Bioweapons, killing someone on a world map, and blackmail sex

Been watching TWO AND A HALF MEN lately as the lead-in to HOUSE, heh. Manipulative mothers, indeed... fake operations, anyone? Yikes. HOUSE was about a patient who faked being sick to hang onto someone for attention. Then a relatively new character committed suicide - I've heard that Kal Penn is going to work for the President, and also that he's a vegan.

In 24, we pick up where we left off last week: the big Starkwood vs. FBI standoff. Jonas shows up and gives Moss a mouthful on trespassing and warrants, and gives him an ultimatum: leave in five minutes, or my goons'll kill ya. Back at the office, they need to act fast and find the bioweapon, because Tony officially took the Jack road and snuck off deep inside the evil Starkwood military base in the middle of D.C. So Jack finds a convenient new lead: Douglas Knowles, Starkwood's Chairman of the Board who ratted out corporate stuff to Senator Mayer during his investigation. Jack contacts him and Knowles agrees to help find the bioweapons, because Hodges apparently went crazy. So Doug meets with Tony and they encounter an obstacle: the door to the building with the bioweapons has a keycard lock and it won't open. And back at the FBI, Jack is going green – but not the environmental kind of going green.

In case anyone forgot, about a million people tell Jack how sorry they are that he's been exposed to the bioweapon, including President Taylor during his call to brief her on their plan. Taylor also reminds us that Jack always has to be the only one. This time, he's the only one who can identify and verify the bioweapon canisters before she orders a "surgical air strike." I assume "surgical" means they won't hit a school half a mile away.

Still at the White House, it's Olivia! Her reporter friend is calling her with some bad news. It's the same reporter who was supposed to run a story on Kanin at eleven (last episode), but suddenly it's going to be in the morning news. He found out about the action in the container yard and about a meeting of the Joint Chiefs. He wants to know more, and threatens to expose her power play against Kanin if she doesn't agree to meet him.

Th FBI is using satellites now, and they're doing infra-red scans of the Starkwood compound. There's one building that's showing no signal because they are using some sort of shield. Why do that when it obviously draws attention anyway? Beats me. Janis starts decoding the door lock with some R6 module or whatever, and naturally, it's taking too long and there's a guard Humvee coming round the corner! Tony and Knowles might get spotted, so they hide behind some conveniently placed barrels, and then Knowles decides to step forward and buy time. It's so exciting that Jack gets a seizure. The guards call Jonas for instructions despite the fact that Knowles is their boss and practically owns a controlling share of their asses. Jonas tells them to bring the guy in, and Tony enters the building in the nick of time. "Copy that" is said about a dozen times.

Pierce and Olivia walk down a hall to meet with Ken the nosy reporter. Pierce insists on going inside with Olivia, but she tells him she has him on speed dial and she can scream really loud. (I guess it's a good thing Ken didn't gag her and take her phone away the minute she entered the room.) Ken suspects there's some sort of WMD out there based on his intel from a mysterious source (the future dad security guard?). Olivia refuses to confirm this because it's a matter of national security. He tells her he understands why it has to remain secret. So she tells him what's up with Starkwood. Then he tells her he's gonna report it unless she sleeps with him. Apparently, they used to do that a lot in the past. Off-camera sex ensues.

Jack gets a shot of pen dopamine from the pretty season three doctor, Sunny Macer. But it's only going to stop the shaking, it ain't gonna cure him. And yeah, he'll need more of it because the sickness is progressing faster than progressive rock in the 1970s. Then Macer tells Jack that some university is doing research on weird diseases, and there might be a cure for his incurable sickness. Now, watch out, because this show is on FOX... the cure uses stem cells! They need 'em from a family member, and Jack's file (and my worst nightmares) say he's got a daughter. But Jack will hear none of it. He doesn't want Kim involved because they haven't talked to each other since like 2009. (To us, that is nothing, but these people are in the future.) It is implied that Walker will call Kim anyway.

Tony's op is back on. He's inside the building. There are guards coming his way, so he needs to open other doors a bit quicker. Fortunately, he magically knows all the codes inside the building, and he punches them in pretty fast. On the way, he kicks some henchmen booty and takes one of their uniforms. I hope the shoes fit... McClane wasn't so lucky. Tony gets on an elevator, and a Fayed look-alike scientist hitches a ride. He's looking over some photos of microbes, and does some small talk with a slightly nervous Tony. There's no Muzak. Tony is now in the main building, four floors down. Janis has no information that the building has subterranean floors, but believe him, he's there.

As are a bunch of scientists loading the bioweapon from one canister to another. Jack IDs the canisters from the truck by looking at the picture three times in different sizes and on different screens. All thanks to Sprint. The air strike is go, but the bioweapon is on the move. Tony has ten minutes to leave.

Jonas meets with Knowles, who's pissed off because his employees arrested him. He asks Jonas if Starkwood has bioweapons. Hodges confirms it by denying it in his signature weird way. Knowles doesn't like his speech on serving the country no matter what, so he gets a huge crystal bottle of Scotch in the face. Again, again, and again. Then Hodges throws him down a balcony onto a map of the world painted on the floor. You don't see any blood, although Knowles' face must look worse than Marika's lasagna. Then Jonas notices that he has like three drops of blood on his shirt and he tries to wash it off with some water from a very cool crystal box. He gets a call that jet fighters are on their way.

Sex is over, and it was probably better than the notorious Logan Quickie. Ken says Olivia must think he's a total asshole, but she's just glad he won't run the story. But won't he? He won't, right? Oh sorry, Olivia. You just got used. He wants to run it anyway. So that's how many double-crosses from this guy? Well, she's got some tricks up her sleeves as well. Like making a sex tape with her cell phone and threatening to show it to Ken's wife. The double-crosser gets double-crossed. Jeez, just buy a bottle of super-expensive Double Cross vodka and let that be the end of it.

So she leaves the room, and Aaron totally knows what was happening in there. Mommy Dearest calls Olivia to tell her she's missing the fireworks – air strike in five minutes and counting! The generals in the situation room are all thrilled, and they're gonna use phosphorus charges that burn at 5000 degrees, which is more than enough to eradicate the pathogen (and ten times more than what they need to burn all the paper in Starkwood). The CDC confirmed it.

Jonas enters his situation room and orders a call to the president. Greg Seaton notices the bloodstains on Jonas' shirt, and the boss says Knowles will be missing the show. Jonas gets Taylor on the line, and makes her take the call in a small room with a TV. He tells her he put the bioweapon into rockets pointed at the East Coast (L.A. FINALLY off the hook!), and he even shows her with his video phone. He orders her to stop the air strike or else, and so she runs back to the room full of generals, and stops the blast. She has nothing more to say (which is definitely a first), and leaves the room without so much as a decent cliffhanger.