24: 3:00 AM - 4:00 AM

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for 24 last night--could be the crappy weather had something to do with it--but didn't this episode seem almost perfunctory? Lots of characters enslaved to an unwinding plot, going through the motions of killing double-crossing terrorists and threatening the well-being of families and hollering the names of dead presidents (when is David Palmer going to replace Andrew Jackson on the 20 anyway?).

The mad-cow gas is really taking its toll now--and, gee, the way those brain-wasting diseases work is by wasting away the brain, right? So if they don't miraculously cure Jack Bauer soon, won't he need a drool cup on his next mission?

Look at me, trying to impose standard story logic on 24. That's kind of like insisting on nutritional labels for packets of meth. At any rate, the one moment where someone broke out of the confines of the established plot was when the president's daughter came completely unhinged. I know it's part of the standard process of adding obstacles and complications, but it's the one thing that felt reasonably fresh about the episode.

Well, that and the fact the consortium of conspirators has a really cool voice-garbling teleconferencing system...