained. But whatever. He orders the satellite feed turned off and also has the helicopter that brought Doyle and Josh to the rendezvous point removed.

With Josh and Doyle alone on the beach — and Jack and Buchanan still in transit — Phillip reveals his hand, and lets us know how he’s going to extract his grandson. He’s going to use… a boat. Not a big boat, either. A little one. It looks kind of funny, bobbing up and down in the waves and stuff. He sends a hired goon along with the boat, who’s supposed to make the switch.

I say “supposed to” because in the end it’s all a trap. Why would have guessed? It’s kind of an awesome trap, at least, as Phillip’s created a replica of the nuclear component that, instead of containing all of Russia’s nuclear secrets or whatever, just explodes in a brilliant flash of fire. Doyle gets it right in the face, which allows Phillip’s goon to grab Josh and take him away in his cute little boat. Doyle might be blind or something.

Jack and Buchanan show up just as the goon is taking off in his boat. They shoot at the boat, but to no avail. It’s a stealthy and zippy boat!

Also going on in hour one: a bunch of boring stuff! Milo’s brother Stuart visits CTU to collect his brother’s things. Nadia talks to him and is all “Hey, your brother was cool and died a hero.” I guess that’s all the closure we’re getting on that one. More thrilling — but not very much so — is the other major CTU happening this episode. Just as Chloe’s about to tell Morris something about routing tables or DNS encryption or whatever, she keels over and collapses. Oh no!

Hour two is more of the same. Jack gets an idea, but then he shares that idea with CTU, which is never a good idea. Bauer figures that his dad took Josh to an oil platform owned by one of the Bauer shell companies. After a bit of CTU wizardry (which would be ‘googling’ I think, in this case) Morris pinpoints a likely candidate, and uses some thermal imagery dealie to confirm that their are a bunch of goons on board.

What he doesn’t know is that those goons are both of the American and Chinese variety. See, Phillip still wants to give the nuclear component to Cheng. We never really get a good idea as to why, aside from Phillip saying that China is “his future.” Which I guess means that he hopes to live there. And nothing gets you a passport quicker than giving out free nuclear secrets.

After the Vice President is informed that the component, Phillip and Cheng are on this oil platform, he quickly determines that the best practice in this case is to blow the everloving fuck out of the whole thing. So he works with CTU to put that whole plan in motion, scrambling some fighter jets.

The fighters will be in position in about twenty minutes, but, of course, when Jack hears about the Vice President’s plan he’s not exactly thrilled. It would seem he disagrees with the new administration’s nephew-killing policy. And so he and his new best buddy Buchanan rush off in a stolen helicopter to save the day before the planes get there. It’s a classic time-based stand-off! Who’s going to get to the oil platform first?!

Jack and Buchanan do, landing the helicopter in a hail of gunfire and easily laying waste to everybody on board. The oil barrels on board prove incredibly convenient, as Jack just shoots at them and makes all sorts of great big explosions. One of the explosions even takes out Cheng, badly burning his face and allowing his easy capture. That’s what you get for conveniently being in the country alongside your American prisoner, I guess.

Jack gets to his father just as he’s loading Josh into an escape boat. Also, just before Jack arrives, Josh hits his grandfather in the head with a wrench, points a gun at him, and shoots him in the chest. And people still wonder if this kid is Jack’s son. With all the hard work already done for him, Jack doesn’t have to do much aside from convincing Josh not to shoot his grandfather again, and send him back up to the waiting Buchanan at the helicopter.

With the fighters just minutes away, Jack tries to convince his injured father to come with him to the chopper. But Phillip just isn’t a big fan of conspiracy and treason trials, and tells Jack that he won’t go. And, given that Jack doesn’t have enough time to carry him up to the chopper before everything will start exploding, he has no choice but to leave his father there and let him die.

So Jack does.

He jumps off the platform to a waiting rope ladder just as everything goes up in flames. And there’s triumphant music and even a little cheering because, yay hooray the nuclear component has finally been destroyed! Russia agrees not to attack America! The Vice President is very relieved and, presumably, quite tired.

