First something
I realized only after posting last week. Jack got a gun past security in to see
the president, the gun he used to kowtow Mark. Four years without the drama Jack
brings to every day, and presidential security winds up in the hand basket of an
ACDC song.
With the fuse
still sputtering along (must be a slow fuse), China ships are steaming to
Okinawa, and nobody knows what they’ll do when they get there, but everybody’s
worried. I don’t know what happened to the fighter escort—maybe they ran outta
gas. PH is getting jittery with all the brass around him (because none is
educated as evinced by their pronunciation of “nuclear”?). He just might engage them if they cross the imaginary line. Or he
might suddenly come down with Alzheimer’s and forget what’s going on. That must
be why 24 starts each episode (but the 1st) with a recap.
After the
recap, we start with Audrey pinned down by a sniper. Thank goodness she still
has her cell phone and doesn’t look suspicious using it. PH and entourage arrive
at the CIA station, though lord knows why. Jack, Kate, and Mark are picking up
the pieces chez dead Russian ambassador. Jack cleverly uses his elbow to find a
drawer with a false bottom, finds a cell phone, finds the ambassador’s dead
thumb to unlock it, and finds the location of the evil Chinese behind all this.
Coincidentally, evil Chinese calls Mark showing a live image of Audrey through
the sniper’s scope, tells Jack to stop tracking him, let him get away, and
he’ll let Audrey get away. Everybody believes that line, with Mark leading the
charge to give up. He nicely informs Jack that Audrey loves Jack, and Jack
nicely tells Mark to shut up.
Jack takes Kate
aside to plan their divide and conquer—does fighting a war on 2 fronts ever
work? Kate reminds the now patriotic, order-following Jack that PH ordered him
to get Chiang, so Jack sends Kate to save Audrey, while he goes to stop evil
Chinese. And there’s something about evil Chinese tapped into CIA somehow, so
let’s keep this intimate, giving evil Chinese fewer chances to catch on.
Kate and
intimate team get to Audrey and call her, she answers without drawing attention
or fire, and Kate, curses ‘cause she wanted a muzzle flash. So she tells Audrey
to make a sudden move, and Audrey obliges, finally drawing the muzzle flash
that gives away the sniper. Now we’re getting someplace. Good thing Audrey’s
not dead in the process.
Meanwhile,
Chloe, remember her? Unconscious Chloe? She wakes up, clambers up the
hill, looking like death warmed over in
Goth getup in the middle of nowhere on a deserted road. Luckily, there’s soon a
passing motorist at 10:12 pm who has never seen a horror movie, and so isn’t
afraid to pick her up. Even more amazing, this motorist apparently lives
another day, unlike most throwaway roles in past seasons of 24. Chloe borrows a
mobile to call Jack.
Jack picks
her up and tries to give her the silent treatment. She says this whole day is
her fault and she wants to make it right. Oh, and JJ lied to her. If only she’d
told the
whole truth. But at
least she tells Jack she’s his only friend—remember the 1st hour
when she said the same thing? Well, this time Jack buys it, and they head off
together to save the world. Somehow they pick up Jack’s flunky from the start
of this day. I sure am glad he shows up again, it’s gotta mean he plays a
substantive role somewhere. If only wifey would make an appearance again!
They reach
the docks, but Chloe’s computer’s wifi’s on the fritz. Ever observant and
resourceful, she spies a sat dish and heads off after it. Jack, now the worried
mother hen, slows her down long enough to blast an innocent lock to smithereens
only to find … no one home. Chloe can set up shop in peace, tap into a
satellite with an IR camera that has resolution down to inches from
geosynchronous orbit—somebody broke some laws here, laws
of physics that is.
Notwithstanding
my growing disbelief, Chloe serves as eye-in-the-sky as Jack and flunky board
the boat ready to play their video game. With Chloe telling them where the
baddies are (“2 coming straight towards you,” “one on the container.” I guess
you hadda be there, but those directions didn’t tell me where anybody was) Jack
and flunky fired only once each time and downed their targets, not taking the
time to assess the morals of each killing.
