Vito Corleone’s advice to his son Michael was exactly the opposite. “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” In the case of our mushy headed President, however, Assad’s advice that he watch his back rings true.

The “Right Wing Plot To Take Over The Government” gambit is a time honored plot line in Hollywood. And the granddaddy of all right wing conspiracy movies is a film based on the taut, well written thriller Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey (who also collaborated on the political pot boiler Convention).

The equally engrossing movie starred some of Hollywood’s most prominent liberals at the time; Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Frederic March. Lancaster played an Air Force General James Matoon Scott who, angry with the President (played by March) for signing a nuclear arms treaty with the Russians, plots to take over the government with the backing of a shady conservative Senator as well as some other generals. The hero of the movie, Jiggs Casey (Douglas), senior aide to the general, discovers the plot and brings it to the attention of the President who then must counter General Scott, trusting only his Secret Service protection and a drunken Senator marvelously underplayed by Edmond O’Brien.

Complicating matters was General Scott’s mistress, the lovely Ellie Holbrooke, played by the ravishing Ava Gardner. She has in her possession some love letters from Scott that Jiggs is tasked to steal so that the counter-plotters have some ammunition.

Of course, being liberals, they are much too principled to use the damning letters and in the end, the President does what he should have done 5 minutes into the movie; fire General Scott and save the republic. Jiggs, who also thought the President was a loon for trusting the Russkies, ends up getting Ava Gardner in the end so sometimes I guess it pays to be the conservative hero in a liberal movie.

All kidding aside, the film is extremely well written and as suspenseful as any movie you want to see. But if you think about it, 7 Days in May and all the films like it that posit a military (or politically conservative) coup d’etat have one gigantic flaw.

It would never happen in a million years. Only a paranoid lefty could believe that any high ranking military officer would violate their oath and tradition in such a manner. It may say more about the left that they have these fantasies in the first place than it would ever say about the military or conservatives.

And while we’re on the subject, can you think of one movie or TV show that ever showed a left wing plot to take over the government? Of course not. That too would never happen in a million years. The plotters would be too busy sitting around arguing about the make up of the post-coup government and could never come to an agreement. Besides, liberals talk too much. All those angst-ridden soliloquies about what they were about to do would put the audience to sleep in about 15 minutes. There would probably be more action in a movie detailing the mating habits of Three Toed Sloths than in a left wing coup film.

For President Palmer, it appears that all the left wing fantasies about heroically battling the evil conservatives who, like Bush, are seeking to overthrow the Constitution and lock up every Muslim in America in concentration camps, are about to come true. And right in the center of the plot, a man who bridges the two worlds of the terrorists and the conservative plotters – Philip Bauer. What is the end game here? What “shipment” is coming from Las Vegas?

Things are starting to heat up. And Jack is just starting to realize that the price he is paying to save the country may be more than he can personally bear.

SUMMARY:

The hunt is on for poor Morris who has been seized by McCarthy and his Ditzy Blonde girfriend. Bill tasks Chloe with uplinking to the satellite to see if they can’t track McCarthy’s car but something is terribly wrong. Chloe has lost her geek magic! She is no longer Super Geek but a mere shadow of a geek, an ordinary low rent techie who can’t even access a super secret military satellite – something any geek worth their salt could do with their eyes closed.

Chloe insists she’s fine but she is obviously distraught over the kidnapping of her beloved ex husband. When Bill asks what the problem is she snaps, “The only problem is people like you bothering me when I’m trying to do my job.”

Being inured to Chloe’s pungent personality, Bill simply shakes his head and slinks away. It is finally up to Milo to shoo Chloe away and take over after Jack, who is circling the area where Morris was abducted in a helicopter, wonders out loud why the geeks at CTU can’t do something as simple as uplinking to a top secret military satellite.

