Warning: plot spoilers
Like Fox’s hit spy thriller 24 comes to an end, the theory that the good guys use Macintosh computers while the bad guys use Windows PCs seems to be reinforced.
The show’s penultimate episode, which aired Tuesday night, finally resolved the show’s biggest cliffhanger: the identity of a traitor.
The identity of the traitor was a revelation that took most viewers by surprise, but not those who had discovered the producers’ new device to denote villainy in the murky world of spies: the bad guys use computers with Microsoft Windows. ; the good ones use Macs.
The show has become a cult hit for Fox and earned star Kiefer Sutherland a Golden Globe award. The show, which premiered in November, chronicles 24 hours of the eventful life of counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Sutherland). , who attempts to rescue his kidnapped wife and daughter while also foiling a murder plot. Each hour-long episode takes place in real time. The final episode airs next week.
The action is full of plot twists. The central part of the drama is discovering the identity of the mole in Bauer’s group; There is a traitor among them, but no one knows who he is.
Until now. The mole turned out to be one of the most trustworthy characters on the show.
But viewers like Dean Browell, a Virginia web designer who championed the Macintosh theory, knew it all along. While Bauer and most of the other agents in his unit used Macs, the traitor used a laptop made by Dell. The bad guys, a group of renegade Serbs, also use Dell machines.
Meanwhile, another agent, whom everyone suspected was the traitor, used a shiny Apple Titanium PowerBook. To Browell, he was clearly trustworthy and the shady characterization was a dead giveaway.
“Looks like we said it,” Browell said triumphantly. “I had started to doubt my own theory. It feels good to have been right.”
The vindication is even sweeter because no one believed Browell when he first formulated his theory a couple of months ago. His idea was ridiculed on fan sites and mocked on message boards.
Not even his wife believed him. She thought it was nonsense. Browell hopes to update her when she soon returns from an overseas business trip.
