My, oh my. I certainly didn’t see that twist coming. 24 has hit its stride.
From the beginning of the episode, we got some great action — no long, slow build-up. Jack, Cole, and two other CTU agents caught up with Samir and his men, engaged them in a cool firefight, and then try to sneak through the crossfire, using the armor from their CTU vehicle as a shield. It would have worked perfectly if everyone had just listened to Jack. But there’s always one idiot in the group … Agent “Let’s-Make-a-Run-for-It” gets shot, and his pal tries to save him and gets shot too. Red shirts. Finally, Jack takes his turn on the suicide run, but lucky for him, a surprisingly calm, sane Renee comes to his rescue in classic 24 fashion (just like in Season 1, when Tony arrived in the nick of time to save Teri).
The EMP’s aftermath gave Chloe another chance to demonstrate her superiority. Frank, the NSA engineer, shows up at CTU to “help” (as if making snide remarks is a form of helping). I enjoyed his conversation with Chloe in the server room, because he’s as blunt, rude, and sarcastic as Chloe is to everybody else.
The EMP, of course, also gave Dana a great way to get rid of Mr. Prady and his creepy bug eyes. She lies to him, not knowing that his bug eyes see right through her. I really started to despise Dana when she didn’t back Chloe up, but then Prady comes back again and tells her to her face that she’s a liar. Dana gives him the death stare, and indeed, she garottes Prady and stuffs him in the wall.
Then the big OMG moment arrives. Not since Nina was revealed to be the mole in Season 1 have I been so caught off guard. The writers did a smart thing. They threw me off by creating all that personal drama for Dana from the beginning of the season. Well played.
Were you surprised by the revelation that Dana is working with Samir?
Clacked by Ruby T.
on Mar 23, 2010 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
Alas, poor Owen/Agent Puppydog. We hardly knew ye.
Hell YEAH Dana being a mole was a surprise! My wife, who doesn’t normally watch the show, questioned my surprise since we already knew she had a secret identity, but I wasn’t expecting the double secret proba- er, identity! All in all, great episode.
I think the ship might have already sailed on Dana. They’ve gone out of the way to make me not care about her all season long, and now that they’ve finally made the character marginally more interesting, I’m not going to just jump back in.
Chloe being “back” was kinda fun though, and I really like seeing more Renee and Jack.
I’m a serious 24 apologist but even I can’t defend the ridiculous Dana-is-a-mole twist.
You have to ask yourself – does this add up? In many ways, yes: We thought she was stupid for aiding Kevin instead of coming clean, but this explains why she wanted to keep up appearances and give Kevin what he wanted so he would just go away. However, there are too many ways this doesn’t add up: She left CTU for three hours and was of no help to the terrorists during that time – and she was seriously jeopardizing her position there! She acted like a frantic, scared little girl all season and then suddenly is revealed to be a cold-blooded murderer capable of strangling a probation officer who she was just about to hand over the video to an hour before! (True, she may have never intended to give him the evidence, knowing the EMP was about to strike CTU…BUT, then why the tearful phone call to Cole saying it’s over? Why bother?) And by the way, what exactly has she done to aid the terrorists to this point? I expected her to sabotage Chloe’s attempt at rebooting the servers to save her own butt (in case that video wasn’t really erased), but now it just seems flat-out dumb that she wouldn’t have done that to keep CTU blind if she’s supposed to be a mole. Oh, how I could go on and on about this…
A twist is only good if you can look back in time, connect a few dots and see the plausibility behind it. A twist doesn’t work if almost everything that came before it undermines it. You can argue the writers were genius for keeping us preoccupied with her Kevin storyline so we wouldn’t see this coming. I’d argue the writers didn’t play fair because with everything that’s happened to this point, this twist just doesn’t add up.
Potential things that she did:
– Disabled the drone anti-missile defenses for the helicopter in the first episode. (There was a discussion of why they weren’t working, but the plot point wasn’t resolved.)
– Undermined Chloe and made her seem incompetent.
– Told the terrorists that the radiological detectors were active.
– Distracted Cole with those phone calls.
I give up.
Chloe is by far the most annoying and insipid character ever created. All she does is pout and snap and somehow pull a wiring schematic out of her butt after she pulled a 9mm on an NSA officer.
C’mon now…
And Dana being a mole? Hmm…sounds like they hit the ‘rehash’ button again to put yet another ‘mole’ into a high office position. Are there actually no background checks still for CTU?
I know it’s fiction, and entertaining at that, but this show is leaving believe-ability behind more and more each year.
She is! I used to hate Chloe, but now I just laugh at her. It’s great that one of the “good guys” is obnoxious. The most hilarious, ludicrous twist to end the series would be Chloe turning out to be evil. Haha.
I loved this episode. From Jack and Cole in the firefight to Chloe pulling a gun on that a-hole from the NSA it was great fun. The episode made me even like Hastings. Plus how can you not laugh at the terrorists yelling, “its Jack Bauer” like he is some sort of superhero about to take them on.
Then came the Dana twist. Now like I said I loved the episode, but its because I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just ignoring whatever new shit they add to Dana’s story. Last night was no different because the reveal that she was a mole just made my eyes roll. CTU being destroyed again at least made Jack and Cole have to go it alone, which is an interesting dynamic to watch. Having Dana be mole #2234 in CTU means we have to put up with her even more, which is what everyone who watches the show is complaining about. So now when I consider the quality of an episode I’m just gonna ignore Dana scenes all together because the writers obviously can’t figure out that she is the main reason people are hating on the show this season.