(S08E14) Judging by tonight's ep, it looks like we can expect more lunacy and lazy story developments as '24' heads into its final hours. It's probably best for the show to end its run after this season. At this point, '24' is merely recycling its once startling twists and turns, and the real-time gimmick has gotten stale. We have a new locale and a few new names and faces, but the tricks are all the same, and the suspense feels manufactured, cheap and forced. Fans can see the twists coming from hours away, even when they're as unbelievable and over the top as they have been this year.

Jack Bauer is long overdue for a trip to the big screen. Hopefully, the tired real-time dramatic device that has outworn its welcome on TV won't shackle the character once he jumps to the movies. I'd much rather see Kiefer battling the baddies in a dense, smartly paced thriller than sit through another ridiculous real-time setup.

That being typed, the show still knows how to deliver solid action and great gunplay. I loved watching Jack and Renee work together tonight to save Hassan and his family. Here's hoping we get more bullets, smoke bombs, and violence as the story continues.

At first I thought the president's idea to have Jack relocate Hassan made no sense. Actually I still think it makes no sense – Jack belongs in the field tracking down the terrorists with the nuclear rods. He seems to be the only CTU agent capable of locating bad guys. (Remember how he instantly knew where Samir and his goons would take the rods after CTU went dark last week?) But Jack had to escort Hassan out of the UN; how else was he supposed to get into an awesome gunfight with a swarm of trigger-happy government agents?

Let's back up a little bit and talk about Weiss and General Brucker's treasony plan. It makes little sense that Brucker would approach Weiss about such an insane idea in the first place. Brucker risked losing everything and being thrown in prison by bringing a plan like that to the Chief of Staff. How did he know Weiss would go for it? Have these two been in cahoots before? Are they golfing buddies? Who knows? This development skyrocketed straight into planet Stupid when Ethan Kanin realized what was going on ... and swiftly decided to have a convenient heart attack.

I can't decide what was sillier, watching Kanin's bum ticker give out at the critical moment, or watching Dana the Wicked Witch parade around CTU talking to the terrorists on her cell phone. If she's not careful --- and she's not – our lady mole is gonna get caught. I only hope Chloe notices Dana's double-dealing first. I know she got her chance to shine last week, but Chloe deserves to be the one to take Dana down for good. I'm not saying she should kill her (although that would be pretty awesome), but Chloe should be the one to put her in a corner.

So is it me, or does Dana's connection to the terrorists make absolutely no sense? (Yup, lots of things didn't make sense last night.) If she's such a cold, terror lovin' badass, why didn't' she just execute Kevin and Nick when they first showed up knocking on CTU's door? Instead, she helped them raid a warehouse and fell into the role of victim before dragging Cole into that awful mess. And why hasn't she been talking to Samir all day long? Was she texting him in the bathroom? Instant messaging him from her smart phone?

At least Dana's gone into full-blown bad girl mode. It's a lot more fun to watch her act completely evil than play the whimpering victim. I like watching Katee Sackhoff play tough, even when her character has little to no redeeming qualities. And let's not forget the one compelling nugget of info we learned about Dana last night: She answers to someone higher than Samir. It'll be interesting to find out the identity of this bog boss and what his motives are.

So, yeah, I liked it when Jack and Renee fired their guns at the misguided US agents. Everything else was completely ridiculous, but I still had fun with it. President Taylor's speech about American integrity was a little corny, but Cherry Jones made it work. Hasting's short motivational speech at CTU was a lot better. It's good to see this guy finding his groove. Let's hope the show does the same as the end approaches.