Television review: 24 #811: '2am - 3am'

811: '2am - 3am'

Wr: Evan Katz & David Fury
Dr: Nelson McCormick

Synopsis: Jack works to resolve the bomb situation that has come up with Marcos isolating himself in the pressure chamber while terrorists talk him through how to manually arm the bomb. Meanwhile, Cole and Dana arrive back at CTU to face Hastings regarding their absence.

Review: Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And you were doing so well, 24. Last week's moderately entertaining instalment demonstrated a much more concerted effort to maintain some semblance of momentum, edging that ever-so-slightly important central narrative forward a few paces and actually managing to engage the viewer, rather than cause us to throw the entire contents of our living rooms at our television sets. We were mostly free of extraneous, uninteresting interpersonal rubbish and treated to forty minutes of solid anti-terrorist action. And if only we could say the same of hour eleven. Where Manny Coto and Brannon Braga succeeded, Evan Katz and David Fury spectacularly fail; '2am - 3am' is about as far removed from entertaining as you can get, featuring so little of any consequence that it's almost as if the episode is inviting you to tune out, goading you into giving up on its catastrophically lacklustre carcass.

Really, where oh where do we begin? Perhaps with the script's predominant feature: the woeful regurgitation of The Kevin/Danajenny/Cole Show. Honestly, the amount of screen time devoted to the furtherance of this utter and complete waste of space is actually dumbfounding. We effectively begin the episode submerged in its detritus: after an all-too-brief sojourn around the bizarre pressure chamber (sound tracked to eerie perfection by Sean Callery, it must be said), Sackhoff and Prinze engage in one of the most horribly protracted, and woefully forced, two-handers ever to grace a storyboard. We accompany the characters as they embark upon their CTU elevator ride and just when you think it's all over, when the conversation falls silent and the 'dramatic' (hah!) pauses begin, the doors open, they step out, and who is there to greet them? Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker with an axe, dripping with the sodden blood of every other pointless character that currently populates the show? No, it's Hunchback Hastings, ready to read yet another set of clumsy lines straight from his autocue, demonstrating no semblance of acting ability whatsoever! Just what we all need! This is truly horrible, horrible stuff and what's worse is that Katz and Fury make an active point of signalling this fact to their audience. At the very beginning of their elevator ride, as Dana begins harping on about the mess that the characters have just dived straight into, Cole tells her that they have more important things to worry about... like, you know, the threat of a nuclear dirty bomb being detonated in the city. You know, that troublesome little job that they're both supposed to be doing. Effectively, he's turning to the viewer and highlighting the fact that this entire storyline is extraneous, that it's wasting valuable time that could be better spent dealing with the actual plot. How about making no reference at all? How about some silence in the lift, conveying the gulf that now exists between the two? Ah, but we couldn't have that, because Prinze needs to be given awkward, hokum lines like "I wouldn't have done what I did if I didn't still love you", that we're supposed to care about but to which, really, we don't give a crap. This is made out to be the big, perfunctory pay-off at the culmination of their conversation, a moment of clarity and euphoria, but it has no impact whatsoever. Essentially, it's just another kick to the face, a reminder that no matter how much we may crave it, the show simply will not get on with what it's supposed to be doing.

And of course, as Mykelti Williamson traipses onto the proverbial stage, things only get progressively worse. Choice lines like "you two have holy hell to pay for" and my personal favourite, "if you weren't the best at what you do, you'd both be out on your asses" are delivered with such a remarkable dearth of naturalism that it's hard to believe Williamson is actually a human being, capable of processing and understanding emotion and behaviour. It doesn't help that the content of his dialogue is patently ridiculous either. Thankfully, he notices that Dana has had a change of clothes, but then proceeds to brush their entire disappearing act aside in the interests of 'getting through the threat', failing to ask any questions about where they've been or what they were doing and instead, just having a bit of a harsh word, demoting Ms Walsh so that she's working under Chloe and sending Cole out to assist Jack. Huh?! Your top agents have just buggered off without consulting anyone! They've been gone for hours and your investigation has been significantly hampered as a result! Doesn't that count for anything? Wouldn't it be possible to get anyone else in your super hi-tech, state-of-the-art, brand-spanking-new Counter Terrorist Unit to step in for the two of them while you, oh I dunno, interrogate their asses? Or send them home on probation? Anything?! Is CTU really that under-staffed?! And as for the actual demotion, God, this is infuriating. Dana actually has a bit of a strop when she's made to take orders from Chloe... wouldn't she simply be happy just to have a job after the Kevin debacle?! And that conversation between the two of them is just plain horrible; Chloe's assertion that "it must be hard for you, what with being demoted and everything" and the added "hang in there" is a further waste of space, failing to manufacture even the slightest shred of engagement. The last thing any of us need is for the show to get into some sort of 'war of the geeky intellects' between the two analysts, simply because one of them hasn't quite done something right. It's mindless, it's pap and it has no place in 24.

