Tonight on 24: Jack Bauer and Renee "Screw Loose" Walker continued to wreck havoc on New York City in pursuit of the Red Square faction. Ziya, the poor Russian mob contact who lost his thumb (not his hand) to Renee's circular saw last episode, was able to lead Renee to the infamous Vladimir. Turns out Vlad developed an obsession with Renee was she was undercover. And by "obsession" I mean "penchant to beat and rape her." Okay, the rape part wasn't explicit, but Vlad asked her if she had Hepatitis C (as a possible explanation for why she looked so shitty) and the dots connected pretty clearly on that one, I think. Vlad still didn't trust her, though, so he threw she and Ziya into his trunk and drove them off to an isolated location (as isolated as one can find in New York, I suppose) to shoot them. Jack, meanwhile, freaked out when he realized that he was tailing a decoy vehicle and flipped the World's Most Badass U-Turn in the middle of the road in order to rescue his slightly deranged soulmate. Seems Ziya was really the one who needed rescuing (poor guy got his thumb sawed off and a bullet blown into his skull within a span of about two hours -- bad times, eh?), as Renee was able to save her own life with an unnervingly somber plea for Vlad to kill her. Convinced that she wasn't trying to screw him over, Vlad agreed to meet with Renee's buyer and Jack breathed a sigh of relief that his favorite redhead didn't have her brains splattered around the Lower East Side. We'll come back to that in a minute.
Onto Subplots I Don't Give A Damn About: The Leonardo DiCaprio knockoff, Kevin, finally revealed what Dana's dark secret was: she was an accessory to murder as a minor and served time! OMG! Like, is there any reason we couldn't have been told that fact from the get-go? Because I don't think stretching it out over four episodes has contributed to the "DUN DUN DUN" effect much. So Kevin is holding the ex-con status over Dana's head as blackmail until she uses her position at CTU to get him intelligence that would lead him to a six-figure "score." And, see, here is why Dana is a blundering idiot: any rational person would go straight to Hastings and be like, "Look, I sorta lied on my job application. I'm not who I said I was. But before you get mad, there are these two idiots on my back, looking for national secrets. Take care of my problem and I'll tell you how I slid a false identity by you guys so you don't make that mistake again." See? Win win. Sure, there's probably some jail time involved, but it's got to be better than watching this crap unfold. Kevin had better be working for Red Square or something because, as of now, I'm seeing no reason to give a damn about Dana and her Problems.
The second subplot I care slightly more about, but only because it involves David Anders. I'm allowed my shallow moments, okay? The Brothers Bazhaev were on an epic, Daddy-unapproved mission to get the older brother, Oleg, access to a doctor who would keep quiet about his radiation poisoning. They succeeded at holding a doctor at gunpoint, but... well, that was pretty much it. This too had better have some relevance to the main arc because my patience is waning. Anders can only get me so far.
The third subplot that got virtually no attention this time around (and actually deserved more screentime, I think) was Hassan's struggles with President Taylor and the peace treaty. No longer sure who he can trust, Hassan's administration acted with force to put down his opposition in the fictional Islamic Republic of Kamistan. The Ever-Vigilant Reformer President Taylor was none to happy with Hassan's military crackdown, but the two had a nice conversation about the nature of power and legitimacy in Eastern and Western political cultures. There is still tension in the Hassan household, though, as Hassan's daughter attempted to side with him despite his wife's continued animosity regarding the affair. The younger Hassan brother, Farhad, entertained himself for most of the episode with Red Square-provided hookers. He actually didn't look too happy about it. Can't imagine why.
Aaaand I think that was about it. Back to Renee for a moment: I was more or less "meh" on this episode until the last five minutes, but Annie Wersching's performance at the end really saved it. The look of cold resolution in her eyes as Vlad pressed the pistol barrel to her forehead made my stomach flip. For all the crap that Jack's gone through, I've always thought he's valued his life and despite the fact that last season he said he was ready to die in peace. I didn't really believe him. But tonight, I almost wanted Vlad to pull the trigger on Renee, if only to put an end to the inner demons that continue to torment her. I don't know if the backstory with Vlad is just well-crafted retcon on the writers' part, but it seems to put both her actions this season AND last season into perspective. Perhaps last season's naivety and attachment to the grander ideals of justice were a coping mechanism so that she could keep on functioning after such a horrific experience. A more constructive version of post-traumatic stress? So maybe Jack wasn't the one who was entirely responsible for her descent into Dark!Renee, but he was the instrument by which she was able to justify her deeper feelings of nihilism and act upon them. Well played, '24.' Well played.
And next week we'll find out the answer to two questions that have been bugging us for eight seasons: (1) does Jack Bauer dig voyeurism; and (2) how does he look in nerd glasses? See y'all then!
