Posted on 05/22/2005 11:57:48 AM PDT by FlJoePa
Look who makes '24' tick
Chloe O'Brian, everyone's favorite cybercurmudgeon, has added acerbic comic relief to the adrenaline-fueled TV thriller
By HEATHER SVOKOS
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
We will sit, by the millions, white-knuckling our remotes and wondering how Jack Bauer will save us from World War III. On the brink of tomorrow night's season finale, we can say it with confidence: Fans have finally been given a season of 24 that has lived up to the potential of its premise.
Seasons one and two of the hit Fox series started strong but devolved into a sometimes boring morass of seen-it-coming plot twists and goofy gimmicks. (Jack's daughter, Kim -- stalked by a cougar! By her abusive boss! By a survivalist!)
This year, the writers got it right. Not only did they ditch Kim Bauer altogether, they figured out how to pump each episode with the perfect amount of adrenaline and create spine-tingling plot twists that, for once, make sense -- at least within the confines of the preposterous world of the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) of 24.
In the span of one day, which began with a train wreck and a kidnapping, the country has managed to go through what amounts to three presidents (chain-of-command crisis), narrowly averting nuclear holocaust, but still somehow finding itself on the brink of war with China. (Uh, didn't see that comin'.)
But for all the bang and whiz and whir this season delivered, the thing that brought 24 fans back to the water cooler was a hilariously huffy malcontent named Chloe.
As it sometimes goes with brilliant types, Chloe O'Brian, CTU's chief computer analyst -- not so good with the people skills. When it comes to churlishness and social dysfunction, she is a poem.
Played with grumpy magnificence by the rubber-faced Mary Lynn Rajskub (Legally Blonde 2), Chloe grumbles around the office with her lip curled into a skyward sneer so artful, so unwavering it's as if the lip is attached to a fishing line.
Since she was introduced last season, we've gathered that Chloe is easily irritated by co-workers and superiors alike. She'll signal her annoyance by narrowing her eyes, clenching her face into a puckered frown and fuming until her eyes roll up into her hairline.
"Why are you always so impatient with everybody?" asks her colleague, Sarah.
"Not everybody, just you," snaps Chloe. "Now please go away."
In a show once devoid of humor, Chloe and her ill-tempered antics have proven 24's very welcome secret weapon. (To give credit where it's due, she's also had a terrific foil in fellow analyst Edgar Stiles, played by lisping Sopranos refugee Louis Lombardi. Their ping-pong sniping is a thing of beauty.)
It's strange that such a cartoonish show would give birth to one of the most real characters on TV, but this surly staffer is recognizable to anybody who's punched the clock in an office. We've all either worked with a Chloe or felt so cranky and annoyed by incompetence that we wish we were Chloe.
Wouldn't it be great, for instance, to tell your boss, as Chloe did: "You know what, Ms. Driscoll? I'm really not in the mood to play the part of the scared student at the principal's office. I came to you with important information that my friend Andrew gave to me, and you chose to not respond to it."
Chloe may be peevish and huffy, but in her defense, she's also tactless and inappropriate. Consider this exchange between her and Audrey Raines, Jack's still-married girlfriend, whose husband is on the operating table:
Chloe: "I can't imagine how I'd be feeling right now if I were you."
Audrey: "I'm feeling like someone who's afraid of losing her husband."
Chloe: "No, I meant, you know, you and your husband are separated, and then you fall in love with Jack, I guess... And then they end up together and your husband ends up taking a bullet that saves Jack's life. What do you do with that?"
Audrey: "Chloe. I don't wanna talk about it."
Chloe: "I was inappropriately blunt, wasn't I? I do that a lot. Sorry. Sorry, I'm gonna go. I have a... meeting anyway."
No, Chloe's not exactly a hit with the co-workers. To wit, one of the best lines of this season, from division director Buchanan: "Chloe, we're in an active code -- we don't have time for your personality disorder."
So how does Chloe hold on to a job?
