(S08E21) Jack Bauer got blood on his hands doing a little exploratory surgery last night on '24.' The show followed Jack's cold-blooded execution of Dana Walsh last week with one of the darkest and most grisly eps we've seen in a while.

It seems like Dirty Dana was right about our hero; he's in pure vendetta mode, and he's more concerned with slicing up and shooting everyone responsible for Renee's death than with seeking justice through the proper channels.

I'll admit that watching Jack spiral down this destructive path is pretty exciting. He's angry and unpredictable and his judgment is completely clouded by his dangerous emotional state. There's no telling what he's gonna do next.

On the other side of the fence, you have Charles Logan manipulating the Prez and the Russians and basically taking over CTU in a bid to get back on top. His agenda is purely selfish (no surprise there) and he'll step on anyone to see his own personal stock rise.

Almost all of the major players have gotten their hands dirty or have been corrupted one way or another this season. Even the Prez, who probably deserves a house call from crazy Dr. Jack at this point, is covering up the fact that the Russians have basically become agents of Sauron. Maybe Ortiz was on to something when he said "there are no good guys here."

But we're still backing Jack. He might be a little nutso right now, but he's still the only one trying to punish the people responsible for almost nuking New York and for killing Omar Hassan.

It's probably best not to gripe about the convenient plot developments that popped up in this ep (Pavel guest starring in Dana's video, the magic mobile hot spot). It's better to just sit back and enjoy watching Jack go rogue in his last TV hurrah. Still, there's no way that he could've orchestrated that department store rouse on the fly or that Jim Ricker (Michael Madsen) could've located Pavel right in the nick of time. But, hey, it's '24.' There's no way that Charles Logan's attaché is gonna get the drop on our man, right? You don't play Jack Bauer; Jack Bauer plays you. And then you die.

Chloe was finally ready to break the rules again to help Jack, and she even convinced Arlo to lend a hand. Independent Chloe is fun to watch. Hopefully she'll get the boss's seat back from Pillar soon.

It'll be interesting to see Chloe reconnect with Jack after she set up that sting operation a few hours ago. I'm sure that Jack has probably already forgiven her for that, and she's eventually gonna forgive herself, but I'm still looking forward to seeing these two make up and work together again.

I wonder where Ortiz is gonna end up as the next few hours unfold. He agreed to help Chloe in her attempt to locate Jack, but he still seems to be stuck in limbo after all that's happened. Jack used him, Dana used him (but she might have loved him), and he's locked up because the Prez refuses to take a stand against the terrorists. His painfully blunt comments to Pillar were pretty hilarious. Freddie Prinze Jr. is finally showing some spark here. I'd like to see him bust out of CTU and maybe even play a major role in the series' final few hours.

Now let's talk torture. It seems like the show is going out of its way to tell us that torture is bad bad bad, and I'm not just talking about Meredith Reed yelling "Hey, that's wrong" as Jack prepared to gut Pavel. Even Jack admitted that his gruesome methods of extracting information (with pliers, a shiv and a blowtorch) were not working.

I winced a few times during this brutal final scene, but thankfully most of the horrible stuff – including Jack digging into Pavel's belly to fetch his SIM card -- happened out of camera range. The stabbing, yanking, burning and cutting were more suggested than seen, but Pavel's horrific screams and the sounds of torture were enough to make watching the scene feel pretty uncomfortable. But it was capped off by a great moment where Jack finally learned about Logan's involvement.

I don't even want to think about the awful things that Jack might do to Logan after watching him slice and dice Pavel. Next Monday can't come soon enough.

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