24 : Season two summary

Silver Chips Online is pleased to bring you the definitive guide to season two of '24,' just in time to bring you up to speed for the premier Tuesday, October 28th, at 9:00 PM on FOX.

The last thing Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) wants is to have another day like that awful one last year. Season two finds the nation's greatest hero depressed, unshaven, and retired. Unable to cope with his wife's death and with his relationship with daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) deteriorated to silence, Jack can no longer answer duty's call.

But duty has Jack in mind anyway. At the beginning of season two, a man is brutally tortured by foreign agents until he tells them that a nuclear bomb will explode in Los Angeles that very day. Eight hours later, at 8:02 AM, President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) is spirited away to an underground hideout and briefed that a terrorist group called Second Wave, possibly supported by Middle Eastern states, appears to be behind the plot. The president decides Jack is the only man who can save the day, and calls him with orders to get to the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) as soon as he can.

Knowing that Palmer must be serious, Jack heads back to his old job. At CTU, he decapitates a critical anti-terror witness, then goes undercover. Using the head to establish credibility, Jack quickly gets himself accepted into a gang of terrorists going to pull off a bombing – at CTU, Jack's headquarters!

Jack tries to call Palmer and warn him of the attack, but a nefarious presidential advisor stops him. CTU has almost no warning before the bombing, which partially destroys the agency. Enraged, Jack kills the terrorists and drives off to find the terrorists' leader, a man named Joseph Wald. Wald tells Jack that it was none other than Nina Meyers, the double agent who killed his wife, who contacted Wald's crew to blow up CTU, and then shoots himself.

Frustrated and with nothing to show so far but a body count, Jack returns for a debriefing. Meanwhile, fellow agent Tony Almeda (Carlos Bernard) has headed out to question a man named Reza Naiyeer (on his wedding day no less) who is suspected of involvement. Reza implicates his father in-law, a rich contractor with CIA ties named Bob Warner.

Back at Palmer's secret undisclosed location, it appears that some of the President's own advisers are scheming against him. The plot thickens as Palmer's ex-wife, Sherry Palmer, seeks him out and tells him she's the only one who can save his presidency.

Nina leads Jack to her contact, Mamud Faheen. Jack piles Faheen and Nina onto a small jet to hop back to CTU. In a moment of brilliance, Nina convinces Faheen to tell her everything (in Arabic), and then uses her shackled hands to slit his throat with a jagged credit card. Now that she is the only one who knows the bomb's location, Nina's pardon and release seem guaranteed.

Of course, just then a missile rips through the plane, sending it spiraling into the California scrub. Jack is the only survivor, but he manages to save Nina with CPR. Right away, a group of mysterious US commandos arrive, armed to the teeth and ready to kill. Nina grabs an assault rifle and helps Jack snuff them, but just as CTU agents fly in she turns the gun on Jack and takes him hostage. She demands to speak with the President, and asks for two things – a full pardon for Nina's death, and a pardon for the future murder of Jack Bauer. Jack urges the President to agree to save Los Angeles.

Things are not going well for the Warner family either, as the wedding day degenerates into a bloodbath. Reza's bride Marie Warner reveals that she is the true terrorist and kills him, and a man named Sayed Ali has Marie's sister, Kate, kidnapped and tortured.

It looks like Jack is finished, but suddenly a sniper shoots Nina in the hand. Turns out that CTU has found Sayed Ali, and presumably the bomb – thus making Nina's knowledge useless. Saved, Jack leads a team of agents to Ali's house and rescues Kate. However, Ali has just gone to pray – and a shaken Kate must go to Ali's mosque, undercover, to ID him for Jack. Working together, they capture him and Jack fakes the execution of Ali's son to interrogate him. In tears, Ali confesses that the bomb will be detonated from a plane flown from Norton Airfield.

At the airfield, Jack finds dead US commandos and a Cessna about to take off. He shoots the tires and the pilot, but shortly afterwards the bomb squad realizes that the plane holds only a fake nuke. After interrogating the wounded pilot and Marie Warner (who showed up to deliver the detonator) Jack finds the real bomb – which can't be disarmed and could go off at any second.

Loading the bomb onto another plane, Jack prepares to fly it into the Mojave Desert, thus saving Los Angeles and killing himself. However, when he gets airborne Jack is surprised by CTU Director George Mason (Xander Berkley), who snuck aboard. Mason has inhaled plutonium during the hunt for the nuke and will die that day, and he convinces Jack to let him crash the bomb. Jack parachutes to safety as the bomb nukes the desert by night. The focus of the show shifts from finding the bomb to stopping the US from launching a retaliatory strike against the Middle East based on false evidence.

Sayed Ali claims no foreign governments were involved, but a sniper quickly dispatches him. The man who shot Ali contacts Jack and tells him he is the only one who can stop the war. He needs Kate Warner to authorize his flight out of the US through her dad's CIA connections. Jack agrees to hand Kate over to him in return for a microchip containing information about fake tapes implicating foreign governments.

The man agrees, but is critically wounded in a pitched gunfight against mysterious assailants. Jack figures out that the microchip he needs is surgically implanted in the man's neck, so he slices and dices.

But Jack's not catching any lucky breaks today, and it turns out the chip has a tracker in it. He removes it and sends the chip to CTU with another agent, but is captured by terrorists himself. Next, Jack is shockingly and brutally tortured until his heart stops, and the terrorists have to kidnap a doctor to save him.

When he gets a moment alone with the doctor, Jack convinces him to poison his torturer, whom Jack quickly interrogates then dispatches. Jack learns that the name of the man behind the plot is "Kingsley," and he sets off to retrieve the chip. However, the other agent and Kate Warner have been attacked by rednecks, and Kate, with the chip, is being kidnapped. Jack rushes in just in time to save her, but the rednecks crush the chip. It is so badly damaged that the only readable information is the name of the programmer - Alex Hewitt.

President Palmer is having a terrifically bad day also, as his refusal to authorize air strikes based on what could be false evidence causes his cabinet to turn on him. The vice president makes a power play and has the cabinet remove Palmer through an obscure Constitutional clause. Palmer is then imprisoned by his own Secret Service.

Jack finds Alex Hewitt, only to find the treacherous Sherry Palmer coming to meet him as well. It seems as if Hewitt, who fabricated the evidence against the Middle Eastern countries for Kingsley, will help Jack. However, this is 24, land of crazy twists, so Alex pulls a gun on Jack, who shoots and kills him. Now, Jack has no chance but to use Sherry and Alex's voice duplicating program to arrange a meeting with Kingsley himself.

Finally, Jack gets Kingsley to admit on tape that the evidence was faked to incite war in the Middle East. A final massive shootout ensues, Kingsley and his men bite the dust, war is averted, Palmer is reinstated, and all is right with the world. Or is it? In the final seconds of the season, while jubilant throngs greet Palmer, a woman shakes his hand with a poisoned latex skin covering hers. The stricken President falls to the ground, and 24 fades to black.

Kim's storyline isn't included thus far because it is irrelevant. Her boss murders his wife and tries to kill Kim and his daughter, then Kim and her boyfriend are caught with the body and charged with murder, then Kim causes a highway accident which severs her boyfriend's legs to escape, then she is caught in a bear trap and menaced by a cougar, then she is rescued but kidnapped by a survivalist, then she escapes and is taken hostage during a convenience store robbery, then she escapes again and returns to kill her boss. Kim really has an unbelievably awful day.

The new season of 24 is set to deliver all new surprises and characters, with a bio-terrorism plot as the centerpiece of the season. Tune in to catch all the action!