In 2008, Empire magazine made a list of the 50 best TV shows ever produced. 24 ranked #6, and this episode was regarded as the best of the entire series up to that point. As I have already said elsewhere, I prefer the fifteenth hour of Day 2, but Empire's choice makes sense as well, since this is the single most shocking and unforgettable moment of Day 3.
Unlike any other episode, this is truly a race against the clock: the CTU has only one hour at its disposal to locate Stephen Saunders, otherwise Jack will have to carry out his latest instructions and murder his own boss, Ryan Chappelle (Paul Schulze). The latter is horrified by the news and asks Jack to do whatever's possible to prevent the terrible eventuality from coming true, hence the deployment of an entire strike team, led by Chase, which will try to find Saunders using his phone signal. Meanwhile, another problem materializes when Michelle learns one of the hotel guests left before the quarantine was issued, meaning he could spread the infection all over Los Angeles.
That last revelation adds a conspicuous amount of tension to the story, but the real core of this episode is the fate of Schulze's character, which in many ways reflects the departure of George Mason (Xander Berkeley) in the previous season. Both George and Ryan were introduced as obnoxious, by-the-book bureaucrats, always in the way whenever Jack tried to do the right thing. Mason was subsequently humanized throughout the second year of the show, whereas Chappelle appears at his most humane only now, when he faces the possibility of a violent death. Then again, as he points out toward the end of the episode, he has no one who really cares for him, so why bother trying to be nice? Well, turns out he is mistaken: we, the audience, have learned to appreciate his pain-in-the-ass behavior over the course of his sporadic appearances (eerily enough, the number of episodes he is in adds up to twenty-four), and his final bow is guaranteed to leave few people with dry eyes.
Unlike any other episode, this is truly a race against the clock: the CTU has only one hour at its disposal to locate Stephen Saunders, otherwise Jack will have to carry out his latest instructions and murder his own boss, Ryan Chappelle (Paul Schulze). The latter is horrified by the news and asks Jack to do whatever's possible to prevent the terrible eventuality from coming true, hence the deployment of an entire strike team, led by Chase, which will try to find Saunders using his phone signal. Meanwhile, another problem materializes when Michelle learns one of the hotel guests left before the quarantine was issued, meaning he could spread the infection all over Los Angeles.
That last revelation adds a conspicuous amount of tension to the story, but the real core of this episode is the fate of Schulze's character, which in many ways reflects the departure of George Mason (Xander Berkeley) in the previous season. Both George and Ryan were introduced as obnoxious, by-the-book bureaucrats, always in the way whenever Jack tried to do the right thing. Mason was subsequently humanized throughout the second year of the show, whereas Chappelle appears at his most humane only now, when he faces the possibility of a violent death. Then again, as he points out toward the end of the episode, he has no one who really cares for him, so why bother trying to be nice? Well, turns out he is mistaken: we, the audience, have learned to appreciate his pain-in-the-ass behavior over the course of his sporadic appearances (eerily enough, the number of episodes he is in adds up to twenty-four), and his final bow is guaranteed to leave few people with dry eyes.
