That’s right folks, Kasia has the DVD and she’s screencappin’!  Screencaps for the first two episodes of Season 7 are now available in the AIG Gallery, with more on the way very soon.

Well, that’s it for another season of 24. And as always, we learned a lot.

WHAT DID WE LEARN ON THE SHOW TONIGHT, JOHANLEY?

I guess I’ll go first. I learned that any time I use nicknames in a review, I should put more effort into them, because I never know which ones are going to become immortalized.

Seriously, Fake Lawyer isn’t that creative.

Kasia learned the definition of the term “fanwanking,” after it was revealed that Christopher Henderson formulated a complicated plan to fake Tony’s death and have someone else recruit him for an anti-government conspiracy… three seconds after waking from a coma… after trying to kill him earlier in the day. And here’s why it all makes sense.

The 24 writers learned that they can write the most suspenseful, thrilling, gleefully implausible assault on the White House the world will ever see, but if they bring back an obscure character and then get his name wrong, shit is gonna go down.

That said, we all learned that the 24 writers are smarter than we thought, after realizing that Sangala, Colonel Dubaku’s country of origin, is an anagram for lasagna, his favorite dinner. And shortly after that, we learned that wearing Aviator Shades is always bad-ass, even when the sun has already gone down. And of course, we learned that no matter what you do with Kim Bauer, somebody somewhere is going to bring up that fucking cougar.

We HAVEN’T learned how to not get really mad every time that happens. Yet.

Mr. Seaton learned that stress is the fertilizer of creativity. That was a good one.

And most important of all, we learned that an awe inspiring, soul shattering, possible website-title-undermining plot twist can be ruined by a single solitary nostril.

I think that’s enough of that.

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iF Magazine has published a Q&A with Jon Cassar (this was pre-finale) that feels a little nostalgic, given this is his last season working on the show.  Check it out.

Before I begin, I would once again like to take this opportunity to thank the other contributors to the site who devoted their own very valuable time and resources to the Official Episode Summary & Review portion of the site this year.  This was a new feature for Season 7, and from the start I knew that it would kill me to try and handle this content plus everything else every week.  So to Ivanhoe, johanley, Kat, Avery and JustABill, who all threw down at least one OESR this season, you have my eternal gratitude.  I’m indebted.  Now, let’s get on with it …

Summary

We left off at the end of the first hour of the finale with Jack having just escaped Tony and Fake Lawyer’s clutches by pulling a Nina, slaughtering their team of evil doctors with a scalpel and busting out into the sunrise.  We pick up at the beginning of the second hour with Renee, Kim and Chloe desperate for the computer Kim recovered from Fake Lawyer’s hippie henchman to yield some kind of lead on where Jack might be.  Cut to Jack breaking into a storage unit adjacent to Fake Lawyer’s shadowy lair, where he finds an array of taxi cabs ripe for the hotwiring.  But before he can make his escape, Tony busts in shooting, putting a few holes in the gas tank of one of the cabs, causing gasoline to pour out all over the floor.  Jack hits the automatic door control device to lower the door back down and Tony rolls out of the way just in time.  This is a mere inconvenience for Almeida, who gets himself a forklift and uses it to force the door open.  Jack spots a cache of flares on a table nearby (is it SOP for cabs to carry flares, I wonder?) and decides to blow them both to hell by tossing a lit flare into the gasoline pool.  Tony, however, gets to Jack in the nick of time and knocks the flare a safe distance away from the gasoline.  Jack, weak and fatigued, tries valiantly to crawl towards the flare, but Tony easily overpowers him and knocks him out with the classic Krav Maga chop to the neck — The Tony equivalent of the Bauer Sleeper Hold.  He drags Jack by the feet back to Fake Lawyer’s shadowy lair.

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Big Fucking Conspiracy?  You don’t say.  It’s hard to keep track of.  I hope to help.  Click the image for full-size view.

In this 5 minute interview with TV Guide Broadband’s Hollywood 411, recorded pre-finale, Carlos Bernard vehemently defends Tony against labels of “evil” in a hugely sassy manner.

This brief clip, featuring some classic Season 7 Almeida scenes cut with remarks from Carlos Bernard on the red carpet at the Finale Screening, is also worth a look.

This particular article was published by The Boston Herald on May 18, the day of the finale.  At the time, I was too busy co-producing hilarious Tony-related music video parodies and trying to get the regular features of AIG up to date that I really wasn’t paying very much attention to my Carlos Bernard Google Alerts.  OK, I wasn’t paying ANY attention to them.  Anyway, highlights:

Carlos on the “evil/bad” question (yet again):

I can’t call him bad. [...] I’ve played villains before, but I’ve never been able to play – I’ll call him an antagonist at this point – where you actually got to see how he got to where he is. Even in what he’s doing now, I feel like there’s still that place that’s torn. You can still see, hopefully, anyhow, those moments of doubt. [...] Here’s a guy who has devoted his life, risked his life for his country, and not only does the government kill his wife, they tried to kill him. I’m not justifying his choices, but I understand.

On “Dark Tony” prompting his return:

I knew before the season started this was the direction they were going to take with the character.  That’s why I agreed to come back and do the show, because I thought it was a really interesting direction.

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Before I begin, I must thank Kasia once again for letting me be a part of this especially notable year for AlmeidaIsGod[dot]com.  It’s been a pleasure sharing my long-winded and vaguely self-important blatherings on this website. And I’m not through yet, I’ll probably do a review of the season as a whole while it’s fresh in everyone’s minds, so check back for that pretty soon. But for now, we’ve got a season finale to discuss.

Summary

Complying with the demands of Cara the Fake Lawyer Subway Commuter, Jack executes his plan to extract Tony from FBI Custody. After waving his gun everywhere, shooting an agent in the foot, and making everybody cuff themselves, he explains to Renee that his daughter is at stake. Cara meets up with the hijacked van, and she and Tony make their getaway. Jack is subdued and taken along for the ride, since Tony believes that they can still remove the pathogen from Jack’s bloodstream and recreate the bioweapon.

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Here it is folks, the official AIG take on the finale.  You already know we were very happy with how things played out, and we would have been anyway, but I’m not gonna lie … killing a bottle of wine during the viewing and then another bottle on camera definitely made us feel just that much more positive about the whole experience.  Nonetheless, in the cold harsh light of day this morning, I still felt the same way.  I’ll probably be weighing in more later, but for now, let us bask in the afterglow of Tony’s survival and the (close enough) vindication of the theory.  Also, I have about 12 minutes worth of outtakes that weren’t overtly related to the finale itself, but were more an esoteric jaunt into why Kat and I do what we do and how our educational backgrounds relate to the tone of AIG, which I will probably get to tomorrow.

Thanks again, everyone, for watching and reading this season.  The interactive format has made the site the most fun and rewarding for me ever this season, and I couldn’t have done it without all of your support and contributions.  So thank you.

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Produced & Directed
by Adam of TheJackSack.com &
Kasia of AlmeidaIsGod[dot]com

Vocals performed by Kasia

Don’t forget to click HQ to watch in High-Def.  The experience is must more comedically satisfying this way.

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