Right away Milo finds McCarthy’s car proving that Milo is not without some geek gifts himself. He vectors the helicopter toward the vehicle and, after McCarthy realizes the helicopter is after him, a wild chase ensues in suburban Los Angeles with Ditzy Blonde weaving in and out of traffic, crossing the center line, and nearly getting killed several times. What Ditzy Blonde and McCarthy don’t seem to realize is that the helicopter, being several hundred feet up and capable of flying about 4 times as fast as the car, easily stays with their efforts at escape.

That is, until McCarthy ducks under an interchange and pulls off the road. While McCarthy looks for another car so they can ditch the helo, Morris works on Ditzy Blonde. He tells her about McCarthy’s connection to the nukes. This seems to make an impression on the clueless woman – that is until McCarthy makes a much bigger impression. He reminds her of the $7 million Fayed will pay them for Morris. Jack goes to ground too late to ID McCarthy’s new vehicle and once again, the trail goes cold for CTU.

You can almost see those rusty wheels turning in Blondie’s head when Fayed calls and demands to know where his nuclear enabler is. McCarthy assures him they are on the way and Fayed gives him the address of an apartment building nearby to bring him. After punching the address into his TomTom, a light bulb appears above Blondie’s head and she gets a scathingly brilliant idea; why share that $7 mill when it could all be hers? Ditzy may not be smart but she has a gun and uses it. McCarthy will not help set off nukes no more forever.

At the White House, Lennox is having a cow about the President rejecting his plan to scrap the Constitution and replace it with his idea of a “No Muslims Need Apply” America. He figures that since he has no more influence with the President, that he should resign. His aide Reed tries to talk him out of it but Lennox orders the young man to draft a resignation letter for him.

And here, as in past seasons of 24, we are treated to the shocker that the most innocuous of people harbor the deadliest of agendas. In a phonecon with Carson who could be either a lobbyist or bureaucrat, we discover that Reed is part of a dark conspiracy that is about to take “extreme measures” against the President so that Lennox’s plan will be initiated. Reed is ordered to feel Lennox out on joining the conspiracy so that the plotters can maintain their access at the highest levels of the executive branch.

At CTU, Bill is informed of Graem’s death and he immediately tells Jack. Jack appears unmoved by the news, more concerned with Maryiln’s reaction as well as his dad’s. And when Marylin arrives, it is left to Bill to break the news of her husband’s death to her. She takes it rather well all things considered. Josh however (who speculation threads are hot with guesses as to whether or not he is somehow actually Jack’s son) grieves over the loss.

At Fayed’s apartment, the Ditzy Blonde delivers Morris to the terrorist and immediately demands her money or McCarthy will “give him up” to the Feds. Not batting an eyelash, Fayed tells her that she’ll get her money after Morris reprograms the trigger on the nuke. Poor Blondie is totally clueless what she has walked into here. Her lifespan is now measured in minutes.

We’re really beginning to like Morris. He’s a male Chloe only blessed with interpersonal skills and a sense of humor. When Fayed orders him to reprogram the nuke trigger, Morris shoots back, “Not bloody likely, mate.” Of course Fayed socks him one. And each refusal brings more pain, progressively worse while Blondie begins to feel sick realizing for the first time that she is in far over her head.

Meanwhile, picked up by a trailing TAC team near the underpass, Jack and the boys find McCarthy’s body on a quiet suburban street along with his phone. Bill orders Jack to download the phone’s info to the CTU’s computers and let Milo work a little geek magic and retrieve recent phone numbers and locales. But something is wrong. Milo is good. He is wise in the ways of the geek. But he is not a geek warrior, a true Super Geek. Seeing Milo’s distress in being unable to crack the phone’s encryption protocols, it’s Chloe to the rescue. Snapping out of her funk over Morris, Chloe dons her Super Geek cape and tights and begins to work some truly remarkable geek miracles. After telling us about the National Security Agency surreptitiously backing up every cell phone call in the US and relaying it to a satellite (causing civil liberty advocates’ heads to explode all over America), she finds the call from Fayed and immediately gets the address of the building it originated from. Jack races to the address to save Morris.

