TV Recaps

24 3:00 to 4:00 (6x10)
Gredenko is at a location with abandoned aircraft - it looks like the famous Boneyard in the Mojave desert where many airlines "mothball" their old planes and strip them for parts. He's annoyed with Fayed and can't wait to be rid of them. The President pressures a middle eastern countries' ambassador to get his Prime Minister to support Assad's upcoming call for peace. Jack tells CTU he's going to talk to Logan. Milo's having trouble working. Logan, under house arrest, offers to help track down another Russian who can help find Gredenko. The assassins tie up Tom Lennox and assemble a bomb disguised to look like a tape recorder, which the slimeball assistant chief of staff plants on the podium where Assad and the President are about to give their speech.

• Ending in Inviso-text: Assad notices the bomb and dives for cover as it explodes, demolishing the briefing room. The President is down.

Heroes - Company Man (1x17)
This show gets better and better. Matt and Radioactive Man are trying to download HRG's home computer when the family comes home and it's Radioactive Man's idea to grill him in front of his family. RM starts grilling HRG about what he does, where he works, and what he's done to them, demanding to know how he can make them forget. Claire knows. Matt's not sure, but hears Claire think that the Haitian wiped all their memories. Matt asks the question HRG is thinking - why didn't the Haitian wipe Claire's mind? In a flashback to 15 years ago, HRG's first partner in his new job to find and contain the "Freaks?" None other than Claude Raines, Peter's new invisible friend. They have the baby Claire - they took her from a fire starter (who they think died) and HRG's boss and HIRO'S FATHER SULU are on the rooftop of the building in New York when Sulu tells HRG (who speaks flawless Japanese) to raise Claire as his own. Whew! Oh, and a young Hiro is in the background, playing his Gameboy. In the present, Claire and Matt get up to speed - she tells him she can heal and he tells her that Peter Patrelli told him to save the cheerleader. They both agree her father is up to something bad. RM wants some answers and is going to shoot the forgetful wife before Matt hears HRG in his head telling him to shoot Claire SO HE DOES. They take her upstairs, where she heals and spits out the bullet. Matt and HRG leave to check out Primatech and RM stays behind to keep the family hostage. In another flashback (14 years ago), HRG's boss (Eric Roberts) arranges for "a new kid we just found in Haiti" to come to HRG's house and make his wife forget she was snooping around his stuff and found a gun and sedation kit. In the present, RM figures out Claire's not dead when she tries to rescue them, then goes nuclear when HRG, Matt, the Hatian and Eric Roberts all show up. Everyone else flees but Claire runs in, saves her surrogate father, stabs RM with a sedative, then walks outside ALL SERIOUSLY CRISPY AND BURNED before healing as she walks across the lawn in front of everyone in her entire neighborhood.

• Ending in Inviso-text: HRG and Eric Roberts discuss what to do with Claire as HRG turns her over to the Company. They have RM and Matt captured and sedated at Primatech. HRG drives Claire out to the desert, then the Haitian shoots him in the stomach and erases his memory so the Company can't find her. Claire and the Haitian go on the run. In the preview, we get a glimpse of Linderman, Hiro gets his sword, and oh, yeah, almost forgot. Simone's not dead.
  

Prison Break
Burrows, Scofield and Sara listen to the stolen tape (no, not the stolen DATA tapes, that's something different) and evidently it's good. We don't hear it so I can't speak to it. They decide to broker the information to one Cooper Green, an ex-associate of their late father. Mike meets with him and figures out he's a fake just before Sara brings the real Cooper Green to their hotel room. He listens to the tape - it can't be authenticated, but he suggests they use it to blackmail the Pres. The sneaky dude buys a big gun and finds a nice cozy spot to shoot the Pres.

• Ending in Inviso-text:And the Agent from Invasion tracks the brothers to their hotel and races up the stairs to corner them.

American Idol
Don't care about any of these folks yet, so can't say who I'm pulling for other than to say that after last week's show, ALL the boys can go home except for Hurley from Lost and the Beat Box guy. The rest were horrible, especially compared to the girls.

TV Recaps for the Week

Sorry about the delay - lots on this week to get caught up on. Here's the recaps. Don't read these if you're spoiler-averse, but I've put the real spoilers in Inviso-text...

Prison Break
Not on this week.

