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This just in: my parents are, as of Sunday night's premiere, brand-new fans of 24. Which means it's more likely than ever that they're going to be reading these recaps. Hi, Mom and Dad! Hope you like them! They'd be better, but spending any more time on them would really cut into my Bible study.
Due to some graphic violence viewer discretion is advised. Somebody should have warned Potato Face.
Previously: Kiefer wanted to bring Witless in to save him from terrorists and also help find DaD. A terrorist overheard the conversation and got to Witless first. TerrorTeen delivered a briefcase and got followed by his idiot girlfriend, which TerrorDad said could bollix up the whole evil plan. Kiefer 2.0 reluctantly brought Kiefer along to pick up Witless, then got his ass killed, so Kiefer had to chase after Witless on his own. Curtis questioned DiCK about DaD and DoDder's kidnapping, which had been perpetrated by terrorists who now want to try DaD for war crimes and execute him on the internet. The following takes place between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM.
We open on Air Force One, looking very impressive indeed as it flies over the ocean. Is someone lost? That might have been a good metaphor for the last year of the Palmer administration. Oh, well. Keeler sits down to a meeting of what looks like whichever Cabinet members and Joint Chiefs happened to be on the plane. Others, including Driscoll, are patched in via video teleconferencing. Keeler brings the new viewers up to speed, with a little analysis thrown in: "Make no mistake: this country is under attack." What's more, "Intelligence indicates that the kidnapping may be a trigger -- the first step in a series of larger attacks." So that explains what the second half of the season will be about. Keeler asks his people what's being done. His campaign manager from last season, Poor Man's Tim Russert, who now appears to be Keeler's Chief of Staff, says that all of DaD's codes and protocols have been changed and the rest of the Cabinet has been sequestered. His maybe-Press-Secretary explains that the major media outlets won't be broadcasting DaD's trial and execution (even Al-Jazeera?), but they can't control the terrorists' use of the internet and they can't shut the 'net down without crippling the government and the economy. Okay, first of all, I barely know enough about the internet to get these recaps to Sars, but even I understand that the internet doesn't have some master switch somewhere that shuts it down. And I would also like to think that the command and control systems we're using aren't quite as 'net-dependent as this scene would lead us to believe. But then the last four years have changed a lot of things that I used to like to think about the government. Poor Man's Tim Russert cuts to the chase: the only way to stop this is to find and rescue DaD. Which puts all the pressure on Driscoll. Keeler asks her how the search is going. Driscoll answers the question as nonchalantly as if Keeler had asked her about remaining storage space on CTU servers, which is so distracting that I don't even hear what she actually told him. Keeler breaks up the meeting, telling everyone that finding DaD is their top priority.