Back at the White House, Assad shows up for a meeting with the President. Both men look very uncomfortable – the terrorist and the President forced by circumstance to work together and neither one very happy about it. Palmer, as the aggrieved party, demands that Assad prove his bona fides by making a televised address asking for the assistance of radical Muslims around the world and in the United States in getting the nukes and Fayed or there will be war – not just against terrorists but against nations that sponsor them as well.

I don’t know about you but if a nuke went off on American soil, I don’t think any President in their right mind would be having a conversation like this even if a terrorist leader was seeking “peace.” And there is a distinctly unreal quality to this notion that Lennox and the national security apparatus would be more concerned with domestic security than in blowing the terrorists and the nations that enable them to kingdom come. But in service to the storyline about jailing innocent Muslims, reality is sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

Jack makes it to Fayed’s apartment building and deploys his team. The problem is that there are more than 100 apartments that need searching. A way must be found to narrow their search considerably.

For Morris, rescue can’t come too soon. After giving us a demonstration of “waterboarding,” Fayed still can’t get the snark out of Chloe’s boy toy who continues to refuse to cooperate. The terrorist then decides to use a drill to convince Morris to give in. Truly horrific. And effective. Seeing this is too much for Blondie, she begs Fayed to let her go, foreswearing the money owed her in exchange for her freedom. This obviously disgusts Fayed who doesn’t trust anyone who would so easily give up $7 million and he turns around a drills a hole in Ditzy Blonde’s head with a bullet. For Morris who perhaps finally realizes he is going to die, it only takes one drilling through his shoulder to make him give in and agree to do Fayed’s bidding.

Jack has decided on a course of action to determine which apartment holds the terrorists. When in doubt, use the fire drill gambit. Chloe hacks into the city services computer and sets off the fire alarm for the building.

With the alarm, Fayed realizes that the jig is up but, like any good leader in a crisis, knows there is time before CTU can figure out where they are. He puts Morris to work reprogramming the trigger.

Back at the White House, Lennox can’t believe his eyes. He’s just gotten the memo on Assad’s upcoming speech:

“Not only are we providing free air time to a mass murderer, an avowed enemy of democracy, but we’re proving terrorism works.”

Good points but too late to do anything about it. Reed comes in and feels out Lennox about the plot. He is very cautious and guarded in how he broaches the idea of overthrowing or killing the President but Lennox still bristles at the idea. Simply saying he was “musing out loud,” Reed goes back to his office to write the resignation letter after Lennox appears to reject the conspiracy out of hand.

Back at Fayed’s apartment building, CTU narrows down their options and by process of elimination, hits the jackpot. Morris, goaded on by Fayed, completes his task and watches helplessly as Fayed arms a nuke. Fayed seems satisfied and orders Morris killed. And just when things look blackest for him, CTU TAC springs into action. They blow a hole in the wall, stunning the terrorists inside momentarily. Jack takes the lead pumping a 12 gauge into 2 bad guys while the crack shots with him account for 3 more. The last terrorist, hiding in a doorway, is dispatched when he is flanked by two window crashing TAC team members.

And Fayed? Flown the coop. A ready made escape hatch in the wall leading to the basement and freedom through the sewers allows their nemesis to escape capture. But Fayed was kind enough to leave a little present behind, just a small token of his esteem: an armed and ticking nuke.

Never fear. In CTU’s vast data base are instructions to disarm this particular brand of nuke. Must of been in the file marked “allpurposedisarm.exe.” Chloe pulls up the schematics and talks Jack through the nerve wracking procedure. No clock on the bomb itself so CTU helpfully supplies us one on Chloe’s screen. Working feverishly, Jack does everything that Chloe says but he still can’t access the timing mechanism to shut it off. We then discover that there is an updated disarm file (“fooledya.exe?”) and with Chloe telling him to hurry, Jack successfully disarms the nuke.