24 - 1:00 to 2:00 (6x08) and 2:00 to 3:00 (6x09)
Two hours on tonight. Hour One: Morris, the only person in Los Angeles who can evidently build a bomb trigger, is whisked away by McCarthy and his hottie girlfriend to be delivered to Abu Fayed. Jack is in a chopper and hot on their heels but loses them - he doesn't seem too broken up over hearing his brother died in custody. The hottie kills McCarthy and takes Morris to Fayed, hoping to get the $7 million and keep it for herself. Like I always say, don't deliver a hostage to a terrorist organization who just set off a NUKE and expect them to keep their end of your monetary bargain. Needless to say, Fayed kills her and tortures Morris until he agrees to build the device. Meanwhile, President Palmer/Principal Wood (comment if you can name that reference) convinces Assad (who looks just like Baltar, I think) to make a public call for help in catching the terrorists. Jack finds Morris and A SUITCASE NUKE and is too busy disarming the weapon to catch Fayed, who escapes with the other nukes and "a fully armed and operational battle station"...uh, I mean nuclear trigger. Good one, Morris - couldn't fake that, could we?

Hour Two: Morris and Jack return to CTU, where Buchanan questions Bauer on what led up to his brother's death. Nathan Patrelli's wife who is named Marilyn on this show tells Jack that she'd been trying to leave Graem for a while but was too scared. Oh, and she followed him to a house once where she heard him talking to some Russians. Talk about a convenient lead! Since CTU is looking for Gredenko now, Jack offers to take Marilyn out (no, not like that) and see if she can remember the house. Ha Ha! Good one! She tells Zephram Cochrane, who immediately gets his goons to plan an ambush. Why doesn't he just go back to teaching pigs to herd sheep? Meanwhile, various folks are planning a coup in DC, sensing the President is weak. Jack and Marilyn arrive at the house and Jack and his team head inside and it blows up GOOD. Marilyn and Milo, the techie dude flee, chased by Jack's father's goons. Follow all that?

• Ending in Inviso-text: Jack escapes. Didn't see that coming, did you? Oh, and we find out that Gredenko set up this whole thing and that the Muslims are the fallguys for his plan to strike with nukes in America. Guess he's still sore about the whole Cold War thing.

Heroes - Run (1x15)
Not the best episode ever, with most of the show given over to Claire's annoying Mom and the pointless pursuit of a pink bag. Nathan arrives in Texas, meets with Claire's Mom, who blackmails him for money and decides to only share a small portion with her daughter. Sylar kills a dude that can melt things and pretends to be him with Mohinder shows up to interview the dead guy. Claire's mom is having mental problems, probably from having her head melted one too many times from the Haitian. Matt, the mind-reading cop, gets a gig as a personal bodyguard to the weasley dude that let Niki out of jail last week. Funny look on his face when she (now she is a killer for hire) shows up to kill him at a botched diamond purchase. Ow, and Niki throws Matt out of the window of a ten-story building.

• Ending in Inviso-text: Matt wakes up on the catwalk of a sign outside the building - talk about luck - then goes back inside and retrieves the diamonds. Ha ha, now he's rich and psychic! And Niki gets her next assignment: Nathan Patrelli.

Studio 60 - The Friday Night Slaughter (1x15)
I love this show, but too many things happen to recount. I counted seven active storylines going on this week, but I'll hit the highlights. It's mostly a flashback episode to 1999 showing how Matt and Harry met and started working together at Studio 60 - Matt spends most of the episode remembering how he was a low-on-the-totem-pole writer and she was the new "talent." I did enjoy Matt and Luke (yes, that's the same guy directing the Anita Pallenberg film in the present) bickering over who has "dibs" and each trying to out-write and out-pitch each other with competing sketch ideas for Harry. Matt feels sorry for a fellow writer, Tim Batale, who is fired for taking drugs. In the present, Matt's losing it and high and everyone can tell because he's babbling and not making sense and talking about the things he's remembering.

• Good Catch of the Week: HA HA I'm a freaking genius! The guy Matt is imagining? Tim Batale? HIS NAME IS AN ANAGRAM OF MATT ALBIE! ANYONE ELSE GET THAT?

• Ending in Inviso-text: Luke's sketch gets on the air and Matt's doesn't and he realizes he's been imagining this Tim Batale all along. And Matt's high and taking even more drugs now.

Lost - Flashes in My Mind (3x7)
Desmond saves Clair from drowning and Charlie and Hurley confront him about his newly-emerged precognition. He tells them that after he turned the key in the hatch, he blacked out and woke up in what appeared to be his old apartment in London with Penelope there. In what turns out to be a dream, he keeps getting reminders about things that happened on the island. He meets with Penny's father (Widmore) who is also the head of the Meade family on Ugly Betty, who tells him he's not good enough. He tries to change his life but an old lady from the Matrix explains to him that it is his fate to go to the Island and push the button and nothing he does can change that. Long story short, Desmond's reliving his past and it's a dream and he wakes up in the woods and now he gets occasional flashes of the future.

• This week's hidden clues: 1-NAMASTE in the painting in Widmore's office - according to wikipedia, "Namaste" is sometimes used in the context of practicing Yoga as a greeting or goodbye, generally taken as an expression of good will. 2-Even though it was part of the flashback, we can assume that Desmond really DID see Charlie playing music on the street outside the Widmore building.