Let's review: Early on this season, Jack told Chloe she was the only person he could trust. Even so, since she joined the department in season two, she's been fired and rehired 1.5 times -- including last year, when Jack, in a rare fit of poor judgment, tried to have her sacked. (Jack, it should be noted, was still the teensiest bit out of his mind on heroin.)
Still, when it comes to computers, she outclasses everyone at CTU. Sure, Jack is the unflinching hero of 24, what with his super-duper marksmanship and his torture-iffic ways . But one could argue that without Chloe, who's faster than a speeding bullet at decoding encrypted files and able to download satellite links in a single bounding keystroke, the world might have melted down a few times over by now.
As much as we love the idea of a crotchety geek saving the day from behind the shadow of her computer monitor, a few episodes ago, fans were given the delicious dessert of Chloe's big breakout.
Her boss, Buchanan, determines that CTU needs a computer analyst in the field to retrieve an important laptop. He picks Chloe, who responds by sniffing: "Oh, I'm not a field agent; I don't do that." But eventually she and her sneer, a little nervously twitchy this time, set out, only to become the latest bad-guy target. Things look grim for the petrified Chloe, who clutches the laptop like it's the Holy Grail. But she manages to snatch a semiautomatic weapon, morph into the Chloe-nator, and at the last second (as TV drama dictates) blasts the baddie into oblivion.
If you listened carefully, you could hear the millions of 24 fans -- and fusspots everywhere -- cheering her nerdy victory.
Before Chloe was sent to her uncertain fate, rival and officemate Edgar offered his concern and encouragement. "While you were prepping, I asked Buchanan if I could go instead of you," he says sweetly. "He wouldn't let me. He said you were the best analyst we have. He's right."
Chloe's worried face softens, as though she's about to thank him.
"I know," she says bluntly.
So do we, Chloe. So do we.
Chattin' with caustic Chloe
The world of 24 would be a much poorer place without the oddball utterings of Chloe O'Brian.
A sampling of her give-and-take:
Chloe: "I'm more insulted that you thought I wouldn't notice than by the fact that you were spying on me."
Sarah Gavin: "Driscoll ordered me to do it."
Chloe: "Next time, do it right, using Newman filter so the subject doesn't see red lights flashing everywhere. Amateur."
Michelle Dessler (over the phone, trying to rehire her in the middle of an international crisis): "Listen, Chloe. You're better at what you do than anyone I've ever worked with. I need you here."
Chloe: "Thank you for saying that, but I think I've had enough for today."
Jack Bauer: "I still have to talk to Audrey."
Chloe: "That's gonna be weird."
Jack (irritated): "What?"
Chloe: "Talking to Audrey. I mean, you had to do what you did, and her husband died -- it's probably destroyed your relationship with her."
Seconds later ...
Chloe: "Jack, I just want you to know that if you ever need anyone to talk to, as a friend, I'm here for you."
Jack shoots her a puzzled stare.
Chloe: "Not now, but later, when things calm down."
CTU Director Erin Driscoll: "Chloe, why are you logged onto an active DOD satellite? All right, you're done here."
Chloe: "Whatever. I was gonna quit anyway."
Driscoll: "You're not being fired; you're being arrested. Call security. Edgar, lock up her systems, and take control over all her files."
You don't know Jack (and neither do the folks at '24')
Kidnappings of Cabinet officials. Torture. Presidential assassination attempts. More torture. Parents willing to sacrifice their children and men willing to let their lovers' exes die, all in the name of the greater good. And did we mention torture?
Yes, it's just another season on 24, which is confrontational, disturbing, preposterous and absolutely addictive if you give it half a chance. But it leaves, well, a lot of questions unanswered. I'd put them in context for nonfans, but this section only has 10 pages and it needs room for ads and other writers. Suffice it to say that 24, a thriller in which each episode represents an hour of a 24-hour period, is so convoluted that even its writers get confused.
"It's very difficult for us to remember who actually wrote what episode and what actually occurred," says Evan Katz, one of the show's executive producers. "It's not like a normal show, where you go, 'Oh, that's the serial killer' or 'That's the werewolf.' . . . There was a point in the second season where we actually had to draw a diagram to follow the plot."
