If ever there was a character on broadcast TV who deserves the appellation, it's Nina Myers of 24.

In a mere three seasons, the lean nightmare preternaturally portrayed by actress Sarah Clarke, has betrayed her country three times, killed former lover Jack Bauer's wife and unborn child, aided and abetted a plot to kill a candidate for president of the United States, helped bring a nuclear bomb into the United States, helped bring a deadly virus into the United States, killed numerous unnamed others who got in her way, and served as an insinuating, slithering icon of woman-as-castrator evil.

Last night, it looked like she would escape yet again, having lulled the CTU medical team into complacency by nearly killing herself, faking anesthesia-induced unconsciousness, then (off-camera) wiping out the medical staff with surgical instruments and leaving a trail of death and destruction in her wake.

Then, when Jack's daughter Kim confronted the escaping Myers at gunpoint, the excruciating standoff seemed certain to result in ill for Kim. But then a shot rang out! Jack found them and shot Myers. Even then, as she lay on the concrete bleeding, her hand inched toward a gun before Jack almost audibly said "FUCK THIS SHIT" and shot her three more times. Dawn shouted out, startling kiddies, "Shoot her again, shoot her again." But the bitch was dead - FINALLY.

24 is in high gear now - it always seems to do better when confined to a small, constrained area, where the interpersonal conflict can build to a pressure cooker pitch, as it has of late.

And speaking of bitches, how coldblooded do you have to be to goad a sick old man into an angina attack, then just sit there while he expires begging for his pills? Damn cold - that's Sherry Palmer.