The clock reads midnight and if my tentative grasp on temporal matters holds water, we still have seven hours before the clock strikes 24. With Big Bad Bierko nabbed and the President fingered as the true Man Behind The Curtain, how will they ever fill the following seven hours. Either Bauer is planning on kickstarting Happy Hour a bit early or there are some bumps in the road ahead. I’m betting on the latter – scratch that, I’m praying for the latter – the last thing we need is Super-Sized American Idol and four additional hours of Mendisa talk.

On to Hour 18.

1. So Audrey’s Papa – Defense Secretary Heller (William Devane) – flies into the rescue. After this show’s constant reshuffling of the deck – moving staffers and actors in and out of rotation each season – this year has provided a constant stream of actors back for return engagements. (Kinda’ like the way NBC trots Noah Wyle out each sweeps period. Seriously, that guy is wracking up some serious frequent flyer miles jetting from Nambia to Chicago four times a year.)  Anyway, the return of old characters for guest-stints is the television version of comfort food. In particular, I’m thinking back to the first shot (no pun intended) in Episode 1 this season with David Palmer taking in the LA skyline. It was like a visit with an old friend. Of course, he was dead moments later, the victim of a sniper shot to the trachea, so more to the point – it was like a visit with family. Anyway, seeing Heller fly into the rescue, beckoned by daughter Audrey, gave me a feeling that all would be right for Jack and company. Of course, moments later he was rabbit-punching Jack in the neck, so again, we go back to that family visit I alluded to.

2. For the second time in two weeks, we get a poor working man schlub (all right technically it was a Red Shirt member of Devane’s security detail) that finds himself in a firefight alongside Jack. Someone’s going down and it ain’t gonna be Bauer. Last week we lost a dedicated bank manager – it was like the dark side of those Citizens Bank commercials where the manager locks himself out of the bank in order to help some deluded octogenarian who has jammed his library card into the ATM slot.

3. Meanwhile Logan continues his ascent from Gump to Sith through a one-two punch of having Devane discredited and arranging for Martha Logan’s red-headed boy-toy, Secret Service Agent Aaron Piece, to vanish.

4. Speaking of Logan, Entertainment Weekly had an interesting sidebar on the career of character actor Gregory Itzin – who applies such a slimy polish to his portrayal of the Commander in Chief. Apparently, Itzin potrayed one of the flower clutching peaceniks that Robert Stack delighted in punching out on his way through the airport in 1980’s Airplane. Surely, I can’t be serious.

I am serious and I wish I’d stop calling myself Shirley.