Liveblogging 24 again this week. I'll keep it up as long as strength and interest remains, although many people are leaving this show due to its implausible and redonkulous plot-lines. As I've always said, when you've lost Jen, you've lost America.

****** Major spoilers below the fold ******

Beep. beep. beep. beeeeeeee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eep

Previously on 24: Taylor frets over geopolitical minutia. There's too much Taylor in these previouslies; that can't be a good sign. Dana does some dumb things. Bazhaev is cruel; he beats one son and shoots another dead. Vladamir makes the moves on DarkRenee. Jack looks smashing in his big glasses and some NOW! DROP IT! imperatives.

And now to the show. In the past few minutes Taylor has gotten unanimous support for the treaty. So all that fretting was for . . . ? She fields questions from a diplomat with a plumy British accident. Taylor spills the beans about the unsecured nuclear rods, the whole "they're here on our soil. CTU is running an undercover operation", and, Madame President, what if Plumy is a mole? Stranger things have happened.

Jack rides, gun trained on his Russian goon, and refuses backup from Cole. Of course. CTU could really, really save a lot of budget by just hiring . . . Jack (well, and Chloe too, but that's it). There are some good Jack-isms in here, and I need more of Jack.

"You're not in a position to make demands," Jack tells me.

Arlo watches Jack do his thing, while Dana runs off because Kevin is calling her on her phone. "No biggie," Arlo grouses, "we're just dealing with unsecured nuclear materials." Seriously. Arlo's a sexually-harassing piece of bleaugh, but he has a really good point.

Arlo tries to talk to Chloe about this, but she brushes him off, calling him a "stalker who's about to get fired". Go Chloe. Hastings wants Dana and Chloe in his office.

Meanwhile, GermanJack walks into Vlad's DesertedCrimeWarehouse, with a gun on the Russian Goon. Why don't Vlad and the other goons just kill Jack and Goon 1? Maybe Goon 1 is important to them, but all the other goons who have already been offed haven't lowered Vlad's mood much thus far.

Jack gives his gun to Vlad (Whazzat?!) and demands to speak to Renee alone. Goon #1 logically tells Vlad that they should take Jack out. He makes his case a bit too strongly, calling Renee a bad name and getting a death threat in return. Ah, love.

Jack tells Renee that he has authorization to pull her out. She protests and Vlad stops the conversation so they can do the deal.

Meanwhile, Dana walks off to one of the many unsupervised, deserted conference rooms in CTU NY and pulls up a monitor as she walks Kevin through his crime. "This is getting on my last nerve," says my wife. She (Dana, not my wife) gives him (Kevin) the security code to yet another abandoned warehouse/building. Oh, I almost forgot, his sleezy, bearded sidekick is with him.

There's got to be a security guard somewhere, right? She directs Kevin to the chain-link bin where the money is. That's bin number THREE ONE ZERO ONE, not THREE ONE ONE ZERO, dork. Dana is irritated. Kevin enters the code she's given him, and heads to the bin where the money is. They get it.

"Call me when you're clear," she says. They have fifteen minutes.

Kevin grins and says "don't worry, I will" or something cheerfully menacing like that. But his sidekick doesn't want to leave just yet. I smell trouble.

****** Commercial ******

OK, we're back, Jack and Renee are waiting pensively while Vlad makes some phone calls and orders Renee to "cut some bread" for him. And that's not Russian criminal slang. He means literally slice some bread. He also takes vodka shots and cuddles Renee a bit while she fills his bread request. Jack is holding it together but he is SO jeal. Vlad is really probing Jack to DTR¹; so what went on between Jack and Renee in Mexico? Jack tells him what he thinks of that so Vlad orders Russian Goon #1 to lead him out. They make Jack sit down under the guard of Russian Goon #2.

Now, back to Bazhaev: He is demanding that Father Gregor bury his son, who is lying in state. Bazhaev says that his son is like a soldier who died on the battlefield.

