How'd we do? 10a-noon

Just as we predicted, Jack Bauers asked the stunning red-headed FBI agent, Jacqueline Bowers, to be his girlfriend. And she accepted, if only briefly.

She broke off the relationship because her uber boss, Agent director or something Moss, in a fit of jealousy, kicked Jack Bauer off the case.

But not before Jack, while crushing his windpipe, heard Tony utter a top secret cold red alert message "deep sky" known only to CTU agents and now everybody else in the world. As you see, we correctly predicted Jack would torture Tony, but really, a Namibian yellow tailed newt would have seen that one coming, so not a lot of credit is owed us for that one.

Rightly suspecting Tony is, in fact, a good guy, Jack then called 411 to get the number of the CTU headquarters to find out just what the heck is going on here, and we soon learn Rumsfeld viewed CTU as a threat to his planned hegemony over US government intelligence operations, cutting it back to a skeleton staff consistenting of Bill Buchanan and, fortunately, Chloe.

Receiving the call, Bill, a bit frustrated with Jack for interfering in an extremely urgent top top top top top secret undercover operation involving Tony--so secret that Bill is now disguised wearing a beard--and told Jack, who he hadn't seen in years, all about it in about 30 seconds.

This was fairly predictable. Tony was, of course, quite despondant, not only over the loss of his wife, but also because of his own death. But, hey! No way a CTU agent like Tony turns on his government. Only a complete buffoon would think that is even remotely possible. Fortunately, for the purposes of drama and plot, such a buffoon in the character of David Emerson is currently running a Blackwater-type mercenary intelligence service comprised of said renegade and disaffected former government agent ne'r do wells.

It seems the most significant plot aspect we missed was that, in order to escape from FBI headquarters, Jack, in a poignant moment unlike any other in the series, was forced to skillfully torture Jacqueline to within a heartbeat of her life. We also failed to predict that the FBI would stop to question why Jack, after working so hard to get Tony into FBI headquarters, would suddenly work harder to spring him. Fortunately, the real writers of the show failed to get that into the plot, too, so the issue is a push.

Thus, one can fully understand why Jack and Jacqueline had to break up. Indeed, when Agent Bowers awoke from her near death experience, she swore a blood oath to capture and kill Jack Bauer. Since he'd long escaped by then, she went over to the hospital and tortured Sniper Tanner instead. Speaking of Sniper Tanner, we admit failing to predict that Sniper Tanner, who suffered a gunshot wound to his upper thorax in the 8-10am period, would be hospitalized in the 10a-noon episode with an abdominal gunshot wound.

FBI Agent Jacqueline Bowers is a breathtakingly beautiful woman, especially for a redhead. But if we've learned one thing, characters in 24 who seek vengeance against Jack Bauer tend to be short lived. So we're afraid it won't end well for her. She'll be truly lucky if she never catches Jack.

Of course, as predicted, Jack and Tony managed to escape from the heavily fortified FBI headquarters. The FBI agents were rather hapless in this regard. Indeed, we had predicted the two would evade a Keystone Cop-like pursuit, but had presumed they'd be chased by a Chechen mafia, not elite FBI operatives.

What we appeared to have missed in our prediction was that the organizing plot element for the entire day is the blackmail of a hopelessly unsure President Taylor by the Chief Shaman of a small, otherwise unremarkable African country if not for the fact that it was orchestrating the genocide of 1,583,798 people under his control. She now faces the difficult decision between two horrible choices. If she stands up to the terrorists and those who support the terrorists tens of thousands of anonymous negroes living in a remote, unheard of African village will face death at the sword of General Duma. If she stares the terrorists down, thousands of US citizens who voted for her in the last election will die.

Oh, yeah..... and a collaborator of this African Shaman exists within her close inner circle--most likely her husband, who is slowly going insane because their son who probably didn't commit suicide was buried with the only set of keys to their BMW. We missed that one, too.