Please read only after you've seen the complete first season!
After Jack has successfully rescued his family and Gaines is dead, we now watch a second story unfold within the first season of "24", and it is pretty much independent of the first one. Nina was so helpful for Jack in the whole Gaines-story that I wonder whether the "24"-writers really knew themselves what was going to come up in the second part. But there are some hints they definitely know now: just watch Ninas reaction when Alberta tells her the news of what happened between Jack and the Gaines-crew. This episode contains some pretty strong material: for example Jacks interrogation by Alberta - very nicely displayed here a frequent and typical behavior of Jacks: at first he's trying to cooperate even with someone who tries to harm him professionally. But he's not willing to tolerate everything and starts to verbally fight his new superior which is nice to see because in the normal everyday professional life we all know these situations even if we don't hang around in a kind of prison being interrogated by the state. Scenes like that also make Jack the hero he is ;-), it's not only fighting the terrorists. (A very similar scene years later will prequel the fourth season.) An even stronger scene is the encounter of Palmer and Jack minutes later. Although they will have persistent contact to each other for years to come, most of that will happen by cellphone, so this meeting is a very rare opportunity and exquisitely done by the writers: the senator thinks Bauer is his enemy. Because both characters are very much alike: straight forward and quickly trying to resolve problems by openly confronting them it takes only minutes for the two to find their way out of the misunderstandings caused by third party. Now they can add up their background knowledge on the case and really get into the matter, and the second story within this first season is on its rapid way now...
After Jack has successfully rescued his family and Gaines is dead, we now watch a second story unfold within the first season of "24", and it is pretty much independent of the first one. Nina was so helpful for Jack in the whole Gaines-story that I wonder whether the "24"-writers really knew themselves what was going to come up in the second part. But there are some hints they definitely know now: just watch Ninas reaction when Alberta tells her the news of what happened between Jack and the Gaines-crew. This episode contains some pretty strong material: for example Jacks interrogation by Alberta - very nicely displayed here a frequent and typical behavior of Jacks: at first he's trying to cooperate even with someone who tries to harm him professionally. But he's not willing to tolerate everything and starts to verbally fight his new superior which is nice to see because in the normal everyday professional life we all know these situations even if we don't hang around in a kind of prison being interrogated by the state. Scenes like that also make Jack the hero he is ;-), it's not only fighting the terrorists. (A very similar scene years later will prequel the fourth season.) An even stronger scene is the encounter of Palmer and Jack minutes later. Although they will have persistent contact to each other for years to come, most of that will happen by cellphone, so this meeting is a very rare opportunity and exquisitely done by the writers: the senator thinks Bauer is his enemy. Because both characters are very much alike: straight forward and quickly trying to resolve problems by openly confronting them it takes only minutes for the two to find their way out of the misunderstandings caused by third party. Now they can add up their background knowledge on the case and really get into the matter, and the second story within this first season is on its rapid way now...