24 - 5x19 "1 A.M. - 2 A.M."

YOU HAVE MY WORD! 24 Fantasy League Analysis

To start off, a snazzy new title to further indebt myself to Soi Disantra's WRooT! stylee. I've also tweaked the format if you've been confused lately about my starting/benching recommendations. Now, I'll simply describe who's Hot, who's Cold, and whose head is on the Chopping Block. (If Chase Edmunds were still active, that'd be his hand.)

HOTT
Chloe O'Brian - Way to slip through the subnet!

Karen Hayes - She breaks out of her slump to provide yet another example of how undermining authority is patriotic.

Graham - Yet another conspirator behind the ostensible head villian. But with only 5 episodes left, you can be pretty sure that Graham (or should I say, the bald love child of Ron Howard and David Cross) will give you considerable Villain Scheming Points.

Curtin Manning - After an inexplicable absence for the past couple weeks, Curtis returns to action with game-highs in Kills, Assists and Captures.

NOTT
Audrey Raines - Pointing a gun at Robocop, threatening to shoot him and finally running off to hide without shooting him? Women be hysterical! However, Audrey did use her connections to avoid being the second injured woman that Jack left only to be killed by Henderson and Co.

Jack Bauer - Yes, the premiere player in 24 is in a rut. (Arguably, Chloe has become number 1, but bear with.) First, he saw to Audrey's injury with a tourniquet -- a big no-no as anyone who's taken a health class in the last 15 years can tell you. Secondly, for the second straight week, Jack couldn't pull the trigger on another would-be blockbuster trade (Heller's life for Henderson's -- and we've seen how that's turned out).

Martha Logan - Women be hysterical!

CHOPPING BLOCK
Aaron Pierce - MIA, or worse, DOA. Whatever the case, he's probably relieved that he doesn't have to do any real acting anymore.

President Logan - He's a pawn in his own conspiracy! He's going to be taken down, and hard.

Miles Papazian - The way he said "I can trace [Chloe's] physical location by looking at the binary!" sounded like he'd just made his first potty.

Chris Henderson - Like baseball closers, principal villains in 24 tend to flame out even after establishing some gaudy numbers early on, because of the high-leverage, high-stress, now-or-never attitude that most of them have. So it isn't surprising that Henderson looks like he's about done, especially since he has no more useful information. It'll be interesting to see which family member of a dead CTU agent will kill him, though.

Next column: 2 a.m.
Previous column: Midnight

Indie rating: Solex - "Chris the Birthday Boy"