It actually beggars belief that we spend so much time concentrating on The Dana Walsh Show and so little bothering with Marcos's attempt to blow himself up in a pressure chamber. Not only do we prance around worrying about her working relationship with Chloe, but we're subjected to a reconciliation sequence, of sorts, with Arlo, in which they effectively kiss and make-up after their semi-sorta-falling out in the last ten episodes, which no one actually gave a monkey's cuss about. And it doesn't end there folks, oh no. As if it would! Katz and Fury seem to think that we need to explore every possible detail that may result from her abandonment of her post. Following a thoroughly redundant conversation with Arlo that does nothing other than reiterate information to which the viewer is already privy, we're then treated to a practically identical scene with Hunchback Hastings, in which Dana wanders casually into his office for no reason other than to apologise. Again. And he basically rebukes her. Again. Honestly, is the central plot so thin that we need to resort to regurgitation? Virtually nothing new is achieved here, other than Hastings offering up a load of cod-psychoanalysis that adds little or nothing to Sackhoff's character. We really don't need any of this. It's crap; crap, crap, crap, I tell ye. And does it end there? No, of course it doesn't! This is season eight of 24, where engaging, well-paced drama is but a pipe dream! It doesn't seem possible in the wake of the unfathomably abysmal 'aftermath', but Katie Sackhoff's narrative actually manages to get even worse. Yes, gentle reader, you read that correctly. There's more. So much more. Katz and Fury proceed to smother their script in putrefied horse shit, taking the greatest of relish in destroying every last semblance of respectability that the show has ever had. There really aren't the words to describe how catastrophically atrocious this is. Perhaps we should simply start by describing events. Instead of letting the Kevin storyline die a horrible, horrible death (like every discerning viewer desires), the writers introduce a brand spanking new character to the mix in the form of the ex-con's probation officer, who decides to call up Danajenny at two o'clock in the sodding morning to ask her if she might sorta have something of an idea as to where his charge has buggered off to. One word guys: aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Christ, this storyline just. Won't. Fucking. Die. How about we don't spend any additional hours wasting valuable screen time on a narrative that has no redeeming features at all? How about Dana spends a good few episodes getting on with her job instead of being subjected to a series of pathetically unbelievable distractions and contrivances? Why oh why oh why is this so difficult to achieve? What would the show lose out on by culling this redundant storyline? Precisely nothing, that's what. But of course, that's impossible. Instead, we have to put up with the possibility that Dana may have to leave the office AGAIN, put her work on hold AGAIN, tell head-scratchingly nefarious lies AGAIN. What is she doing denying that she knows Kevin when that is the only logical way in which his parole officer, who is obviously looking for him, may have contacted her? It doesn't make any sodding sense. There again, this storyline doesn't seem to have any logic to it whatsoever, given that this guy is up and about, doing his job in the middle of the night. It's not like Kevin is still in jail and as far as anyone can tell, his actions don't indicate that he's done any wrong. All of this could wait 'til morning. But no. The writers have so little plot that they need to bring out the 'big guns' here and significantly impede upon the progression of the central narrative. Hell, they even integrate it within the terrorist threat, unbelievably, as once we return to Marcos after probably the worst scene in 24 history, we take a break form things for the umpteenth time so that we can have events that we've just watched be narrated to us in the form of a conversation between... you guessed it... Dana and Cole! About the probation officer! Whom we just saw! And cared nothing of! Momentum annihilated AGAIN. Hurray! It really does beggar belief that this is considered to be of more worth than the terrorist plot, that we're expected to be engaged in Dana's plight and desperately want her to succeed in her endeavour to outsmart the dreaded Probation Officer. It just fucking sucks. Period. Just like the vast majority of the rest of the episode.