• Ending in Inviso-text: Desmond has been running around saving folks because he's trying to save Charlie, who he's convinced will die. And he tells Charlie. Not the news Charlie was hoping for, I bet.

Monday TV Recaps

Monday nights has gotten rough for the old TV watcher as there are 5 things on I normally watch. Here's what I do:

1. Watch Prison Break live in HD,
2. Watch 24 live in low-def while I tape Heroes in HD,
3. Watch recorded Heroes in HD while I tape Studio 60 in HD and CSI-Miami in low-def,
4. Watch recorded Studio 60 in HD.
5. Watch CSI-Miami sometime later.

Whew! Why do I watch all these shows? Because they're great? Here's the recaps. Don't read these if you're spoiler-averse, but I've put the real spoilers in Inviso-text...

Prison Break: "Prisoners on a Train" is what this should have been called as our main characters spend almost the entire episode on a train. The fugitives reunite with the tasty Sara Tancreti and she's less-than-excited that they are now running buddies with the Agent who tried to drown her four episodes ago. Needless to say, the first chance she gets she tries to kill him. After, she and Wentworth Miller almost get it on in the ladies bathroom before the cops try to stop the train with a roadblock. IT'S A TRAIN! For the future, in case you need to know, you can't stop a train with two Ford Tauruses. I fast forwarded through the other storylines as I could care less. Turns out the President didn't call the Agent to try and bring him in - his Asian boss was using a voice-modulator to fake her voice. Coolage! Ending in Inviso-text: I can't remember the ending. Pretty boring.

24 Season 6: Ha Ha This was a better episode than last week, where no much of nothing happened that I didn't even recap it. Jack and Zephram Cochrane escape they're execution with relative ease (more on that later) and Cochrane turns to his sons and slowly nods his head. "That'll do, Jack. That'll do." Okay, that didn't really happen, but I couldn't help myself. They catch Jack's brother Graem back at his house and torture him and he ADMITS TO KILLING DAVID PALMER or at least setting it all up. He tells Jack he had Tony and Michelle killed and tried to pin it all on Jack. Great look on Jack's face when he realizes his own family would stoop that low. Ending in Inviso-text: Shocker-turns out Jack's daddy is bad. He doesn't believe Graem will be able to resist CTU questioning and kills him. Yuck.

Heroes: Claire lies to her mom and brings Zack with her to meet her mom, who turns out to be a firestarter but isn't named Charlie and doesn't work for the company. She can light her cigarettes with her fingers, though - think of all the money she saves on matches! CLICK ON CLAIRE'S PICTURE TO SEE HER FICTIONAL MYSPACE PAGE. Doctor Who helps Peter try to learn how to control his powers and convinces him that no one in the world cares for him, including talking him into spying on his girlfriend who is hanging around the painter, hoping he can help her find Peter after he disappeared from his hotel room. Endings in Inviso-text: Doctor Who pushes Peter off a building, hoping to make him fly. Instead, he falls to his death but REGENERATES even though Claire is 2,000 miles away. Doctor Who tells him that his body can remember how to do all these special things, he just has to learn how to control it. And I saw this coming two weeks ago, but Claire's mom the firestarter calls Claire's dad to let him know that Clair tracked her down. It's Nathan Patrelli. I guess he has a thing for blonds. And that makes Peter Claire's uncle. Yuck. Oh, and did anyone else notice the licence plate on Hiro's father's (played by George Takei, Sulu on the original Star Trek) car? That's right - NCC-1701, the Starfleet number for the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Nice one, guys!

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: Trapped on the Roof part 2 as Jordan and Danny verbally spar. Matt and Harry continue to argue at the dinner and Jack and the mouse help the viola prodigy up off the floor and back to Studio 60 to sober up. Ending in Inviso-text: Jordan confesses to Danny her feelings for him and they kiss. Harry and Matt end things for good (supposedly) and Jack gets the Asian Businessman's backing to stall the Macua deal. If any of that doesn't make sense to you, just watch. It's the most densely-plotted show on TV and I'm skipping three other storylines.

If you want real episode recaps instead of my quickies, go where I go: Television without Pity. They are the best.

24 hour 5 - Fallout

24 just keeps getting better. Hour five, broadcast on 1/22, deals with the fallout -- literally -- from the nuclear device that was detonated in Valencia last week just before the end of the episode. Panic grips Los Angeles as images of the ominous mushroom cloud appear on everyone's televisions. Residents are throwing everything they own into Volvo's and Honda's and trying to navigate the southland's notorious roads before the wind changes and sends the lethal fallout their way - Valencia is about twenty miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

The secret service, concerned about his safety, moves the President and his advisors into the underground bunker beneath the White House. Did anyone else think the bunker looked like something out of a 70's Bond film? It looked like the 'secret underground lair' of some evil mastermind - are the folks at 24 trying to imagine that the bunker was built in the 70's and therefore reflects the rounded 'tomorrow-land' architectural style of the time? Anyway, I digress.

