What I’m Watching: 24

24: Season 8, Episode 13 “4:00AM-5:00AM” (F)

If this show hadn’t “jumped the shark” a few years ago when it was revealed that the President of the United States was actually the traitor, this would probably be the second most unbelievable and indefensible moment in the show’s history. I refuse to accept the fact that Dana is a mole working for the terrorists. It doesn’t make a lick of sense on so many levels. There’s no reason she would become a soulless killer now after twiddling her thumbs and whining for twelve episodes while a common criminal tried to get her to do something illegal. Rule number one of flying under the radar involves trying not to arouse any suspicion, and instead of offing Kevin in the privacy of her own home, she decided to play along with the whole charade and wait until his parole officer was in an interrogation room at her place of work to finally deal with the situation in a productive way. It would also appear that she hadn’t yet checked in with the terrorists to provide them with an update, officially making her the worst mole ever. It just doesn’t add up, and we’ve seen way too many moments of her freaking out when no one else was around for it to compute. The writers should have learned their lesson in season one with Nina that they can’t have their secret moles be seen alone looking all innocent. Clearly that’s not the case, and the need to have another twist, though completely unfounded since CTU being pretty much completely destroyed, seems like enough of a problem. On to other concerns, it seems like you really can’t get anything done these days without pointing a gun at someone. The NSA guy asking Chloe whether she really wants to do this seemed so silly because no one, especially Chloe, ever has to reap the consequences of their actions on this show. But along those same lines, only Chloe and Jack can be right. The sole half-decent moment of this episode, which I’ll admit made me smile for about half a second, was Renee showing up to save the day, even though she waited until after Jack got shot to step in. It wasn’t nearly as cool as one of the best-ever moments on this show, featuring Tony saving Jack and Audrey in season four, but at least it’s a glimmer of hope amid the rest of this trash.