'24': The Sticky Flapjack fails Jack yet again

I love it when a plan comes together, then gets busted all to hell by Jack Bauer. Tony returns in earnest to this hour of "24," but it's the actions of a Starfleet officer (and Jack's caring attitude) that may doom his life once and for all.

The Spoilers are glad to see Tony back... in any capacity.

Once again, Larry Moss is upset and fears the wrath of everyone. Ethan bears the brunt of the latest verbal attack, but owns up to his mistake of allowing Jack to question Ryan. Sensing he's called down the thunder upon the White House, he offers his resignation to the President, who reluctantly accepts it. And here she was hoping for nothing but good news after sharing the recent events to a recovering Henry.

The great-great grandfather of Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker is nothing more than a security guard at the port when the bad guys arrive. He's in cahoots so as to provide much needed support for his expanding family. Jack and Tony capture "Carl" to kindly ask for his support in accessing the port manifest to locate the weapon. While access is denied, the baddies provided Carl with his own radio, asking to be let in. When attempting to call the FBI in as backup fails, Jack and Tony allow Carl to resume his suicide mission.

Meanwhile, Jonas advises the baddies to proceed with extreme caution. That's exactly what he doesn't do when he demands the Starkwood board of directors to stop playing nice with the government. Yeah, that'll show the Feds to cancel all their contracts with Jonas!

Carl plays along with the baddies and they eventually locate the container. Tony thinks the plan is to follow the guys to their next location and then apprehend them... except Jack has other plans, especially when the fat bad guy takes Carl away to off him. The needs of the one outweigh everything else when Jack finishes off the fat man, allowing Carl to run off and start the family that eventually leads to the chief engineer of the first starship Enterprise. The rest of the baddies load the container onto a flatbed, but when the fat one doesn't call home, that's when Jack and Tony open fire. They only manage to take a couple of the men out, which forces Jack to split up from Tony to chase after the fleeing truck. He eventually does his best Peter Pan onto the truck... Tony isn't as lucky as he's captured and taken away.

Back in the White House, Olivia can barely contain her excitement when she learns Ethan is leaving. They both exchange "apologies" for their actions, except she twists that metaphorical knife in his back when she later calls the cable news reporter and allows him to proceed with the story on the condition Ethan is the fall guy and nothing can hurt the President. Our reporter friend can barely contain his excitement.

Because it seems he can trust no one else, Moss places a call to a still-in-custody Renee, asking what she knows about Starkwood. While she doesn't initially play along, the mere thought of something bad happening to Jack is enough for her to spill the beans on Quinn. If she thought that would get her out of the dog house, she was sorely mistaken.

Jack calls to have Moss assemble a team to deal with the weapon. Are they trusting one another again? Before we get our answer, the weapon does something to pique Jack's curiosity enough for him to pull over... where he not only finds a potentially harmful leak in one of the tanks, but comes under heavy gunfire from a just arriving helicopter and van. He takes cover, which allows the baddies to remove the weapon from the container and flown away using the helicopter. This elicits one of the strongest DAMN IT! reactions in recent memory. If he thought that was bad, wait until next hour when he could very well be contaminated with the bio-agent. On the other side of the river, Jonas is pleased the mission is back on track. The time is now 11:00:00.

Jon Voight's performance reminds me of the good ol' days when Penny Johnson Jerald ran the antagonist role to perfection.