Oh yes, it doesn't get much better when Katz and Fury turn their attentions to other matters. Far too much time is spent pontificating over the relationship between Tarin and young Hassan; they're almost as poorly constructed as Dana and Cole and, as a result, are about as bloody interesting. Of course, much of this is concerned with demonstrating the regret that Omar harbours over his supposedly rash actions many episodes earlier (something that was telegraphed from the moment that this hopeless plot began... it really was obvious that some peril would come of her and that Hassan would repent as a result), but even this struggles to keep itself afloat. The actress portraying Mrs. Hassan essentialy props it up, providing some genuine emotion, but sadly, Katz and Fury completely drop the ball with Omar's dialogue. Lines like "I've lost my way, I see that now" are far too sweeping, sounding like he's talking about some inherent, protracted character trait that he's only now beginning to regret. It just lacks naturalism, something that is particularly disappointing coming from these two writers, given their track record. However, this seems Oscar-worthy when compared to what subsequently develops. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as with Dana's story, things continue to spiral effortlessly downwards, robbing 24 of every tiny morsel of integrity. Yes, the unthinkable actually happens. Tarin is revealed to be a mole. The most transparent, predictable and downright lazy plot development comes to fruition, thereby proving the supposition that 24's writing staff compose their scripts in between smacking up. I am actually praying that this is a red herring; that Fury and Katz have something truly surprising up their sleeves because if not... well, I don't know that there's any point in tuning in any longer. Things are that bad.

Perhaps if all of this wasn't so unforgivably horrible, I might actually have been able to engage with the remainder of the episode. To be fair, the sequences between Bauer and Marcos certainly harbour some merit; both actors play fairly well off each other and there is a notable level of dramatic tension underpinning events. Unfortunately, once again, the dialogue lets things down. Katz and Fury trot out the ol' 'arrogant America' argument but, as with every sodding text of this kind, the statement is a sweeping one with virtually no verisimilitude to act as support. And then, even more problematically, Jack comes out with the utterly mind-boggling corker, "you say 'your country' but you were born here in America!" Huh?! What fucking good does that do? He's loyal, you idiot! Your place of birth is not necessarily the country with which you 'align' yourself. Bauer would know this, and that saying such a thing would be more of a hinderance than a help. It's shockingly out of character and sticks out like a sore thumb. And while Bauer's threat to essentially irradiate Marcos's mother is certainly more in line with his mentality, it's difficult for anyone to convincingly deliver lines like "YOU LOOK INTO MY EYES!", even an actor of the calibre of Kiefer Sutherland. The inclusion of the mother, despite being predictable, is fairly well handled, even if the actress occasionally lapses into cliche, although Marcos's emotional conflict is less convincing, particularly given that one of his sentences essentially consists of the phrase "uuuurrrrrrrrrrrr nrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh." Yeah. Eloquent. At least he gets blown to smithereens at episode's end in a nicely shot sequence with a whole heck of a lot of blood. It's a pity that after being spectacularly subjected to the full force of the blast, Bauer is up and about once again, but that really is the least of our worries at this point. I'm slightly more concerned that Marcos doesn't seem to have a clue that four lights (anyone else have a chuckle at "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS"?! Star Trek: The Next Generation? No?) and beeping noise might indicate that he's about to be all exploded, and that the terrorists seem not to care about the fact that opening the container housing the nuclear rods might actually expose them to radiation. Small fry that, guys. We're more concerned with making sure that "CTU's radiation sensors are down". Huh? What? Another mole? Please be fucking kidding. Please. No. Sodding. More.

While there are certain elements of '2am - 3am' that are at least passable, it's hard to be even remotely engaged with them when they're surrounded by so much extraneous crap. Honestly, this is truly abysmal stuff at times, completely unrelated to the all-important central narrative and serving no purpose other than to thoroughly infuriate the discerning viewer. This is certainly the weakest episode of the season by some considerable margin; in fact, it's also one of the worst hours in 24 history. Oh how the mighty have fallen... 2.1