Jack Bauer, who quit only moments ago - "Tell the President I'm sorry; I can't do this anymore..." - promptly un-quits when he sees the mushroom cloud. That's what it takes to make Jack angry now. He's seen too many things, he's anesthetized to everything. But this gets him up off the ground again, and he's wandering around, looking for a way to help. He helps a man rescue a person from a downed helicopter perched precariously on top of a house - it was knocked out of the sky by the electromagnetic pulse, Jack helpfully explains. Thanks for the science lesson while at the same time saving people's lives! What a guy!

In DC, the President's sister and her newly-undercover boyfriend are at the Anacostia detention facility and the Feds rough him up for show (over her protestations) so that he can gain the confidence of the other Arabs in the facility. They give him the name of the terrorist leader, Abu Fayed, to drop into conversation to gain their trust. Why these DC folks are involved with Fayed is anyone's guess, considering they've shown Fayed is in possession of the other four suitcase nukes. This feels like an extraneous plot now but it might pay off.

Now Fayed has trouble - his bomb didn't go off where he wanted (he was aiming for a more populated area) and he's lost his primary scientist and the only person who can detonate his bombs. He's forced to try and recruit a new trigger-man as he and his cohorts escape the mushroom cloud through the crowded streets . If he'd been smart, wouldn't there be five bombs in five different cities? And wouldn't he have figured out how to arm and detonate them ahead of time? I don't believe that the only person in the world who could trigger these weapons happened to have been arrested by the U.S. Government and being held in their fictional version of Guantanamo.

Jack and CTU are investigating how Fayed got his suitcase nukes and Jack's father's name comes up on a watch list prepared by CTU. Even though he hasn't spoken to his father in nine years, he calls to talk to him. "Hi, Dad? How's it been? You working with terrorists?" Ha ha - nice reunion. Anyway, Jack can't contact his father, so he calls his brother. Jack has a brother. Who knew. Oh, and by the way, HE'S THE MAIN BADGUY FROM LAST SEASON! HOLY CRAP! It's that creepy ear-phone wearing Graem (pronounced 'Graham' but Jack calls him 'Gray') that was working behind the scenes with President Logan last season. Oh my. And Jack shows up to chat with him about getting in touch with dear old Dad and Graem doesn't know where he is and Jack doesn't believe him so Jack ties him up and starts suffocating him with a plastic bag. Again, holy crap.

By the way, 24 was features on Best Week Ever for having a Holy Crap week, recounting some of the more exciting moments in this week's show. Nice to see one of my shows talking about another one. Makes me feel like we're all one big happy family. Except for Graem, of course.

Here's the official website's minute-by-minute breakdown of the episode. And, as usual, the excellent 24 wiki has everything the consummate 24 fan could ever need in terms of backgrounds, explanations, and information on the show and its characters. And the great Blogs4Bauer is the best blog ring for 24-related websites - this is my favorite 24 gossip site, and they have some great (and twisted) 24-related humor. Good job guys.

Random News

Hey, I read a lot. What can I say.

• Army Active Denial System is a new weapon with a 500-yard range that makes you feel like you're on fire. (CNN)
• WOW: Burning Crusade is selling like gangbusters and is the fastest selling game ever (SciFi.com)
  
• You're not allowed to talk at lunch any more (Brietbart.com)
• Amazing Race 11 is coming - the All Star edition. Watch out for those coal miners! (CBS)
  
• Sailing on the QE2? Don't forget your barf bags (SciTech News)
  
• Get ready to pay through the nose for all those corn tortillas - not to mention popcorn! (MSNBC)
• There's the Space Shuttle and the crew of the Starship Enterprise except for Kirk, who must be taking the picture. But why would anyone buy those green shoes? (Geek Crack)
  
• This crazy Spider Ship makes knots and looks like a big praying mantis skimming along the surface. Extremely coll (Tomorrow's Tech)
  
• Fox doesn't like clips of 24 getting posted to YouTube (Hollywood Reporter)
• Watch out - crazy lights in the sky (Charlotte Observer)
• Huh? Eric Roberts to join the cast of Heroes (SciFi Wire)
• These crazy lights are explained - unmanned Russian cargo ship lifts off for Space Station (SciTech News)
  

Jack Tracker!

Okay, this Google Maps Mashup over at Wayfaring is just the coolest - track Jack Bauer as he runs around Los Angeles, saving the world - again! With great photos from the show, notes on interesting shooting locations, and other trivia. Way sweet!