24 “Day 8: 8AM – 9AM” Silent Clock for Renee Walker

All photos from Fox

Two silent clocks two weeks in a row means they are dropping like flies in this final season of ”24” (Fox). Like Star Trek, sometimes people are as disposable as the infamous "red shirts” of the Star Trek Enterprise away team. As I said back in February, people who get too close to Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) usually wind up dead or in serious trouble, and Renee winds up dead in this episode – not a moment too soon in my opinion. She was getting a little too scary looking for me.

Luckily this episode spends a lot of time focused on President Allison Taylor, a character who comes to life as played by Cherry Jones. Not only must Taylor deal with the death of President Hassan which puts the peace agreement in jeopardy, those nasty Russians want to make sure that the agreement gets torpedoed altogether. With CTU security again being inept - likely because Cole (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is there - a man manages to infiltrate the EMTs sent to the scene of Hassan’s murder. He gets close enough to Samir and is left alone with him so he can inject him with a drug which will later cause Samir’s death while he is in CTU medical. Fake EMT man makes an easy exit but Renee Walker (Annie Wersching) gives him a quick once over as she passes by him, as if she recognized him. This worries phony EMT guy, who decides he must take out Renee. He follows Jack and Renee to Jack’s place, and we see a man in an apartment across the street from Jack being killed so phony EMT get guy can watch Jack’s place and maybe shot him and Renee from there.

While Taylor is trying to put the peace deal back together, Jamot (Navid Negahban) convinces Dalia (Necar Zadegan) to take over for her dead husband in the peace negotiations, a move which makes the Russians – specifically Novakovich (Graham McTavish ) very unhappy. He doesn’t want any stable leadership in Kamistan, so he tells Taylor that he Russia will not sign the accord. While Novakovich already told fake EMT guy that he has concerns if Jack and Renee were killed outright, fFake EMT guy still has his sights set on Jack and Renee as they move to the bedroom. Odd, I find myself thinking that the first thing Jack should have done when he got home was go to the bathroom, since he hadn't been in one since this day started.

Meanwhile, back to CTU, Hasting (Mykelti Williamson) gets his walking papers for his bungling of the case, and Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is installed as interim head at CTU. While she thinks Hastings got a raw deal, he still stays professional and helps her make the transition, a process which seems to take 5 minutes. No wonder CTU is such a mess, if they can just transfer all the important details of the job in just minutes. Chloe’s first problem arrives when=Samir dies in CTU medical, and she orders an immediate tox screen, where they find he was drugged.

Meanwhile, in Jack’s bedroom, in a scene which looks cold and robotic, probably because Sutherland and Wersching have zero chemistry, Jack and Renee make love and afterwards, while Jack is out of the room, his phone rings and Renee answers. It is Chloe; she tells Renee that Samir is dead and Renee begins to wonder about the EMT that reminded her of one of the Russian guys she knew from her undercover work. While Jack is in the kitchen, breaking glass is heard and then bullets fly past Jack. He runs to see Renee lay bleeding and dying, and while more bullets fly - this sniper is a lousy aim - Jack picks her up and races her down the stairs and jumps in a taxi – lucky for him the taxi is right there – and races her to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Taylor meets with a recovering Ethan Kanin (Bob Gunton) who tells her that the only thing that may save the peace talks now is disgraced ex-President Logan (Gregory Itzin) so she reluctantly brings him in and makes a deal with the devil, so to speak. Logan will meet with Novakovich.

Back at CTU, Chloe works to see if the sniper can be identified and located, and she must later call Jack at the hospital to inform him that CTU lost the shooter. She also tells him that in her conversation with Renee before Renee was shot that Renee may have seen one of the Russian guys posing as an EMT. Doctors come out of Renee’s room and tell Jack that Renee did not make it. As Jack cries and kisses her forehead, the episode ends and the clock ticks silently.

So Jack, who thought his job with this day at CTU was done, finds himself pulled back in. With CTU in Chloe’s hands, it will be interesting to see if all the ineptitudes of that division will be erased in the next hour. Considering the cranky Chloe, like Jack Bauer, is portrayed as never being wrong, I suspect that CTU will have their act together for the remaining episodes of the series. You can also bet that Jack Bauer will be out for some serious revenge. The close of this day – and the series – should be good.


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