[24H] Day 7: 10:00pm - 11:00pm

TV Programme: 24
Season: 7
Episode: 15
Date I watched this episode: 27/03/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 4 days.

Strange that I was, only earlier today, reviewing an episode of Prison Break in which Michael Scofield's strong morals come out, and here we have the king of ruthlessness, Jack Bauer, in a similar moral dilemma. This time it was Tony Almeida who was really pushing Jack to make the same ruthless decision, but he took a chance, and saved the life of someone he'd sworn to protect, slightly compromising his mission in the process. Obviously Renee and Larry's morals, or perhaps the conversations with Senator Mayer, have had some effect on Jack.

The object of this dilemma was Carl Gadsen, played by Connor Trinneer, an actor we know well from Star Trek: Enterprise. That's the second Enterprise guest star we've had this season, interesting. Anyway it's pretty amazing that Carl actually survived; the show gave us all the tell-tale signs of a doomed character (showed him talking to his wife on the phone, he is clearly really naïve, etc) but then fooled us by having him survive after all.

There's definitely something going on with Tony. He has obviously had some involvement with Starkwood before, because Stokes (one of Hodges's operatives) recognised him. He's also giving those shady looks all over the place. But then it does beg the question of why he stays involved with this at all...and where even was he when Jack called in the last episode? He may have gone back to his old ways; he is very difficult to read.

This episode made you feel really quite sorry for Olivia, before the reveal of how evil she really is. She truly is playing everyone and she's bound to be found out...but she thinks she is serving her mother by doing this. I still think she is really hot though, so I want her to stick around! Ethan's speech to her was quite compelling and for the first time I really enjoyed Bob Gunton's performance. He made a very difficult decision here and I think given the information he had, it was the right one.

The internal politics going on at Starkwood is not a particularly interesting thread, and I can only assume that this is going to develop into something more interesting in a future episode. I suppose that it goes some way to explain why Hodges is doing the things he is doing, but it doesn't seem a valid justification for a man who supposedly finds tragedy in the loss of one single innocent soul.

This episode marked yet another transition; the "Jack on the run" storyline is pretty much over. Again if this season wasn't so fragmented, they could have played this story out for quite a long time, with murder after murder wrongly attributed to Jack. But as is the way, it only lasted a couple of episodes. Somehow though I think the revelation that Jack has been exposed to a biological agent will not go away easily. Then again, Jack has to survive to the next season so there has to be something weird going on here.

I'm not sure to what extent the morals story will continue through the second half of this season. In all seriousness, Jack should know that even if he had gone with his original plan and followed the truck then it might still have been airlifted out and he would have lost it. But he might still beat himself up about it.

I was glad to see a glimpse of Henry in this episode. In his current state, it's hard to imagine when he'd be able to get back into the main story, but maybe his influence as a father can radiate from just his hospital bed. In general, apart from perhaps the resolution to Jack's exposure to the biological agent, there doesn't seem to be much left to look forward to this season.