And Morris? When Jack finds out that Morris actually built Fayed a trigger, Jack screams into his face “You gave him something that worked?” One of the few times that I’ve seen Jack actually not act solicitously toward someone who had just been through what Morris had to endure. But he has a point. Morris has broken the CTU Code of Heroic Conduct and will have to redeem himself sometime later in the show. Let’s hope he doesn’t have to give his life for that redemption. Morris is one of the more interesting characters on the show.

Lennox gets the update from hell; Fayed escapes, nukes can be armed at will, CTU has no leads on where they are. He reconsiders his opposition to Reed’s poorly disguised “musings” and calls him back to tell him he wants in. The die is cast. And Lennox has crossed his own little Rubicon.

On the run now, Fayed calls his partner in this terrorist enterprise, the Russian General Gredenko. It is here we get the first hint of a wider plot involving a shipment of something from Las Vegas, presumably not poker chips. A hint might be that a lot of nuclear testing has been done in Nevada over the years but who knows? Maybe it’s poker chips after all?

At CTU, the hunt swings toward trying to track Gredenko. The agency’s data wizards spring into action trying to find him. An email fragment found on a hard drive at McCarthy’s gives them a clue that Gredenko is in Los Angeles. Jack (who received some interesting stares from CTU employees when he walked in either because everyone thinks he killed his own brother or because they haven’t seen him for two years) decides to go down to the morgue and talk to his dad about Gredenko.

Philip Bauer is deleting numbers from Graem’s phone. An interesting activity considering that someone – CTU, the police, perhaps the janitor – should have secured Graem’s personal effects as part of the evidence chain of custody as would occur in any criminal case. No matter. Jack is still clueless about dear old dad’s perfidy. Lying through his teeth, Philip denies knowing much about Gredenko, pointing to Graem’s dead body and saying “Whatever you needed to know, died with him.” .

Jack sees Marilyn and apologizes for killing her husband. Marilyn tells him that she’s been trying to leave Graem for years but that he threatened to cut her off from Josh if she did. It’s obvious she is pining for Jack which may set up an interesting conversation between her and Audrey when Jack’s flame makes an appearance later in the show.

And now the parameters of the plot are completely fleshed out when we discover that the nexus of all of this criminal, treasonous activity centers around Philip Bauer. Philip calls Carson about CTU being on to Gredenko. He orders that Gredenko be killed at all costs.

So Philip is not only involved with selling the nukes to Fayed, he is at the center of the plot to get rid of Wayne Palmer. What are the connections between the two? All we know is that Philip has some grand design that will be revealed shortly.

Back at CTU, Bill has a sit down with Jack about the death of Graem. Bravely, Jack takes full responsibility, even going so far as to insist that Bill not alter his report to protect him. Jack will take the consequences of his actions but he assures Bill he didn’t want to kill Graem. This may be true up to a point. Even Jack says he lost control when Graem admitted to killing David Palmer and his friends. But, you know, stuff happens. Jack reminds Bill that he didn’t think he could do the job anymore but Bill once again convinces him to stay on.

At the White House, Palmer reviews Assad’s speech remarking that it appeared to be “too religious.” Assad explained that since that was the worldview of most of the terrorists he would be addressing, he must talk to them in those terms. The President then receives a call from Noah the Veep who is upset that Lennox’s plan for concentration camps and mass roundups of innocent Americans was shot down. Patiently, Palmer starts to explain but the Veep doesn’t want to hear him. He says flat out that the President is weak and that he’s a fool to boot. Referring to Assad’s upcoming speech, the Veep says “The man has murdered countless innocents over the past 20 years and you are putting your hope for the country’s safety on him?”

Well…not exactly. But close enough to the truth to make Palmer uncomfortable. The Veep then reminds the President that the reason he was put on the ticket was because people thought he might be weak on national security. Now that he’s seen him in action, the Veep is forced to agree with that assessment. “Is that all?” asks the President? They hang up and you realize that Palmer has one more major league headache to worry about with the Vice President.

