Day 6, 9 AM - 10 AM (Episode 4)
- Buchanan announces "We have to do better than we're doing and we have to do it faster!" It's taken this long for him to realize this? CTU might be the worst-run government office in history, and that's saying a lot. Maybe if they were to have more than 3 competent analysts and 1 decent field agent, they'd be in better shape.
- Jack and Curtis are having their standoff after the President asks Jack to be in charge, and Assad walks up with a busted PDA, saying, "they found this". To this point, they've been treating Assad like a suspect - now they're going to give him some evidence to take to Jack instead of taking it to him themselves?
- Once again, Assad is extremely trusting, given that Jack couldn't even keep his promise regarding how CTU would treat Assad. If Assad's not up to something bigger, he's the most altruistic ex-terrorist I've ever seen.
- Fayed calls Ahmed a new recruit, but trustworthy. This is apparently one of the biggest, most complex terrorist operations in history, and Fayed's entrusting it to a teenager?
- Ahmed answers the phone immediately again, this time when Scott's dad (Ray) is calling from a pay phone, clearly a number that Ahmed won't recognize. I'm sure he's pretty desperate at this point, but what happens when someone else calls? Why doesn't he make Scott or Scott's mom answer the phone?
- Boy, it's a good thing there was some spare change in the coin return in the pay phone Ray uses to call Ahmed. This is his second call from that phone, by the way - we're to assume there was two calls worth of change in the coin return?
- Milo complains to Morris that the data is in tab-delimited format instead of "tables". He can't just use Excel to convert the files? Even I know it can do that, and I don't work for CTU!
- Back in Season 2, pardons were huge things to grant, even to a relatively minor criminal like Nina. Now, the President is willing to grant a full pardon to a well-known terrorist like Assad, based solely on a 5-minute conversation with the ambassador from an unnamed country. Why is this even valuable to Assad in the first place? If he wanted a pardon before doing business with the US, then he would have asked for it earlier. But it seems much more likely that he doesn't really care, possibly because he's planning on screwing the US over in the end anyways.
- Furthermore, while it might be possible that Assad's being so helpful in order to curry the favor of the US, why is this the first they've heard of it? His back's not against the wall, and I have no idea why the President would take Assad's promise of working towards peace as worth anything.
- Immediately after approving Assad's pardon, the President has a discussion with his advisors (what the hell is Tom Maddox, anyways? Chief of Staff?) about how to spin it to the public. Of all of the things they're worried about now, is this really urgent? What about addressing the public about the 3 simultaneous bombings that happened a couple hours ago?
- I thought there was only one suitcase nuke from Russia? Now there are five? I suppose they'll clear that up in future episodes...
- Jack and Curtis are having their standoff after the President asks Jack to be in charge, and Assad walks up with a busted PDA, saying, "they found this". To this point, they've been treating Assad like a suspect - now they're going to give him some evidence to take to Jack instead of taking it to him themselves?
- Once again, Assad is extremely trusting, given that Jack couldn't even keep his promise regarding how CTU would treat Assad. If Assad's not up to something bigger, he's the most altruistic ex-terrorist I've ever seen.
- Fayed calls Ahmed a new recruit, but trustworthy. This is apparently one of the biggest, most complex terrorist operations in history, and Fayed's entrusting it to a teenager?
- Ahmed answers the phone immediately again, this time when Scott's dad (Ray) is calling from a pay phone, clearly a number that Ahmed won't recognize. I'm sure he's pretty desperate at this point, but what happens when someone else calls? Why doesn't he make Scott or Scott's mom answer the phone?
- Boy, it's a good thing there was some spare change in the coin return in the pay phone Ray uses to call Ahmed. This is his second call from that phone, by the way - we're to assume there was two calls worth of change in the coin return?
- Milo complains to Morris that the data is in tab-delimited format instead of "tables". He can't just use Excel to convert the files? Even I know it can do that, and I don't work for CTU!
- Back in Season 2, pardons were huge things to grant, even to a relatively minor criminal like Nina. Now, the President is willing to grant a full pardon to a well-known terrorist like Assad, based solely on a 5-minute conversation with the ambassador from an unnamed country. Why is this even valuable to Assad in the first place? If he wanted a pardon before doing business with the US, then he would have asked for it earlier. But it seems much more likely that he doesn't really care, possibly because he's planning on screwing the US over in the end anyways.
- Furthermore, while it might be possible that Assad's being so helpful in order to curry the favor of the US, why is this the first they've heard of it? His back's not against the wall, and I have no idea why the President would take Assad's promise of working towards peace as worth anything.
- Immediately after approving Assad's pardon, the President has a discussion with his advisors (what the hell is Tom Maddox, anyways? Chief of Staff?) about how to spin it to the public. Of all of the things they're worried about now, is this really urgent? What about addressing the public about the 3 simultaneous bombings that happened a couple hours ago?
- I thought there was only one suitcase nuke from Russia? Now there are five? I suppose they'll clear that up in future episodes...
posted by Dave at 12:48:00 AM
2 Comments:
Smut-Li and Confusious (sp?) say:
Seek and ye shall find. I am going to apply that wisdom to a majority of the scrutiny of this past episode.
I agree that Assad's place and position are suspect and potentially very stupid and poorly thought out at this point if there is nothing going on with Assad.
Assad is poorly constructed and certainly cast incorrectly for a diabolical terrorist that Curtis can't help himself from trying to kill. I can't help but like the guy and I feel that the writers know this and are forced to constantly remind us that we're supposed to hate this guy.
Well, of course. The whole point of this blog is seeking!
If they surprise me on Assad, I'll be impressed. Overall, I actually think this was one of the better episodes (despite all of the silliness that I complained about).
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