What I’m Watching: 24

24: Season 8, Episode 12 “3:00AM-4:00AM” (F)

Apologies in advance if this review seems like a rant, but this episode absolutely deserves it. In the past, CTU has been blown up, targeted by a virus, and tunneled under by terrorists. Having full knowledge of those previous attacks and other problems that plagued CTU in the past, the government decided to construct a new facility in New York City. In order to make this building more secure, someone decided it would be a good idea to have a tunnel accessible by any person from a random city street that ran not just into some CTU parking garage but directly into their offices without any kind of checkpoint. The fact that Brian Hastings was able to run over from his command headquarters room in a matter of seconds to greet the completely unscreened Kayla and her vehicle is just plain preposterous. My “favorite” part of the whole thing was the CTU valet who for some reason thought that he could get the car away quick enough and couldn’t even slam his foot on the pedal to get the car out of range of the building. Jack, always one step ahead of everyone else in the universe, was just as unhelpful yelling at them to transfer over all of their files to the NSA as if they had more than a few seconds to deal with their present situation. Another entertaining moment from the episode was Tarin’s assertion that they couldn’t go anywhere but CTU because there are traitors everywhere. That’s hardly a surprise, since Tarin himself is one of those traitors! Moments before the episode started, a promo announced that a huge twist would be happening. This isn’t the first time that someone who was originally thought to be duplicitous and then revealed to be good turned out to be truly duplicitous. Nina and Tony weren’t the only ones, and it’s getting very tiresome. As if the level of security at CTU wasn’t low enough, having impossibly dedicated parole officer Bill Prady roaming freely through the halls unchecked is just plain silly. I’m sure he’s not even going to wait until they’ve begun to recover from the devastating effects of the EMP to start grilling Dana about what happened with Kevin. At least Jack is staying on top of Cole and telling him he needs to keep his head in the game, because someone needs to start doing something quick, otherwise New York is hopeless against these uber-resourceful terorrists.