Dana Walsh is the worst character in the entire history of “24.” Now if you don’t agree, that’s understandable, but you need to stop reading because you probably have some Saxon Math homework for your 6th grade equivalency class you should be doing, and you probably don’t understand complex sentences anyway. Seriously stop reading. Look!! Transformers 2 is on! Okay, now I know they’re gone.

Now I know the list of absurd 24 characters is lengthy. This is a world where Charles Logan and Wayne Palmer became president after all, but Dana is a whole new level of stupid. We are again reminded that what is truly the greatest threat to America’s future is the dwindling talent pool of reliable human resource directors.

We have CTU of the future (since it’s something like 2015 in 24 time), with hd graphics displays hidden inside every single glass wall in the place and a seemingly limitless supply of lanterns (because after how horribly protected CTU Los Angeles was the insurance company probably required they take some precautions for when they were inevitably attacked.) The same CTU which has facial recognition software good enough to recognize Tarin Fahroush’s blurry face from a drone flying 900 miles above the city in about 3 seconds. However, somehow Dana’s previous life as a redneck murderer escaped them.

I assume, that as convicted felon, her mugshot is somewhere in the national database of people that do bad things, but she’s apparently never gotten close enough to one of CTU’s 900 million worldwide cameras for one of them to flag her as someone you probably shouldn’t hire for a job crucial to our national security. This isn’t 1956 people, you can’t just move to a new city and make up a new identity for yourself. Of course not only did Dana manage to pull this off, she also landed a high paying gig at CTU.

Now this in and of itself would be a stupid and annoying plotline, but the writers of 24 weren’t done yet. Not by a mile. Not only did Jenny Scott/Dana Walsh manage to bypass every aspect of a decent background check, but she’s also apparently working with the terrorists. Yes, she’s our season 8 mole.

Amazingly, the fact that she’s the mole is the most believable part about Dana Walsh. CTU has a track record of hiring terrorist moles. I assume that it’s part of a really complicated and long term trap method of counter terrorism. Anyway, it’s easier to believe that CTU would hire another terrorist mole than it is to believe that a redneck murderer from Rock Wall, Texas would have the mental ability to be a lead operations worker for a government task force. It’s EVEN HARDER to imagine that if you did happen to stumble across such a person, that they would want to get married to Cole Ortiz.

Okay, so we’ve now established Dana as having previously committed a murder. We’ve also established that she’s working with terrorists. Dana also had no problem killing Milto… err… Bill Prady in about 30 seconds to protect herself. So, armed with that knowledge, WHY WOULD SHE HELP KEVIN AND HIS MUTE REDNECK BUDDY BREAK INTO THE POLICE STATION?!??!!! Why not just kill them? Or have the terrorists kill them? Why waste the time to help them pull off this gig if you’re not only busy trying to find terrorists, but doubly busy because you’re also helping them.

I welcome any and all explanations, and I’m really looking forward to what awaits Dana as the season progresses. She’s probably the one that set that Mountain Lion after Kim Bauer.