Or should, anyhow.

A few weeks ago, I asked you, my crazy 24-phile readers, for suggestions for Day 7 of our beloved, yet beleagured show.

I’ve noodled around some plot points from the various ideas I received and I think we may have a winner here. Stay with me.

Cast

The Plot

Worn out from the past few years of terrorist hunting, torturing, being tortured and just having everyone he loves being killed or estranged or in a vegetative state, Jack moves cross country to the Big Apple.

He gets a job doing security on the Maury Povich show, but that’s really a front for his real job — chief of security for wealthy oil baron Addison Curnow. Mandy has been hired to assassinate Curnow by an anonymous person obsessed with The A-Team. This person hates the Faceman for being such a womanizer and has become convinced that Curnow is actually Dirk Benedict.

This person does not care that killing Curnow will wreak havoc in the world oil market because those set to take over Curnow’s company upon his death are OPEC moles who want to destroy the U.S. oil reserves. This would plunge the entire futures market into uncertainty and spike prices far beyond those the average person can afford at the pump.

By day’s end

We find out that Tony Almeida’s long-lost identical triplet brother, Anthony, is actually Josh Bauer’s father, when he, Philip Bauer and Marilyn Bauer sandbag Jack by appearing on Maury’s weekly paternity test shows, trying to prove that Jack is the father. Marilyn forgot about her fling with Anthony, the black sheep of the family. It happened on one drunken night after a Girls Gone Wild: All Grown Up taping that Marilyn participated in 18 years earlier (Season 7 takes place a year after Season 6 ends). Anthony was on a bender in Rio at the time.

The blond hair is a recessive trait in Marilyn’s family; but she always figured Jack was her babydaddy.

The person who hired Mandy turns out to be none other than Martha Logan. (See how I didn’t put her in the opening credits, so you were surprised? Take note, Surnow & Co!) She’s still at loony central, and Aaron Pierce is aware of her having hired Mandy, though he found out after the fact. Given Mandy’s history, he decides to let Martha go ahead with the plot and instead helps Jack track down Mandy and take her “into custody.” They do, and find out the person behind all the bad stuff that’s happened today is Philip Bauer, who wanted to prove he was Josh’s father after all. He also has drugged Martha Logan, causing her to have an irrational fear of ‘80s television shows.

Also on Day 7

• Toni and Jack decide to start a security consulting firm. No one who’s ever thought about appearing on Maury will ever be taken on as a client. Anyone with a Cubs coffee mug, however, gets half off their usual fee. Anthony tries to sabatoge their efforts, pretending he’s Tony, come back from the dead, to get on the inside. But Jack has his suspicions from the beginning, eventually forcing Anthony to wait on the TKTS line in Times Square and not come back until he has front-row tickets to “Spamalot.”
• Maury is assassinated by Mandy, who just can’t take another episode of “who’s my babydaddy?”
• Heller tells Jack all is forgiven and that he can finally marry Audrey, but Jack tells him he’s come to his senses and wants to go back to Kate Warner, not Heller’s bats**t crazy daughter.
• Bill Buchanan is NYC’s DOT commissioner and works with Chloe in the main control room for NYC’s traffic signals, adjusting them to give Jack clear sailing across town whenever he needs it. Chloe also adjusts subway schedules to ensure a train rolls up every time Jack jets down to a station to chase after a suspect or follow up on a lead.
• She cannot, however, override the need to pay for the train rides. Jack swipes his MetroCard and proceeds into the turnstile. He doesn’t swipe it well enough, so he rams his crotch into the unmoving stile. This causes him to mutter (you guessed it) “dammit.”
• Jack forces random bad dude #23 to drink the cooking water from a hotdog stand. The bad guy knows nothing about the plot against Curnow nor the identity of Josh Bauer’s father, but confesses to having carved his name into his high school desk 10 years earlier.

Many, many thanks to all those who contributed, but most especially toThe Jack Sack, Riding With Rickey and Steve of Blogs4Bauer (he’s responsible for the Almeida triplets photo montage above, among other things). Much of the above came out of absolutely hilarious and insane e-mail exchanges with the three boys. (And a special shout-out to Glockspeak, who suggested the Dirk Benedict casting.)

Cast photos courtesy of Fox Television.