With all that business taken care of, we get another twenty-five minutes of wrap-up. Cheng goes back to CTU for processing. Russia moves all their armies back to Russia. The President, after some convincing from Tom Lennox, agrees not to prosecute Karen Hayes for working with Jack and Bill illegally last episode. Bill visits CTU and tells Nadia what a swell job she did, which is a lie, but she still takes it well. And, lastly, Chloe tells Morris that she’s pregnant. With his child, I assume, and he is all “Hey that’s great.” (It’s not really great for the kid, however, as he or she is likely to be a bald, scrunchy-faced and blunt to the point of social awkwardness.)

Not going back to CTU is Jack, however, as he decides to take this 5 a.m. opportunity to go check in on Audrey and her dad. Nobody ever sleeps on this show. Except for Audrey, I guess, but that’s all she does. Jack barges in on James Heller and has a very emotionally-charged conversation while pointing a gun on him, accusing James of always being a father figure to him, but also exploiting him and just generally being a jerk. If this sounds entirely inconsistent with past portrayals of James Heller, that’s because it is. This scene was just odd.

James responds to Jack’s accusations by pointing out that, hey, it’s not that he has anything against Jack, really. It’s more than he just has noticed that everybody in Jack’s life tends to die.

Jack takes this to heart, apparently, as he asks only to see Audrey one last time. He goes in to his sleeping and traumatized ex-girlfriend and lets her know that he loves her, and also that he can’t ever see her again. Audrey responds by continuing to sleep heavily.

Jack leaves the Heller household and walks down to the water. He stares at the sun rising looking incredibly sad as the clock ticks silently toward morning.

Things that were good

• I was so sure that Buchanan was going to die in the last episode that I have to put the fact that they didn’t kill him off as a positive. He got the teary phone call to his wife and everything! Plus, it’s kind of odd that any head of CTU sees this much longevity. I’m so glad he lived, though. Mostly because he has a sweet house.
• Similarly, Jack and Bill teaming up was nice. Jack’s works best when he has some old dude helping him out and shooting guys. Bill’s a way better partner than stupid Doyle.
• Speaking of Doyle, how about that thing blowing up in his face? That was pretty funny! I hope Doyle is still around next season, except now he can be link a blind CTU agent who they bring in after-the-fact to sniff out clues or whatever with his heightened senses. It’d really bring the fun back to the office.
• Chloe being pregnant is nice, I suppose. She has experience having to take care of babies at work, too!

Things that were not so good

• The episodes themselves. Not that it was surprising giving the build-up, but there was no sense of urgency to anything happening. It was like they were just going through the motions.
• I really hate the rewriting of James Heller’s character. Sure, he was always a bit of a prickly old bastard, but he was never shown in the kind of negative light they’ve cast him on this episode. I like to remember James Heller as the awesome old guy helping Jack out at the beginning of season four, shooting terrorists with a machine gun. As it is, Jack’s attitude toward him just doesn’t make any sense.
• They wasted so much potential with Phillip Bauer this season I don’t even know where to begin. What could have been one of the most emotionally-charged storylines in 24‘s history was instead one of the dullest. Jack was right when he said that he didn’t feel anything when he left his father to die — the viewers didn’t, either.
• Worst of all, though, they didn’t even leave us with any sort of appealing set up for next season. I get that CTU will (likely) get shut down, because they’ve proven themselves more than useless, and that Jack is now just sort of wandering around the countryside trying to stay out of the whole special agent business, but, beyond that, what’s the hook? It’s going to be hard to muster up the energy to tune in come next January.
• Hey, does anyone remember that a nuclear bomb went off in Los Angeles?

Worth watching if…

…you’re a bit of a masochist. Or you’ve forced yourself into recapping this show for your entertainment website. The rest of you probably gave up sometime around episode 17. And you were right to do so. This season will go down as nothing but squandered potential. It’s amazing how this show went from having one of its best seasons ever to the absolute worst it’s ever been.

In Five Words

James Cromwell Was Too Tall