Evil Chinese
is still pretty smart, and he figures out someone’s tapping into their internet
(even though it wasn’t his boat, wasn’t his dish). Chloe and now Chinese have
eyes in the sky thanks to Chloe (seems they shoulda been smart enough to have
the feed without Chloe’s help). Chloe realizes her gig is up, so she hightails
it. Now the dam finally bursts and the baddies flow outta their command center,
threatening to inundate Jack and flunky (funny that I didn’t see that many get
on the boat). Oh, and they started the engines. Jack sends flunky down to turn
off engines, while he tries to play little Dutch boy.
During a
pause in Jack’s action, Kate’s team takes out the sniper, and everybody else is
shaken but not stirred. They head
back to CIA station, only to be ambushed by sniper’s back-up who kills
everybody but Kate (and maybe one or 2 of her escort). Kate gets off a few
wholly ineffective shots as back-up gets picked up by a speeding car. Heckuva a
lot of backup here, for a lone gunman. Remember when I said (almost) everybody but
Kate? That meant Audrey, too. Touching little scene as Kate tries to will Audrey
to live to no avail. Then calls Jack.
Remember that
pause in the action? Jack takes the call sitting down. At least he knows she
doesn’t hate him, but that’s not helping him take it any better. He sets down
his assault rifle, thinks about crying, then pulls out his pistol. Good thing
there’s a pause in the action. What’s he gonna do with that pistol?
Well, we
never find out, as the action picks up again (good thing), he hears the baddies
coming, he swaps guns, and goes full metal postal. Luckily for him, this ambush
didn’t require cool smarts to escape from. He continues to wade through the
flood of baddies, killing indiscriminately, using whatever tricks he knows,
tools he can find, till he can catch his breath.
And we can go
check on flunky and his big moment—he pulls a gun on a guy by a big engine and
a switch, and he tells him to turn the engine off. Engine guy switches the
switch.
Cut back to
Jack who’s made it to evil Chinese, using a guy he just stabbed as a human
shield, taking everybody out but for head honcho. We have some gratuitous kung
fu, Jack wins, calls PH, waiting for facial recognition, grabs a nearby samurai
sword on this Russian boat, threatens to chop a head off to encourage Chiang to
say his name, Chiang finally obliges, and loses his head anyway—“for Audrey.” PH
sends the ID info to Chinese premier just in the nick of time to call off
whatever his boats were doing. And everybody who’s still alive ends well.
Yeah, you
know that’s not the case. PH insists on hearing some news standing up (unlike
Jack), and when he hears Audrey died, he falls down. He’s OK, even if he’s shaken
and stirred.
And finally
we get to how this series could cover 24 hours in 12 one-hour episodes. After
getting off the boat, Jack finds Chloe missing and gets a mysterious call for a
meet up in 12 hours that he agrees to.
12 hours
later, Mark is in detention, looking forlorn, asking about PH, getting no
answer, being bundled up, stateside-bound.
Kate finally
gets to quit, after writing her report.
Audrey,
presumably, is in the flag draped coffin on the tarmac. I don’t remember
presidential daughters getting this treatment.
PH and Brit
PM are idly chatting on same tarmac, PM offering condolences, PH shrugging them
off, saying in a year his Alzheimer’s will prevent him from remembering that he
even had a daughter. So, no big deal.
And the meet up. Jack and flunky—is this his big
moment?—carry one gun to a vacant lot, with snipers all around trained on them.
There’s a helicopter in the lot. And Russians. Seems Chloe didn’t hightail it
good enough to avoid them as they absconded their boat. Touching moment as Jack
and Chloe pass during the prisoner swap. He says she is his best friend. Then
she gets away scot free, and he tells the Russians he’ll make their life
miserable if anything happens to her. They quickly agree because all along they
wanted just him anyway. Flunky’s big moment is jumping in the car with Chloe,
Jack’s last vestige of his thought-to-have-been-long-lost humanity.
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