Copious Notes

Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) readies for a dangerous move in the two-hour "24" series finale episode airing at 8 p.m. May 24 on Fox. Photo by Ray Mickshaw | Fox. ©2010

I could have done without the scene last week where Jack Bauer disemboweled a ­Russian assassin to retrieve the SIM card the killer swallowed. But in a matter of a few episodes, 24 has gone from nearly losing me to having my complete attention as the series hurtles through its final three hours.

At the beginning of this eighth and final season, the point of the Fox thriller seemed to be to preserve a Middle East peace treaty ­that Russians and many in the fictional country of Kamistan were trying to scuttle. That all went up in smoke early in the ­morning when Kamistan’s president, Omar Hassan, was assassinated.

Game over. What are you going to do the rest of the day, Jack?

Briefly, it looked like the answer would be turning his apartment into a little love nest with fellow spy Renee Walker. But then the sniper who swallows SIM cards shot her, fearing she would expose him and the entire Russian plot to kill Hassan.

Speaking of that ­Russian plot, disgraced former ­President Charles Logan waltzed back into the ­picture, convincing ­President Allison Taylor she can make her mark in ­history by blackmailing the Russians into signing the peace agreement with ­Hassan’s widow, Dalia. ­Taylor, in a complete loss of her once-solid moral certitude, agreed to Logan’s scheme, which involves a cover-up, murder and torture – Nixon, ­Logan … Taylor?

Problem is, Jack knows what really happened, and Taylor’s attempts to ­neutralize him failed.

Silly president. No one neutralizes Jack Bauer.

Read the rest of this entry »