Citadel is Down on '24'

Under many circumstances, it must be nice to be the President of the United States, but being the President on a FOX Monday night drama isn't one of those circumstances.

Prison Break has already killed off one president and Monday's (Feb. 26) episode ended with somebody readying rifle for a presumptive assassination attempt. Things have been far worse on 24, where President David Palmer survived at least three assassination attempts before being killed. In addition, Air Force One was shot down and, on Monday's episode, President Palmer's Brother President Palmer faced the first assassination attempt of his administration, as people within his administration are conspiring to make that evil guy from Deadwood into our next President.

While it seems a safe bet that enough raspberry jelly leaked out of Evil Mr. Carson's tape recorder bomb to prevent its full impact leaving President Palmer's Brother President Palmer to serve more of his term, as the episode ended he was being examined by a secret service agent yelling, "Citadel is down!"

That can't be good.

The explosion, which may have had a more deadly effect on reformed terrorist Assad, capped off an episode devoted fans will say was "short on action and long on, um, character development," while those who have ingested less of the 24 Kool-Aide will just admit it was pretty slow.

Beyond the explosion, the most exciting part of the episode was -- without question -- that somebody at CTU actually used the bathroom. Yup, in one strange scene, Chloe barged into the  CTU little boy's room to confront ex-husband Morris, who was occupying one of the stalls. Sure, he was one of the first people in CTU history to spend any time in the bathroom, but a second anonymous staffer (a future backup for Jack?) tried entering mid-discussion. He looked surprised, but was he more agog to see a woman or anybody else at all?

Yes, the episode spent a lot of time on characters debating whether or not Morris was impaired after his torture several hours back (plus the unmetabolized alcohol he spit out).

How did we know Morris was slipping? He has this debate with Chloe: "I can't uplink these tracking vectors to the homeland subnet. I've been trying. I've been trying and it just won't go through." "Check your SIP adaptor." "What about my SIP adaptor." "You've specified the wrong slot assignment." "Oh. What an idiot."

Good times.

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