Day 8: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Characters Introduced:

• Victor Aruz (Benito Martinez): He will always be Aceveda to me, but a great actor for a small key role.
• Omar Hassan (Anil Kapoor): The Slumdog Regis got promoted to fake nation President.
• Farhad Hassan (Akbar Kurtha): What a horrible brother for the President of a fake nation.
• Rob Weiss (Chris Diamantopoulos): One season after I praise the Chief of Staff role and then this vanilla character comes along.
• Meredith Reed (Jennifer Westfeldt): Red herring reporter with an improper relationship to Hassan.
• Cole Ortiz (Freddie Prinze Jr.): Who would have thought that 24 could top Ricky Schroder as a random casting for a field agent? As usual the role is money and everyone looks cooler rolling with Jack.
• Dana Walsh (Katee Sackhoff): One of the top contenders for worst characters (series regular category) ever. Her storyline is abysmal from beginning to middle to end. What a waste of Starbuck.
• Brian Hastings (Mykelti Williamson): The CTU boss for season 8. I’m gonna have to go back and watch some of Bubba’s other roles to see if he always walked slumped over like this. Ends up falling right in the middle of the CTU director quality scale.
• Arlo Glass (John Boyd): The usual other tech introduced every season. This time he works the magical drones and is a pervert. Interesting…
• Davros (Doug Hutchison): The Russian hitter brought in to take out Hassan.
• Dalia Hassan (Necar Zadegan): Morphed into a pretty decent character by the end of the day since she just started off as angry wife.
• Kayla Hassan (Nazneen Contractor): The Hassans' daughter who, as usual, gets deeply involved in the day’s events.

Returning Characters:

• Jack Bauer (Last episode of season 7)
• Kim Bauer (Last episode of season 7)
• Allison Taylor (Last episode of season 7)
• Ethan Kanin (Last episode of season 7)
• Chloe O’Brian (Last episode of season 7)

Key Moments:

• In New Yoooooooooooork! Concrete jungle where dreams are made of …
• Victor is already in a sniper scope when he gets out of a cab. He is able to get into his cracked out apartment complex with head still intact. He finds some guy named Manny dead in the tub and makes a call to find his other partner dead. He catches on and starts running. He swaps his sweatshirt with a crackhead to gain a few seconds by confusion and speeds off in a stolen car. The sniper shoots him in the shoulder but he gets away. The spotter calls in the stolen car to track Victor.
• Grandpa Jack is asleep on the couch in the middle of the day. His granddaughter wakes him up to find better cartoons on the television. Kim calls to check up and tell Jack they’ll arrive soon to pick up her daughter. She hangs up and tells her husband she hopes Jack thought about returning to LA with them.
• And hey look it's the United Nations. Taylor and Ethan are across the table from President Hassan and his brother as they hammer out some sort of peace treaty. The sticking point at the moment is the nationality of inspectors. The point of this scene is to see how much Taylor and Hassan like each other.
• Kim picks up her daughter and Jack tells her that he is going to return to LA with them. He has a job and a home all lined up. They head to the airport and the day is over…
• Wait nope; Victor is across the street spying on Jack. He grabs his gun and gets out of the car.
• Meredith is held up and turned away at the UN security checkpoint.
• The Hassan brothers are discussing the ramifications of the peace treaty on their fake nation. Meredith calls Omar with her security issue. He says he will take care of it and immediately yells at Farhad to fix it. Farhad accuses him of western corruption … damn white women!
• Victor knocking on his door interrupts Jack’s packing. They have history but Jack tells him that he is out. Victor tells him that Hassan is going to be assassinated. He knows because he brought the assassin into the country. He wants Jack to vouch for him to CTU so he can get a deal. Victor doesn’t know any name just that the hitter is Russian.
• The NYC CTU has a batcave entrance. Cole arrives and we get walked through the new CTU. Seems smaller than LA. Dana greets him and we find out that they are getting married. I’m sure nothing bad will come of this.
• Chloe has regressed and can no longer work a computer. Dana helps her out since she is her boss. Jack calls Chloe but has no time for small talk. Chloe brings his call to Hastings. Jack tells him about Victor but Hastings has no interest in another vague threat. Jack tells him what he will tell Taylor if Hassan is killed. Hastings relents and sends a helicopter and Jack agrees to take Victor to the location.
• Hastings updates Dana, Cole, and Arlo about Jack’s call. Arlo hilariously doesn’t know who Jack Bauer is and the other 3 just stare at him.
• A cop spots Victor’s stolen car and when he calls it in Davros is listening. He sends his men back out to clean up Victor.
• Ethan and Taylor first talk Hassan then talk about Allison’s divorce from Henry over Olivia’s felonious actions. Rob walks in to tell them about Jack Bauer’s information. Ethan and Rob argue over whether Hassan should be notified of the threat on his life. Taylor says she will think about it. Afterwards, Ethan and Rob talk about their disagreement while Ethan takes some heart meds. Is that foreshadowing I smell?
• Jack calls Kim to say he will have to meet her at the airport.
• Chloe and Hastings discuss her poor performances since she came back to work.
• Cole hops in a helicopter to pick up Victor.
• Victor passes out in the alley, so Jack starts some field medic work. A passerby sees this bleeding guy in an alley and calls the cops.
• Dalia and Kayla talk about Omar and we find out that this is not a happy marriage.
• Farhad fixes Meredith’s security issues then tells her to stay away from Omar.
• 2 NYC cops draw on Jack and Victor. Before this can go anywhere, the Russians arrive and wipe out the cops. Jack and Victor run into a building but Jack ran out of ammo covering their escape. He calls Chloe and gets transferred to Cole. They switch the helicopter landing zone to somewhere attached to the building they are running through. Victor tells Jack that he won’t tell him anything until he gets to CTU. Jack kills 2 Russians with a fire axe. They exit through a window just as Cole lands. Jack hands Victor over to Cole. Jack begins to walk away when the chopper is blown up by Davros’ RPG. Jack runs to the dying Victor and pleads for the information. Victor whispers that the hitter has someone on the inside with Hassan.
• Meredith makes a shady sounding phone call.

Ridiculousness:

• Remember that death sentence illness Jack had? Yeah, he’s cool.
• I’ve already bitched about the fake nations populated by Muslims but is the Islamic Republic of Kamistan some sort of super power? How can a peace treaty between the United States and the IRK lead to peace throughout the world?
• It has been months between seasons 7 and 8 but all of sudden Chloe can’t keep up with technological advances. Don’t think too hard about it because she will be working magic within hours again.
• What the hell did Jack do to treat Victor’s bullet wound? He started cutting into an old mattress in the ally before the scene cut away. What did he use from the mattress!

Running Totals:

Chloe drives a sane man crazy: 1 (21)

• Chloe doesn’t even let Hastings reprimand her without yelling at him to be more upfront about firing her if she continues to suck.

Jack’s body count: 2 (229)

• This time Jack uses a fire axe for killing not saving.