Review: 24 #706

706: '1pm - 2pm'

Wr: Manny Coto & Brannon Braga
Dr: Jon Cassar

Synopsis: President Taylor is faced with an angry cabinet after an unpopular decision results in the loss of many American lives in a terrorist attack. Jack and Tony convince Prime Minister Matobo to go along with their plan when their undercover mission is revealed in a showdown with Emerson. Meanwhile, Henry is stuck in an unthinkable situation, paralyzed and unable to help Samantha Roth when she returns home to find Agent Gedge in her apartment.

Review: You'll have to forgive me if this review is, shall we say, a little patchy but I watched '1pm - 2pm' through bleary, sleep-deprived eyes, in two parts no less, over the course of one interrupted evening; an evening in which I intended to lay my weary head down to rest at 9pm but ended up prising my eyelids open until 12.30 in the morning (I had, after all, had the 'out late, up early' experience two days in a row). So if this is a little disjointed, please... show a little understanding. Actually, that's rather appropriate segue into the show itself: 'disjointed' could be the perfect encapsulating term for Coto and Braga's script. The hour feels like it's jostling endlessly between a desire to move the narrative forward and a realisation that there isn't enough plot to go around and so stalling is the only option. Thus, Bauer's thread begins to take on water as we spend a large proportion of our time with he and his cohorts sitting on our hands, waiting patiently for someone to show up and take Matobo. It ultimately happens at the end of the hour, and it's a nicely executed sequence, but does it really need to be dragged out this long, just so that we can get an amusing anecdote from (an admittedly top notch) Chloe about how she's 'a stay at home mom'? Or so that Renee can gleer madly at Jack, or stubbornly insist that she should have the right to bring Moss up to speed on the operation, even though any FBI agent worth her salt would be well aware that 'tell no one' MEANS 'tell no one'? To be fair to the writers, there's some good character beats amongst this viewer-baiting: Tony's escape from CTU in season five is well explained and is a treat for continuity freaks, and the killing of Emerson is both unexpected and well woven into the psychological machinations of the characters' motivations. Carlos Bernard has the chance to prove his flexibility, yet again, and he does so admirably.

Things are similar elsewhere: there is an infuriatingly small proportion of narrative time given to Dubaku, whose on-screen presence alone is enough to have you biting the ends off your fingernails; by episode's end, he's still moaning on about Taylor's refusal to remove American troops from Sengala and, while he actually gets to do something bad ass for once, it's quashed somewhat by the promise that there's something bigger coming... the closing seconds almost made me hurl my toast at the screen in frustration: can we not have the revelation as cliffhanger please?! By far the worst offende,r however, is the First Gentleman's story. This one drags out (quite literally) for the whole hour; we don't see much of it between 1.15 and 1.50 because, apparently, it takes that long to get someone's fingerprints on a knife. And naturally, by this point, the drugs have begun to wear off and the guy is able to defend himself. Well, what a stroke of luck! Come on... is there a single member of the viewing audience who believed our Colm was ever in danger? Did anyone honestly believe Gedge (poor, poor, beautiful Gedge) would make it out of there in one piece? It just smacks of laziness: writing the obvious, least challenging scenario rather than putting some bleeding thought into it. At least they brutally killed Samantha Roth though...

It's not all disappointing, however: the President's scenes are stunning and it's all thanks to the considerable talents of Cherry Jones. She makes the scene in which the aeroplanes collide outside the White House window, perfectly capturing the desolate horror of the moment with simply her body language and facial expression. The sequence with the Cabinet is also spot on: what could have been a rather stifled scene, bogged down by political ennui, is actually a thoroughly engaging ten minutes of debate and considerably difficult decision making. Mind you, if Ethan and that other guy are going to work against the President to try to push through a withdrawal (or ultimately remove her from office), I'm bloody well jumping ship. A tired episode on the whole, biding time before the larger plot developments occur, and relying on familiar narrative trajectories from seasons past for its drive. There are a number of good moments but the complete package feels a little... disappointing. 7.0