24: "5 pm - 6 pm"

Now *that's* the 24 I've been waiting for. It was certainly more violent than your typical hour of television, and well-deserving of its disclaimer, but at the same time we saw real consequences of such violence, and the show never resorted to showing us blood or gore for shock value. The Russian roulette game had great tension, but I thought Kyle's attempted hanging showed more suffering than anything that happened in the prison.

Despite everything else in the episode, the thing that took me most offguard was when Kim dropped the s-bomb about 15 minutes into the episode. Just a tense conversation in CTU and slipped right in there was one of George Carlin's verboten words. I knew the networks had allowed it before, but was this a first for the 9 o'clock hour?

I'm finding it harder to believe that Gael is carrying out such surveillance without anyone else noticing, but hopefully Kim's encounter will help produce a resolution to that. And while I still find it hard to believe that a Presidential candidate would inject personal rumor into a debate, Palmer's response made it suitably evident that the comments were inappropriate for the forum.

But what surprised me most of all was simply that they found Kyle Singer. And we've only had 5 hours so far. I doubt the virus is completely contained, but I still have no idea where the series is headed next. And I can't wait to find out.