"Is that how he died? In battle?" questions Gregor. I would have thought the bullet holes would tell him that. Bazhaev demands his son be buried "with all the prayers".

Josef is in a back room, snitting. He's very angry at his dad, because he killed his brother. Bazhaev explains, "you don't know why I'm doing this, because when I die, I want to leave you and your family a wealthy inheritance, respect, etc." Someday Josef will understand. It was all for the children. They hug.

A goon walks in with a cellphone. Vlad's on the line. Bazhaev is not happy, and demands to be called during working hours, not at 10:20pm. Vlad asks about the nuclear rods and says "I have a buyer here". Bazhaev denies having the rods and says "nobody deals in nuclear arms anymore. Nobody." Vlad gives up, as Renee tells him to call more people. She promises him some noogie once he's made more calls. Vlad is so dumb.

Back to Bazhaev, who is freaking out. He calls someone in a truck and tells him he needs to stop. Truck Goon radios forward to "Anton" and tells him they need to stop. So they stop.

It's 10:24. And we have to stop. For . . .

****** A commercial ******

10:29. Back to Hassan, who is looking at black and white pictures of his political enemies. President Taylor calls him and doesn't understand why he hasn't rejoined her, and why he's arresting everything on two legs, including his good friend, Mr. Delegate. Hassan says some reassuring things to her and they hang up.

Taylor's worried. "How do you think he sounded?"

"Not like himself," responds her chief of staff, who's name I forget.

Meanwhile, Hassan's chief of staff reveals that he's been torturing Mr. Delegate, personally, and he thinks Mr. Delegate doesn't know anything. So Hassan, who is channeling Jack Bauer this season, evidently, commands him to go after Mr. Delegate's family. His chief of staff refuses, because even torturers have their principles, and Hassan relents, and sends him on his way, although he asks the chief of staff's sidekick to stay, which means we can probably say goodbye to the chief of staff. I'm calling him "chief of staff", but actually, I'm not sure if that's his role after all. Wasn't that Fredo's role? I dunno. All I know is this guy is in big trouble, because Hassan has now given some directions to sidekick, reversing his original order about Mr. Delegate's family and also asking this dude to investigate the Chief of Staff.

Meanwhile, Kevin is being held at gunpoint by his (it turns out) extremely mentally challenged sidekick, because it's just a water gun (ha ha) but they're still in deep trouble because an alarm is sounding. By the way, I'm no ballistics expert, but I think even I could tell the difference between the finely machined metal barrel of a glock and the black plastic pinhole of a water gun. Kevin doesn't know the difference, though he stood his ground pretty well even when he was thinking it was curtains for him. I guess I have to commend him for that.

Meanwhile, Dana calls Kevin and is really ticked off at him for being dumb, as am I. A cop is patrolling the place, and what a mess they've made. Dana tells Kevin he's going to have to "slip past the cop", somehow. Sidekick interprets this to mean "whack the cop senseless with a big piece of wood." But the cop has already called in the crime, so now they REALLY need to get out of there.

It's 10:36. My fingers hurt.

****** commercial ******
10:40, and we're back. Jack is still just sitting there. It's been a long time since he did anything interesting.

Hassan's Chief of Staff (Tarun is his name) goes to Hassan's daughter's apartment, They embrace, so they must be an item. Tarun is upset about what Hassan is doing, but Hassan's daughter is not buying it. "You're father is a great man, but . . . " he's planning on torturing me.

Some of Hassan's goons are at the door. I'm sick of goons! This show has too many goons, don't you think? More Jack please! Anyway, Hassan's goons are looking for Tarun. She denies he's there, but Tarun comes out and faces down the goons. You can tell they don't want to arrest him, but they are all too scared of Hassan to disobey him. Dalia wants to talk to her dad, but he's given orders not to be disturbed. Tarun is marched off (to be tortured, I assume).

Meanwhile, Jack just sits in the warehouse. Oh wait, he's now standing. I can hardly contain myself.

