“The Ninth Seat” (Season-1;Episode-17;aired-04/19/17)

POTUS

POTUS kicks us off trying to fill all nine seats for the Supreme Court Justices. His ally on this front is a woman named Julia he knew back in college. It appears she has done a lot of legwork and has a list of nine names that both parties will agree on. (Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of teamwork today?)

Bowman, an increasingly despicable type, objects to one of the names. He and his Republican team say if they don’t throw out the last name, then they’ll walk on ALL names.

At that, everyone is mad and both DEMS and REPUBS get up to leave.

This is when Pres. Tom Kirkman almost reveals he’s really Jack Bauer. He gets pissed. He tells everyone to sit down and then yells it. His Jack Bauerness is screaming all over the place. We all know if this were taking place at a black op site instead of the White House that there’d be a sudden increase in body count and filling the Ninth Seat would be the least of Jack’s, er, President Kirkman’s concerns.

But he reins it in.

Later, when he and Julia meet he offers Julia the position as Ninth Seat. He figures she’s well-liked and respected and no one could say “no”. She seems hesitant so POTUS asks her to think about it.

She does and reveals to him she can’t do it because she’s had early onset dementia for about a year. The president is visibly shocked. I’ll admit I was saddened too. She does, however, offer the perfect plan for the time being: there will only be eight seats filled. It seems like “nine” isn’t a number set in stone.

Oddly enough, when presented to the group, Senator Bowman accepts it by revealing “I’ll wait you out” refer to the selection will be make when Pres. Kirkman is president no more. Okay, red flag alert. Many high-ranking officials have died, and here is a Senator who is all gung-ho about getting his way and suddenly he caves and is willing to “wait it out”. What ulterior plans does he have? Is he part of Team Destroy USA?

Pesky Press

In this episode, Abe Leonard bounces around. At first he’s in Iraq meeting with the terrorists. Turns out he’s not one of them, but he wants to know what’s up with Nestor Lazano (aka Catalan). Mr. Terrorist confirms they had nothing to do with the bombings. So “why take credit” wonders Abe. Turns out Catalan paid Al Zakari (sp) to take credit.

Upon Abe’s return to the USA, his story is rejected by the editor for lack of revealing his sources. Abe will give them up when the time is right.

So he heads to long-time connection Hookstraten (who later tells Aaron that Abe is an enemy she likes to keep close). He starts questioning her on things he’s heard about MacLeish. She will neither confirm nor deny anything and kicks her out of her office. Aaron leaves and makes an odd phone call.

The fact that he’s now in with Hookstraten is somewhat concerning and puts him back in “bad guy” territory, but his phone call is odd. Is he tipping someone off to something about the conversation?

Turns out his call went to Hannah’s phone, but since she and Atwood are enjoying the sights in North Dakota, her calls are forwarded to Hannah’s boss, the guy who interrogated Aaron for possibly being a mole.

Boss man decides to tell POTUS and wants to put a tail on Abe, but the president shoots it down.

Whether he listens or not we don’t know, but someone ends up following Abe. But this don’t happen until Abe, in a seemingly desperate attempt for information, types “Nestor Lozano conspiracy theories” in a search engine to see what pops up. A bizarre links comes up and he clicks on it, to be taken to several videos during the assassination attempt on the President. He sees a video of Hannah Wells being taken down as a possible shooter. He later finds an envelope with an old school cell phone. It rings and he’s told to meet someone in an hour.

Hannah & Atwood

This takes us to Driggs, ND which isn’t a real place (although Driggs, Idaho is and it’s a small town with less than 2000. Hope they aren’t thought of as a whacko-town after this). It’s a small quaint town and as they walk down the street some guy mentions a storm is coming. Atwood replies he wouldn’t know as he hasn’t checked the weather. The guy’s reaction is odd, and he stumbles off as they apparently failed some sort of “welcome test”.

They look in his windshield and notice a book called “Pax Americana”. They leave and walk into an empty bar and end up talking to the bar owner, who is open and friendly (which I guess means they passed his “welcome test”).

He coughs up information about the place used to be associated with the Air Force, but they left and aren’t coming back, and that the “True Believers” in town head up into the woods and light bon fires at night, and oh yeah, sometimes you can hear choppers.

They leave the bar and Hannah puts her FBI skills to use to steal a Pax Americana book out of some guy with a “NVWS” tattoo.

Hannah and Atwood head off in a truck and are stopped on “private land” at a bridge by several gun-toting individuals, who they known are terrorists and part of some sleeper cell.

Since going in the front door didn’t work, they’ll have to sneak in the back door.

Come nightfall, they are on the outskirts of the camp. Hannah estimates there are around 35-40 people with their campers and various vehicles. They also happen to be lighting bonfires in a circle.

Right about the time they realize the bonfires aren’t for singing campfire songs and roasting hotdogs they hear a helicopter in the distance. Turns out it’s markers for a landing zone.

A chopper sets down and a guy gets out which causes a “is that who I think it is but it can’t really be” reaction in Hannah.

Through wafts of campfire smoke we see the face of some guy.

I’m not sure who he is and we’ll obviously find out soon enough, but my mind was briefly taken back to someone who died in the Capitol bombing that Hannah was connected to.

I seem to recall Atwood was worried about her being “too close to the case” since she seemed to be having or having had an affair with a Senator/Congressman.

My bet is: that’s him. He also “survived” the capitol attack, precisely because he wasn’t there.

Wow. The plot thickens.

Questions:

• Just how many people really survived the blast because they weren’t there? We know of MacLeish and Langdon and now this guy.
• Who else?
• How high does this go?
• Where will it stop?
• When will Jack Bauer thrown off his POTUS disguise and kick some serious butt? And where’s Chloe?