In fact, Assad suggests the President watch his back, that these are men who will stop at nothing in opposing him.”They will come after you,” he tells the President. Palmer doesn’t believe such things could happen in America. He’s right of course. But don’t tell Hollywood that.

Down in the bowels of the White House, in a power maintenance room, Lennox is initiated into the plot by Reed. He has a thousand questions. Reed doesn’t have many answers. He does say that the Vice President is not involved although we can’t quite believe that. When Lennox says exactly what is being proposed, Reed answers “Definitive Action.” A military coup? Assassination? Whatever is going to be done, the Vice President will be in charge before long, that’s the important thing says Reed. He wants Lennox to give him the President’s itinerary relating to Assad’s speech which leads us to believe it will indeed be an assassination attempt of some kind. Lennox agrees to get it but still appears a little wishy washy. Will he jump ship and help the plotters? Or will he stay loyal to the President and the Constitution. Suddenly, Tom’s character is becoming much more interesting.

Back at CTU, After Jack starts asking her about Gredenko, Marilyn tells Jack that one night, when she suspected Graem of cheating on her, she followed him to a house where she heard him speaking to people who talked with a Russian accent. Agreeing to help Jack find the house, Marylin asks Philip to look after Josh. Philip, who finds out that CTU may get to Gredenko before his goons can find and kill him, suggests that Josh come with him back to his house. We realize immediately that young Josh is about to become a pawn in Philip’s game – especially when Philip calls Carson and tells him to find a house in West Los Angeles, presumably to set a trap for Jack.

Chloe sees Morris in the infirmary and tries to snap him out of his self pitying mode. When her pep talks seems to be falling flat, she slaps him across the face. But Morris appears too far gone into feeling sorry for himself, calling himself a coward. Chloe tells him to get back to work because the techies are going to be short handed what with Milo joining Jack in the hunt for Gredenko.

And that hunt takes a bad turn when Philip calls Marilyn who is in Jack’s car trying to remember the route she took following Graem. Telling her to keep Jack in the dark about who is on the line, he calmly informs her that if she doesn’t do exactly as he says, Josh will die. He convinces Marilyn that he will kill his own grandson by telling her that he’s already killed her husband. Shocked, Marilyn agrees to Philips terms. As they pass Gredenko’s house, she almost tells Jack about her troubles but decides against it.

In that house, Gredenko lets on that the nuke plot was really hatched as revenge for America winning the cold war. He says, “Russia lost the cold war because they were afraid to use these weapons. Today, we will use them and the Arabs will take the blame.”

Could this plot now be an international one? Is this an effort to carry out two coups – one in Russia and one here – that would bring back the cold war and make defense contractors like Philip’s company rich and fat again?

This would be hugely disappointing, a real downer. And Gredenko’s ultimate play has not been revealed yet. But the writers have done worse so I wouldn’t put it past them.

Marilyn takes Jack to the address Philip gave her and is given to Milo for safekeeping while Jack and the 5 TAC team members make their way to the house. Bursting in, they find no one. Just in time, Jack sees the bomb and jumps out of a window. The huge blast levels the house. Seeing this, Milo takes off in the van with Marilyn. Cut off by some of Philip’s thugs, Milo blows up the van and makes his escape on foot with the thugs in hot pursuit.

Jack is down but not out. As he takes off after the van on foot by himself, he realizes that Marilyn has betrayed him. He may not want to know the reason why.

BODY COUNT

A grim night for the Grim Reaper.

McCarthy gets his just desserts.
Ditzy Blonde gets a second hole in the head.
6 of Fayed’s men are martyred.
3 CTU agents killed in blast

That last is taken from scenes from next week’s show where Jack says he lost “more than half” of his team. Since he had 5 men with him, we can logically assume 3 bit the dust.

TOTALS:

Jack: 6
Show: 365