Vlad is continuing to call, but there are no sellers of nuclear material to be found. Vlad has completely gone through his black book, which he's OK with, because Jack stupidly wired five million into his account already and that's pretty good for a night's work and a few dead goons. He wants to get frisky with Renee, but she is having none of it. "Keep calling!" she demands, and insults him by telling him that he has zero chance with her. He's had enough of her, so he punches her to the ground, where she finds a random knife on the floor (I'm always finding sharp knives on my floor too) and stabs about 1000 holes in Vlad, with the first one in his FACE, and then she STABS JACK who heard the commotion and has run in to help . . . directly into her blade! Russian Goon #1 walks in, but Jack RIPS the knife out of his OWN GUT and FLINGS IT AT RUSSIAN GOON #1's THROAT. One goon down. Now, what to do about the others? Jack grabs a gun and blows all fifty of them away, shooting through the plastic walls. Meanwhile, Renee is losing it. Jack embraces her, sweating the way he always does when he's just been stabbed/tortured/irradiated/withdrawing from heroin/etc. Seriously, he's got an abdomen wound. Get him to a hospital NOW!

Or, go to a . . .

****** Commercial ******

We're back for the final segment. In the split-screens, Dana looks severely bummed, Vlad is dead, and Bazhaev frets.

Jack dresses his abdominal KNIFE WOUND non-chalantly while he speaks matter of factly with Hastings, who is being an incredulous jerk. Jack calls on Cole to "do forensics" on the abandoned Russian Goon warehouse. Hastings asks Dana what she thinks, but she's too pre-occupied by the mind-numbing stupidity of her ex-boyfriend to be of much help.

Meanwhile, Renee, suddenly docile, thanks Jack for covering for her. She knows she lost it.

"I could have killed you." Wait, you STABBED HIM IN THE ABDOMEN! Jack is not acting the way I would if that had happened to me. I've heard knife wounds to the gut are unbelievably painful. He puts a Barney Bandaid on it and he's fine?

Jack Bauer is . . . . . AWESOME!

Oh, he's been speaking tenderly to Renee all this time, but I'm just too amazed by the amazing Bauerness of all this to have taken the time to capture the conversation. Jack thinks he hears CTU arrive, so he heads out to the warehouse, but it turns out it's just more Russian goons (Bazhaev's goons this time). Jack is as agile as ever, even with a soon-to-be-infected bleeding abdomen wound, and he runs back into the room with Renee, and swiftly concocts a plan to continue the undercover op. He tells Renee to hide and hands her a gun. "This door opens again, you start shooting."

Russian goon: "What happened here?" Jack calls "Don't shoot!" as he opens a door where he's been "hiding". Jack claims to have killed Vlad and everyone else (well, that's mostly true) but somehow convinces the incredibly obtuse Russian goons not to shoot him. They do decide to search the place, because they aren't completely dumb. Oh wait, they are, because they don't bother to check the door behind which Renee is hiding.

Split screens: Kevin and Dodo drive off, drinking liquor from brown bags and laughing. They're having more fun than everyone else in the split screens, who just look pensive.

Meanwhile, Cole has arrived at the warehouse with a CTU "tac team". And, uh, oh. Jack's last instructs to Renee were to shoot anything that opens her door. So these dude's are doomed.

Oh wait, Renee decides to give herself up to CTU, rather than follow Jack's orders.

By the way, somehow Jack and the Russian goons cleared out within about ten seconds. Renee tells Cole that Jack has left with the goons, and CTU has no idea where he is because their overhead drones have not seen any vehicles leave.

Turns out the Russians and Jack are in an underground tunnel, of course. They load Jack into a black van.

And that's it.

Next week: Jack meets up with Bazhaev. It doesn't look good, because they're stringing him up for some electro-torture. Dana confesses to Cole, so hopefully that plotline is almost done.

Ha ha ha ha. I crack myself up. My prediction: out of love for Dana, Cole will be dragged into a foolish orbit around the deep, deep gravity-well of Dana's stupidity.

¹ Define The Relationship