“There are no good guys here.”
Perhaps not, but while Cole Ortiz may be jaded by the players involved, as evidenced by a brief conversation with Chloe O’Brian in last night’s shocking episode, I can’t help but think these past couple hours of 24 are the baddest this season, if not the entire series. Bad in the good way—in the way we watch good people turn bad and bad guys influence the good. Strange that a show normally so clear on the Good vs. Evil motif is ending on such a deliciously messy buffet of food for thought, while ABC’s Lost, also in its final season and usually much more ambiguous, is beginning to clearly define that very subject matter.
If you thought Jack’s vengeful execution of Dana Walsh in the previous hour was unnerving… well, let’s just say he would not be outdone this hour. So worried was Fox, the show’s network, that it aired two viewer warnings: one at the top of the hour and an unorthodox encore parental warning prior to the final few minutes. Like, “Hey, we really mean it. Get the kiddies outta the room… NOW!”
What follows has to be one of the show’s most violent—strike that, the show’s most violent interrogation sequence. We find our protagonist, Jack, alone in a room with Renee Walker’s murderer. At this point, you know despite what information or lack thereof the covert Russian agent relinquishes, he’s toast. When we go to commercial before Jack digs in, I suspected we’d return to the man all bloodied up, therefore bypassing most of the unpleasantries. Can you blame me? This season seems to have gone out of its way to play it safe up to this point regarding torture and coercive questioning. But surprisingly, the snarky Russian is primp, untouched and ready to be destroyed. And the more he eggs on Jack, the more Jack enjoys himself. First pliers, then a knife, some kind of fluid to intensify the pain and finally, a blowtorch. All this before Jack realizes answers may lie in the man’s phone; it’s missing the SIM card. He looks around and comes to the conclusion the “dumb bastard” swallowed it. Unwise, for even if you missed the episode, you have a gut feeling, pun intended, what happens next. I’ll just say when the creators of Scream 4 think about casting their next ghost-faced killer, Kiefer Sutherland should be in strong contention. Just sayin’.