To summarize, Josh Bauer was taken to an offshore oil platform secretly owned by BXJ Technologies, the front company for Phillip Bauer. This involved a fake FB subcircuit board that exploded in Mike Doyle's face, blinding him and allowing Phillip Bauer's bad guys to abscond with the kid just as Jack and Bill Buchannan drove up. Bill had been called back into unofficial and borderline-illegal service by his wife, Karen Hayes, who used Bill to spring Jack from custody and interfere with Phillip Bauer's plot. Turns out the offer to give the US the FB subcircuit board was bogus, Big Daddy was working with the Chinese all along, and only Jack knew (or rather, felt) this to be the case.
Once the doublecross was exposed, the plan became to blow the FB subcircuit board, the oil platform and anyone on the oil platform into unusable shards with an F-18 strike, leaving Jack and Bill precious little time to get onto the platform and rescue Josh. Jack opened the back of the CTU Suburban nearby and retrieved weapons, then Jack and Bill got into a nearby CTU helicopter, stole it and headed out to the platform.
With Bill flying and Jack on weapons, Jack got three kills with the MP7 he got from the back of the Suburban, and another couple of kills with the USP after landing. He rescued Josh, confronted a blown-up and burnt Cheng (who was taken to the copter as a prisoner), and left his mortally-wounded father to die on the station, making a daring leap onto the ladder dangled from the chopper by Bill. Short of the beach, Jack leapt off the ladder into the ocean and waded ashore.
Jack then made his way to Ashley Raines' side at her father's house, confronted her father while holding a silenced Beretta 92F in his face about the lack of respect he'd gotten, and eventually decided to leave Audrey in the care of her father. The season ends.
In other developments, Chloe fainted because she's exhausted, dehydrated and pregnant. She and Morris make up. Karen and Bill get to retire, the VP Noah Daniels comes to the realization that it is actually hard to be the President. No word on Lisa Miller's condition, but then, do we care? We meet Milo Pressman's brother, who tells Nadia that Milo did what he did because he loved her, then disappears after cleaning out Milo's locker.
As far as season 7 goes, there will be one in January 2008. Allegedly there is a movie in the works as well. I would imagine that the "X" and "J" in "BXJ" are potential bad guys, and it's entirely possible that Big Daddy Bauer taking a shot to the lung from his grandson didn't kill him, it just made him meaner. It's an odd year in the cycle, meaning that it's time for a domestic or other white foreign terrorist and not an Islamic one. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.
Overall, the season was not bad but was substantially less good than prior seasons, IMO. The first four hours were good, there were a couple of good episodes, but this one was a little too diffuse and the side-plots like Chloe-Morris and Nadia-Mike-Milo were just, well, dull. Total Jack Bauer-derived body count is 40 by my count, mostly pistol kills. This season, Jack killed an average of 1.6 people an hour.
Technical Note
Personal Defense Weapon
In general terms, pretty much every weapon is a personal defense weapon, but PDW in this usage refers to a NATO specification issued in 1989 for a weapon for support troops and vehicle crews that is smaller than a rifle, and penetrates armor better than a submachinegun.
The first alternate weapons intended for support troops was the United States' M1 Carbine, developed just before and in the early years of World War II. Over six million M1 Carbines were manufactured, they were popular because they were light and accurate within a few hundred yards, with low recoil. The round was the .30 Carbine, in essence a long pistol cartridge firing a 110-grain full metal jacketed bullet at just under 2000 fps. The limitation of the M1 Carbine became apparent in World War II and were magnified in Korea, namely limited stopping power. The M1 Garand was heavy and bulky but things shot by it center-of-mass tended to stay horizontal, the M1 Carbine had less success and required more hits.
The P90 by FN Herstal, a Belgian company, was the first modern, armor-piercing PDW to hit the market. It uses a 5.7x28mm round, similar in bullet diameter to the 5.56x45mm NATO round the M16 uses, but only a little over half the case length. The projectile is long and tapered, and is composed in such a way to make it tumble in tissue after penetrating armor. The rounds are highly energetic, leaving the barrel at 2,350 fps. According to Herstal, the SS190 round used by the P90 will penetrate anything less than NIJ Level III armor.
The Heckler & Koch MP7 is a PDW that fires a 4.6x30mm cartidge, an even smaller diameter than the P90, if in a longer case. It looks a lot like an updated Uzi, with a collapsible stock and a fold-down front grip, with a magazine well in the pistol grip. It's been a bit more popular in sales than the P90, being adopted by special units of the military and police around the world. Again, it's a tiny bullet designed to penetrate armor and then tumble to increase damage potential.
Both of these weapons are answers in search of a question. The armor-piercing requirement almost guarantees a tiny bullet at high velocity, unfortunately NATO can't rewrite physiology and physics as easily as it can issue a RFP. Tiny bullets don't do much damage, unless they happen to hit the brain or spine. Maybe NATO needs to issue a specification for a gun that only hits the central nervous system, that would work better.
Jack would have been better served with a garden-variety M4 in 5.56x45mm or some variant of the FN FAL in .308. There is a pistol in the 5.7x28mm caliber for sale in the US, it's called the FN Five-seveN. The armor-piercing ammo being illegal in the US, you're left with what amounts to a .22 Super-Magnum, of limited utility for self-defense. The 4.6x30mm is supposedly getting a handgun version as well, the H&K UCP. Big deal. Another mouse that roars in press releases but doesn't do very well in ballistic gelatin is not something the world needs more of, in my opinion.
I'll take an M4 any day.
The Score for the season:
| Method | Score | Notes |
| Biting A Carotid | 9.0 | -1 for lack of Universal Protocol |
| Shooting Curtis | -8 | -10 own goal, +2 neck shot over a hostage |
| Shooting guard while handcuffed | 7.0 | +2 for while handcuffed |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Shotgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for saving hostages (Milo & Graeme's wife) |
| Handgun | 7.0 | +2 for disarm |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor, because suppressors are cool |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for suppressor |
| Handgun | 6.0 | +1 for through car window |
| Handgun | 5.0 | |
| Handgun | 10.0 | +5 for called headshot |
| Neck Snap | 7.0 | Always cool. |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Fayed henchman |
| Length of Chain | 8.0 | Strangled Fayed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Chinese henchman |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for available cover |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Assault rifle | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Assault rifle | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for three-round burst |
| Strangled | 7.0 | Chief Merc, +1 for choke, +1 for neck snap |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc Driver, +1 for one-handed |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc |
| Handgun | 6.0 | Merc, +1 for sliding entry |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc while running |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| MP-7 | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| MP-7 | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| MP-7 | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Handgun | 5.0 | Merc on the stairs |
| Net | 222.0 |
Jack+Bauer 24 PDW
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