2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Dinner break, and I'm back.

Fayed flies a chopper to his team who are holding the other three suitcase nukes. He calls, Dmitri Gredenko, who worked for Jack's dad's company. Gredenko is played by Rade Serbedzija, who I immediately recognized from one of my favorite movies Snatch. This means I will be picturing him as the guy who shoots a tea cozy clad Benicio Del Toro in the head for at least the next 4 episodes. Anyway, Gredenko is more involved than everyone originally thought. He explains later in the episode that he's holding over a grudge that the U.S.S.R. lost the cold war, and he's using Fayed so that they will get blamed for it but Gredenko will get what he wants, which is revenge on America.

Jack comes back into CTU for the first time in two years, and you can see the emotional toll this is having on him. He sees Chloe and asks how she's doing with everything. This is the first time I can remember that Jack is nice to Chloe without him needing her to patch him through to someone, and he genuinely seems to care if she's all right. I've read that Mary Lynn Rajskub plays Chloe like she's secretly in love with Jack, so this is kind of a nice moment because Jack usually blows her off until he needs her again for something.

Chloe: I'm really glad Fayed didn't kill you this morning.
Jack: Me too.

I really like this exchange. It's simple, but it's kind of the way both of the characters are. You don't usually get that much more emotionally from them.

Cut to Phillip Bauer in the CTU morgue (which I think is really funny that they have one of those and get so much use out of it) erasing contacts from Graem's phone. How is the fact that he just killed his son affecting him? Not at all. He actually seems annoyed that Graem left him all this extra work to do. Jack comes down and whole-heartedly apologizes for what happened. He explains that he didn't mean for it to go down the way it did, but Poppa Bauer clearly doesn't believe him. Jack asks Phillip what he knows about Gredenko. He acts like he's really mad that Jack just asked him this and emphasizes again that he doesn't know anything. There are a couple of moments in this episode where you get the idea that Jack doesn't trust anything that his father says, but is too afraid to question him any further. Phillip says that he'll call some of his business associates for Jack about Gredenko. He also twists the knife he has already plunged into Jack's back by reiterating how badly Josh is taking the death of his "father."

As soon as Jack leaves, Phillip calls one of his henchmen and orders him to find and kill Gredenko no matter what it takes. He explains that if Gredenko is found, his whole company will be destroyed. Here is one of the times where I really wish I could swear in this blog, but I'll try and control myself. WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT THIS COMPANY? It seems like all they do is sell nukes to terrorists, is that really all that cool? NO. Maybe if they were a company that created a cure for cancer or something, I could see why Phillip and Graem were so goddamn proud and protective of it. What do they even do? This is driving me crazy.

Sorry. Now Buchanan needs to have a little chat with Jack over the death of his brother. The autopsy says that the torture juice is what induced his heart attack. The report says that Jack didn't follow protocol (of course) and threatened another agent. Jack explains to Bill that he lost control and did not set out to kill his brother. He also says that he tried to tell Bill that he didn't think he could do his job anymore. Bill asks Jack if he wants him to alter the report before he hands it in and Jack tells him not to, that he's willing to suffer the consequences of his actions.

Then it's time for Jack to face Marilyn. He apologizes for what happened to Graem but Marilyn really really doesn't care. He asks if she knows anything about Gredenko and she explains to him that she thought Graem might have been cheating on her. She followed him one night to a house with a bunch of men speaking in Russian accents. Jack asks if he can drive her to the neighborhood to try and remember which house they were in. She agrees and Jack goes off to tell Bill the plan. Phillip lurks around and asks where she's going. Marilyn explains what she's doing and Phillip agrees to watch Josh while she's gone. I don't know why Poppa Bauer gets to walk around CTU like he owns the place, as opposed to being put in holding room 2 (which is my favorite holding room) but he dashes into another dark corner to tell his associates that Gredenko's in West LA. Phillip tells Marilyn that he thinks Josh will be more comfortable if he takes him out of CTU, so they go to a hotel, where Josh whines and cries and is really annoying. He must be Kim's brother.

Jack, Marilyn and Milo head off to look for Gredenko. We learn that Jack left his family and joined the military because he didn't want to work for the family business, like Phillip wanted him to. I think we also learn, in a really vague way, that Marilyn and Jack were in love. Phillip calls Marilyn and tells her to not let Jack know it's him. He explains that he killed Graem and will kill Josh too if she doesn't do what he says. Phillip tells Marilyn to take Jack to a specific location, and she agrees. At one point she comes so close to telling Jack what's actually going on that I actually said out loud to the TV (that I was watching alone mind you) "tell him you idiot!" However, she doesn't listen to me, and brings Jack to Phillip's location. Jack and a team go in and a bomb explodes, with Jack jumping through a window to safety just in time. Milo and Marilyn speed away with bad guys in pursuit. We hear one of them say that Marilyn must be taken alive. The van explodes as they run away.

While all of this is going on, Wayne is helping Assad draft his speech to the world. He gets interrupted by the VP who is calling from his airplane. I don't know why he's not in D.C. to begin with. But the VP is not happy and tells Wayne this. Lennox is also having secret meetings with Reed about just what they are planning to do. Reed won't tell him much, just that he needs Lennox to get him the president's itinerary. The last time an itinerary was leaked out, there was a really sweet shootout on the Russian president's motorcade. But this time, Aaron Pierce isn't around to save the day. Lennox agrees to get the itinerary for Reed.

There was no Sandra Palmer in either one of these episodes which was a good thing. Phillip Bauer definitely gets the worst dad of the century award. I'm liking the whole Jack's dad plot a lot, but I just keeping thinking about how awesome it would have been if Kiefer Sutherland's real dad had taken the roll. I know he was offered the roll, but no one is sure why he turned it down. He probably knows it would have made everyone so happy they wouldn't have been able to control themselves.

I know this picture isn't from this season, but it emphasizes how much I miss Jack's knapsack of goodies.