What went wrong?

All season long, I have declared this day Jack’s most thrilling to date. I have written extensively on the subject – drawing particular attention to the expert craftsmanship on display by the show’s writers – who have managed to construct a tightly plotted thrill ride, while deftly maneuvering the tricky potholes that routinely plague this brand of serial entertainment. Each time the mere semblance of a go-nowhere plotline began to emerge – the writer’s erred on the side of caution and swept these sidebars under the rug – steering our attention back to the ‘A’ plot and letting those fledgling plot tendrils wither.

And then in the course of one hour, the house of cards began to waver. Last night, I detected three troubling signs that the show is going off the rails. I’ll parse through them and then I’ll run through the ways in which I feel the show can recover.

Warning Signs
1.   Everything Really Wrapped Up Nicely. Oooh! Much quicker than usual  –  H. Simpson          Poor Vlad Bierko. Having opted to blow the proverbial wad and unleash the remaining 16 canisters via natural gas pipelines, Vlad found himself on the business end of Bauer’s fist – as the C4 Jack used to ignite the gas (and by extension, the entire refinery) laid waste to the rest of Bierko’s fiendish schemes. With the gas gone – and 8 hours remaining on the clock – it would appear the major crisis was averted and we could fill the rest of the time clockwatching and playing Soduko.

2. Bringing Up Baby
Last week, I gave Mook props for predicting the First Lady’s assistant would play a greater role in this story before the day was done. Little did I know it would involve the tired “the bad guys kidnapped my daughter and are threatening to kill her if I don’t do what they want” plotline. And ya’ gotta’ hand it to Robocop. You hang around enough movie sets they start to become your little home away from home. So where does Weller keep the little moppet sequestered? Why, your standard Hollywood Steel Girder and Boiling Vats Factory. While this did lead to a nice action sequence where Bauer and Wayne Palmer dispatched Weller’s sentries throughout the facility – it was the second such site in two straight weeks. These bad guys need to start picking less obvious places to meet up. You’re in LA. What about Venice Beach. You’d blend right in.

3. Pay No Attention to the Man Behind The Curtain
So they have us completely certain that Vice President Hal Gardner is behind the whole conspiracy – hell Chloe even said it out loud for those 3 viewers who still hadn’t pieced it all together “Hi Jack. Wow. I can’t believe Vice President Hal Gardner is behind this whole thing.” Then we get the one-two punch from Evelyn, “The Vice President has nothing to do with this” coupled with the reveal that Henderson is on the phone, taking orders from… President Logan. So after getting over the shock of the twist, it sinks in how completely terrible the twist really is. For starters, it simply makes no sense. He’s already the President of the United States – what does he have to gain from allowing terrorist attacks to occur on US soil. At least the VP angle made dramatic sense – the VP, by enabling the baddies and coercing the President to declare an unconstitutional act of martial law – was setting the President up for impeachment, thus opening the Oval Office to him. There’s been so much talk of who’s a true patriot – that a coup de tat seemed to fit nicely with the narrative. And what of the Walt Cummings issue? Walt was revealed as a White House mole one step removed from the big cheese – yet when President Logan found out about Cummings plot – he scolded him (in a one-on-one meeting). If Logan were in on everything – and nobody was watching – why the big charade?

So here’s how they can fix it.

They need to reveal that Vice President Hal Gardner is also evil – that unbeknownst to the two of them, they are both conspiring with warring factions of the government, to shape a new order. Make them both rotten – and make them find out. That sets up a nice dilemma for Jack. He needs to infiltrate the White House and take out both the President and Vice-President.

Or the writers can have Jack track down Logan , save the day, and in the final moments of the finale, reveal that Gardner had this dual objective, and that all Bauer succeeded in doing was help further Gardner’s cause by eliminating Logan and handing him the keys to the White House. This show hasn’t been afraid to go dark before (they killed off Teri Bauer in the closing moments of Season 1) and that sort of denouement could send us off into the summer wondering how Jack will survive as an enemy of the state.