Maybe that's why characters disappear for episodes at a time without explanation and others are able to get anywhere in Los Angeles within five minutes. Whatever the reason, we're confused, too, and we tried to shake things up by interrogating Katz with some burning questions. Fortunately, he responded easily, so we didn't have to resort to torture.
Q: What's up with Sarah, the CTU employee who was fired for asking for a raise during a national crisis? Is she going to come back and go postal on CTU?
A: You're a mind-reader. She'll kill everybody. . . . [Actually], here's my two rules of life: You don't want to work at CTU, and you certainly don't want to receive medical care at CTU. And you don't want to be associated with [CTU superagent] Jack Bauer, because, let's face it, very little good comes of that for other people.
Q: Where the heck is Behrooz? [The teen-age son of terrorists, Behrooz balked at their activities and escaped a murder attempt, only to be traded back to a terrorist boss in a prisoner exchange. He hasn't been seen since.]
A: That'll be answered. But we reserve the right to have other loose ends in the future.
Q: Has Jack Bauer made torture a hobby this season? It seems like there's a torture scene in every episode.
A: He's still trying to match the record of season two. I actually don't think there's been that much torture this year. [Note: There has.]
Q: Where is CTU, anyway? It seems like you can get there from anywhere in LA within five minutes.
A: CTU is in the well-known suburb of Indeterminate Los Angeles.
Q: [As last week's episode ended, a missile armed with a nuclear warhead was headed toward an unknown major U.S. city.] A friend of mine says she wants the missile to strike, so that the next season can be about dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
A: You know, we actually talked about that. The conclusion that everyone reached, which I agreed with, was that it was too dark. You wouldn't want to tune that in every week.
Q: You mean there's something too dark for 24?
A: Oh yes, absolutely. You should sit in the writers' room. You'd be mortified. But we do have limits, believe it or not.
-- Robert Philpot
Amen to that!
Last week's episode was kinda corny with all the sappy romantic stuff in it; perhaps, considering that there's a nuclear missle that's about to destroy a major city and all, everyone at CTU should wait a few hours before they say their "i'm sorrys and all".
Other various musing about this season:
- Chloe, of course, rocks.
- The VP needs to be fired already; talk about a wimp. What the hell was Keeler thinking with that one? Can the House please start impeachment proceedings ASAP?
yea, what's up with that? I thought the missle was in the air? It hasn't hit yet?
24 PING...........
That was a great scene...
They may be planning to carry the suspense over to next season. Makes about as much sense as the rest of the extravaganza. I watched most of the show last week. Did anyone really think that they would get that guy out of the warehouse without having him killed? I didn't count but I guess they lost the usual number of their agents last week. Has there ever been a total count of the number lost in a season?
And great dialouge, too! Remember after her shootout, the paramedics run to treat Chloe, but Chloe says, "I'm okay. I was the one doing the shooting." LOL!
Wait a minute, I enjoyed Kim ... especially because she had the tendency to run down rocky roads in a tight t-shirt. You can't tell me that wasn't entertainment!
Q: [As last week's episode ended, a missile armed with a nuclear warhead was headed toward an unknown major U.S. city.] A friend of mine says she wants the missile to strike, so that the next season can be about dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear attack.They already have a meltdown to clean up.
-Eric
So, no pictures for us TVdeprived?
Is she like a geek babe or what?
Here ya go :)
I wanted to see Chloe respond with either, "then we don't have time for you to be an a**hole about it either", or "I've already killed one man tonight, want to make it two?"
There have been times when Chloe has deserved a verbal smackdown, but this wasn't it, and Buchanan was just being a jerk, to cover his own embarrassment over being slow to realize the significance of what Chloe was trying to tell him.
I've seen those ads. It's nerve-racking. Whenever I hear the clock ticking I think I'm missing something if I'm not right in front of the widescreen!
It's a cruise-type missile, it travels at 600 mph and has a range of about 2000 miles (they mentioned this in the last episode). So it can be in the air for up to three hours before it hits. And since it was launched from the central US (Kansas IIRC), it'll take at least two hours of episode-time to get to either coast.
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