I’m sure there are some of you who set your VCRs to tape “24” last night and forgot to set it to go over the hour, and thus you missed the last 10 minutes due to the football game running over. (And for some of you, your local TV news may have cut it off!) For the benefit of folks (like Blue Spider) who are dying to know what happened, I’ll give a very brief recap.

If you got hooked last night and need to catch up on the first four seasons, here’s your link:

Bauer is at the airport, having dropped off his ladyfriend’s son. He makes his goodbyes and races off to see the Russian man mentioned in ex-President Palmer’s notes. As the girlfriend and her son are leaving the airport, the kid sees a truckfull of black-clothed gunmen running into the airport. He leaps from the car to warn Bauer.

Bauer finds his guy and is beginning to threaten him when the truck in front of the airport detonates and the terrorists begin firing. They announce that the president and Russian prez must meet their demands. As Bauer is distracted, his prey sucks on a suicide pill.

A phone call to that shadowy guy running the terrorists confirms that the phone call to the First Lady from Palmer was altered so that it didn’t sound like Palmer wanted to talk about a national security issue. The person on the other end of the phone call is the First Lady’s Secret Service agent.

Then it’s blink-BLINK-blink-BLINK.