After a year and a half away, Jack Bauer and 24 proper have returned to our lives.  For many, this is a joyous occasion.  College students everywhere are dusting off some old shot glasses in preparation for the Jack Bauer Power Hour.  Tonight, FOX has thrust the first two hours of 24 season 7 onto our laps, and I think 24 fans will be happy with what they will receive.  Jack Bauer does Jack Bauer things in decidedly Jack Bauer ways.  Kiefer Sutherland is the best, man.  He's still bringing it, just as hard as he was in season one.  Below, you will find a written recap of tonight's events.  Enjoy. 

Episode 7.1 Recap

A man is driving his little daughter to school near the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.  It's the middle-aged dude from the short-lived ABC series The Nine.  Talking about cell phones, and BAM – their car is t-boned.  On purpose.  He's hit by another car, and a group of masked men emerge, cut the man from his seat belt and take him away in a van, leaving his daughter behind. 

Jack Bauer is being questioned in front of a senate hearing.  He refuses the services of an attorney because he's Jack Bauer, and he can represent himself.  Because he's Jack Bauer.  He hasr to answer for past uses of torture. CTU has been disbanded. Jack does not apologize, and has no regrets.  Before anything really happens, the hearing is interrupted by FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching).  She needs Jack's help, and she takes him away.

Jack is surly, and makes it clear he doesn't really want to help the same government that is about to indict him.  Taken to the D.C. FBI headquarters, we meet Walker's boss Larry Moss (Jeffrey Nordling) and two analysts Janis Gold (Janeane Garofalo) and Sean Hillinger (Rhys Coiro).  They're both kind of like Chloe.  Sean is a dick, and Janis is a nerd.  Walker shows Jack a picture of a domestic terrorist who might take control of the nation's infrastructure with his fellow domestic terrorist brethren.  The picture is of Tony Almeida.  Jack doesn't believe it, but eventually has to – it is Tony. 

We see Tony is a cliché terrorist haunt, with the abducted dude from the car tied up and bloody.  Tony gives him a special module and tells him to fix it.  It doesn't work the first time, but he fixes it eventually.  It allows them to take control of a plane leaving D.C.  Why, we don't know. 

Jack, having agreed to help in finding Tony, starts with a guy who Tony and Jack used to buy information and arms and crap from when they were both with CTU.  They find out that the man is currently in Washington, D.C.  They go to his apartment and Jack starts doing Jack Bauer things.  Bauer knows the man has information, but he won't give it.  Walker lets Bauer go ahead with some good ol' torturing.  Jack takes a pen and is about to go to work on the dude's eye.  He agrees to talk.  But, before he can say anything, a sniper shoots and kills him through the window.  Jack and Walker take cover. 

The phone rings at the dead guy's apartment.  Jack picks it up – it's Tony on the other end.  He tells Jack to leave it alone, to stay away, that there's nothing in it for him.  Then he hangs up.  Jack is baffled.

In the episode's last scene, Tony takes control of the air traffic control for the flight that is beginning its descent into JFK airport in New York.  Air traffic control starts freaking out when they lose contact.  They know something's up.  Tony tells one of his minions to get ready to make the course change.  Beep-boop, beep-boop...

Meanwhile...at the White House

President Allison Taylor has made the divisive decision to send aid and troops into Sangala, the African nation featured in 24: Redemption.  A coup occurred and thousands of people are dying.  The First Husband helps Allison by trying to convince a journalist from holding off on writing a disparaging column about the government getting involved in Sangala.  We learn that the president's son is dead from an apparent suicide.  The First Husband is crazy in his belief that his son was killed.  He's following tenuous leads, and his assistants think he's crazy.  He goes off to follow another lead, thanks to a PI he has hired.  The lead is this – his son's girlfriend received a huge lump sum deposit in her off-shore bank account three days before the son died.  The First Husband will talk to the girlfriend himself.


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-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image Courtesy of FOX)