A bad week to be in charge

Okay, it was kind of weird watching Buffy and 24 back to back on Tuesday. First there's a Scooby revolt as her Slayerness decides to charge headlong back into the situation that got a couple Slayers-in-training killed and poked Xander's eye out. No one even tried to defend her, or take her side, which was a little tough to swallow, but if she's acting that insane, you could make the case that everyone would be able to tell.

Then, President David Palmer was effectively sacked by his cabinet, at his Vice President's urging. Some interesting artistic license by the writers, as they had Palmer's veep spin the bit where he gets to take charge if the president is too sick to do the job to include mental health. I haven't been checking to see if this might actually fly in the real world, but it's an interesting idea. Meanwhile, they've got three weeks to either tie up or ignore a monumental amount of loose ends:

• Gary Matheseon. The psycho dad that Kim, daughter of CTU Agent Jack Bauer, was fleeing early on has been charged with his wife's murder, but she's going back to his house to get her things.
• Nina Myers. Jack whispered something in her ear when we last saw her, sometime in the late morning or early afternoon.
• Peter Kingsley. The oil exec is definitely one of the bad guys. Right now we're assuming he wanted the microchip because he would profit from the war, although as I think about it, I'm not sure if that was ever explicitly stated.
• Kim Bauer. Along with the Matheson sub-plot, it seems entirely possible that Kingsley might try to grab her.
• Bob Warner. He worked for the CIA. He still may be involved.

But I wasn't talking about that, I was talking about losing your authority. Heck, you could even stretch the end of Jasmine's reign of, well, not so much terror as loss of individuality and willpower on Angel to work in that theme. And the surprise visit from previously dead Lilah at the close of the episode makes me think the First Evil terrorizing Sunnydale may have made the trip to L.A., setting the stage for some of the cast of the spinoff to return to the mothership for the finale of Buffy. I've been staying blissfully ignorant of whether or not this is, in fact, happening.