I was looking forward to this season being about the day Jack escaped from the Chinese, or some sort of “Manchurian Candidate” plot, but the writers are now caught wih a Huge Success on their hands, and seem to only have a triumvirate of Eeevil Acute Events to play with: nukes, bioweapons and nerve agents.

In that sense, Season 1 was outstanding, by concentrating more on smaller crises.

Love the “ancient themes” hunt you are doing in 24. It adds a level of meaning to a show the missus and I find alternately riveting and awful. In brief, we usually love the arc of the plot, and cringe at whole sections of dialogue… and any sub-plot involving the “Kim” character.

(The “Kim” character does not necessarily need to be played by “Kim,” but only by an unnecessarily dim and selfish person.)

Best Actor So Far: President Charles Logan, er, Richard Nixon, played (we thought) unbelieveably well by Gregory Itzin.

Next time, I hope we can have something other than nukes, because at this rate America’s going to be covered in radiation in about 3 more Days.

Nanotech terrorism, anyone? Internet attacks? Mole presidential candidates (not just turncoats like Logan)? C’mon, people!

Also agreed on Hayes’ comment to Palmer. Unfortunately, her character doesn’t seem to be making sense on any level so far. It’s like she’s become the “platitude repository” holding all the lefty sentiment for which the writers can’t find a convincing voice. They didn’t watch enough West Wing, I guess.

You mean like the stories about the Sudan offering Osama to Clinton, and Sandy Berg(l)er’s probable removal of the documentary evidence? I think I can imagine…

Fahagie: “I wonder if there are cases during the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast where there was vigilantism against collaborators?”
Check out the Manzanar Demonstrations, at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8420/shootings.html#manzanar .

Was I the only one that laughed out loud at this? Just a couple hours previously the President caved to terrorist demands, setting in motion events that enabled the ‘triggerman’ to escape from US custody allowing him to set off a bomb that killed 12,000 or so. I hate to be judgmental, Mr. President, as you have the toughest job in the world, but you screwed the pooch (and 12,000 of your citizens) on that one, Mr. President. Beter she should have told him: “whatever your instincts say, do the opposite”.

Another laugher: the innocent “spectators” morph into a lynch mob upon discovering the stolen cell phone. Here the insult wasn’t to the viewer’s intelligence but to American Muslims, who apparently have some sort of murderous gene that gravitates them towards violent group behavior when previously they were just “spectators”.

An alternate interpretation is that this was a dig at the right - the “spectators” were provoked by aggresive law enforcement/military tactics - and that ‘fighting’ terrorism creates more terrorism. I’m sure that’s what the producers were driving at, but in real time I thought it was slanderous towards American Muslims. After all, these weren’t prisoners guilty of some sort of crime but a slice of the general population of American Muslims. Somehow I don’t think they’d depict another cohesive group of Americans similarly. I wonder if there are cases during the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast where there was vigilantism against collaborators? I checked Wikipedia and it’s not addressed head on but it seems like it was possible.

Also, I am pretty sure that Graem said at the end of the episode “JACK forced my hand” not “They forced my hand.” (They who?) If so, that puts a different spin on it - blame game and all - especially with all Graem’s sickeningly ironic sarcasm about Jack’s misplaced dedication to family.

Might the Bauers have come out a tad differently if they had, say, a family game night every week when growing up? Such damaged familial goods…

Sad that no one picked up on your “All My Sons” analogy, paralleling Greek drama makes watching television drama all the more interesting. Of course when you say that common themes are used throughout literary history you are referring to the seven deadly sins, i.e. Greed, Lust, Envy,Gluttony, Lust,Anger and sloth. however in Greek drama any character committing any of the above deadly sins resulted in his death. Oedipus being the obvious example. Modern day drama softens the punishment a tad but still requires scourging if not death.
Its fun to make the observations and guessing the outcome based on the rules of drama, and judge the writer’s literary capabilities set down by Aristotle, as well.
In yesterday’s episode, its not the estranged familial relationship that bears punishing, or the selling of nukes its the greed that transends all iniquity. Hence in Graem’s case, we are able to predict with some certainty that he will or rather must die, no moral judgement need be made. Now that being said, we can predict with the same certainty that the other characters will suffer the same end. Chloe for her lust will (if not already) be punished. In the end the audience will have learned that evil must be punished, even if the audience just says, “Tsk, Tsk.

“Will Jack execute his own brother?”
Of course he will. Especially when he learns the details of the part he played in all the S5 events. Of course he might then off himself (”only Jack can kill Jack!”) out of sheer grief and despair. But what we’ve seen of Jack so far indicates he *might* think twice about Graem… then put two center mass and one in his forehead.

“Will Dad program the nukes?”
No doubt, if the right screws are turned - say, threatening Graem or his family, per McCarthy’s comment to Fayed regarding coercion (so far, I don’t get the impression that threats against Jack would do the trick, but revelations from their past might change that) - especially if he thinks there’s still a way to “contain” them afterward (like Cummings’ and Nathanson’s foul-up with the centox, which might lead to some nice irony). A more interesting question in my mind is: would Jack shoot Dad to *prevent* him from reprogramming the triggers?

BTW, I forgot to mention earlier that I think the lickspittle act in the house was a put-on. Graem had to know Jack would be trouble based on past history. He’d have to do something about that and if I heard correctly (no TiVo here) he outright stated they should’ve had him killed instead of letting him be sent to China. He also knew all along that in leading Jack back to Dad, he’d be leading him into a trap (i.e., his goons). So there really wasn’t any reason to keep Dad’s whereabouts secret. Just the opposite. But telling Jack what he wanted to know outright might have raised suspicions (at least in the ’sharper’ Jack whom Graem knew at the end of S5). Personally, I think it was actually *Graem* pushing the buttons in that scene. He probably didn’t get to wherever he is among these “untouchables” by being a lickspittle with no human intuition and no ability to manipulate people.