Yay! for television! First, on the Buffy front: I love Andrew. Big, big love. I think Tom Lenk did a marvelous job making this character who was originally only comic relief into a three-dimensional person who actually affected me this past episode as well as making me laugh. "Buffy, the Slayer of the Vam-PI-res." I felt the last episode of sweeps was the strongest, and without a doubt the funniest episode of the show I've seen in a long time. As much as I love "In my plan, we are beltless." and "We are as goooods!" I've decided that my favorite moment of the whole episode was when Principal Wood was talking about the Hellmouth, and we cut back to Andrew and his whiteboard. And he points to the Hellmouth and smiles knowingly. That was absolutely perfect.

24: Wow. That was an amazing episode. So many things to talk about: first of all, it was nice to see Kim be smart for a change: seeing the television, checking the stations, covering it back up and waiting for the right moment. She was lucky he wasn't really a psycho rapist/killer, but if he had been, I think she would have gotten out okay. I don't envy this girl the day she's had; I'm thinking in terms of trauma it's worse than the "day" before. I loved the Jack/Kate/Marie plot. Laura Harris did a great job as Marie; I really bought that gunshot wound. It was chilling to see how obviously in pain she was, but was still unwilling to break. It was a great contrast to the other two terrorists we've seen a lot of, Syed Ali and Justin Al-Guarini (to borrow the TWoP name), who both broke almost immediately. Kate's reactions to her sister were very real to me, and I am enjoying the dynamic between these two characters even though I don't like Kate all that much herself. Jack, of course, is just brilliant.

But I'd like to take a moment to talk about Sherry and Palmer. First of all, if it comes out that Sherry was telling the truth, and that she was just playing Stanton to get inside the conspiracy, I'll be very disappointed. Remember that phone call Sherry made to Stanton right before Palmer had him arrested and subsequently tortured? Sherry was the one in charge of that phone call. She was the one telling Stanton how to react and what to expect, and she wouldn't be doing that if Stanton were the one heading the conspiracy. I think Sherry's in it deep, and I hope they follow through with that story. I am a touch bit sad with how Palmer's story is turning out: there are so many things to delve into when you have a President facing a crisis like this, and I don't think we're getting into them. I'm not really interested in the conspiracy plot because it's not been very, well, menacing yet. I want to see Palmer coping with the fact that at the end of the day, millions of his citizens could die. I want to see how Palmer is reassuring the country after a reporter has told the public that the President is suppressing news of a terrorist attack and the Counter Terrorism Unit in Los Angeles was bombed on the same day. I want to see the panic and how Palmer deals with that. I hope we get some of that in the future.

Finally, Mason. My dear, sweet George Mason. How I will miss you. I just want to commend the writers and Xander Berkeley for creating such an amazing character. I never would have thought at the beginning of this season how much I would miss this guy after just half a season, but I do. Hats off, y'all.