In recent weeks, it seemed that the big event on “24: Live Another Day” had all been prematurely resolved. The errant drones were curbed; the President didn’t explode in Wembley stadium, Margot Al-Harazi and her son were dead. Good enough work for Jack Bauer to call it a season, even if there were lingering threads about a missing CIA investigator and an internal cover up. Early vacation, everybody, take the rest of the weeks off!
Instead, the steely makers of the show contrived to crank up the ante in a way nobody saw coming, in an episode that may well have been the most action filled in show history (though my memory, like President Heller’s, is getting hazy).
What seemed like clerical problems when the show started ended with huge World War III implications and both Russia and China in attack mode.
A rogue Chinese bad guy (supposedly the one who had tortured Jack and Audrey for a year) took control of the device that is suddenly much worse than just overtaking drones – no the device can electronically identify and disarm whole national arsenals. A diabolical peace machine, or at least that is how Adrian Cross sees it. The Julian Assange-like Cross had taken money from the Chinese to help develop the override device (and done an Apple-like job on it – it’s so handy and portable!). But now he wanted to take it and use it to render all the world’s arms useless.
It’s a fanciful notion, especially in the brutal world of 24 where “enhanced interrogation” reared its head one more time. And it also involved Chloe O’Brian in the kind of role she’s never quite had before – ambivalent about Adrian’s twisted motives, but forced by China to do her electronic whiz kid stuff for them.
The episode began with another breathless two man chase, with Steve Navarro, the rogue CIA director turned most wanted American in London, pursued by Jack all the way to Liverpool Station (in what is becoming a rail tour of London on the show; Waterloo Station was targeted last week).
Bauer finally captures Navarro (but not before the latter bops a soldier on his head and steals his machine gun – what an embarrassing thing to happen to a trained soldier).
And once in custody, Kate learns that Navarro had sold secrets to China and had framed her husband. She’s a little angry.
But Jack is always angry even when he’s whispering (especially when he’s whispering) so he asks to interrogate Navarro first.
Navarro says he has information, but he’ll have to get a full pardon first. Jack says that isn’t on the table “but your hand is.” So he whips out a gun (or a hammer, or a meat tenderizer) and whacks it.
It is Kate, though, who storms in and puts a gun to his head as if to extract revenge. But it’s part of a scheme to have him spill the location coordinates of the device which they start to track down.
The chief of staff who forged the president’s signature on extradition papers, turning Jack over to the Russians, is ready to turn Bauer back over to them. He thinks the guy is interfering with his marriage. But now that Bauer is need to track down this even worse device, he tries to call off the intercept. It doesn’t work.
A Russian truck (the same one Chloe tried to flag down?) slams into Bauer’s car; he and Kate, emerge without a scratch and return fire.
Meanwhile the Chinese loose cannon is causing the most mayhem, using the override machine to get a U.S. nuclear submarine to sink a Chinese carrier. And blam! He does. It’s more ominous an international incident than the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
And with two episodes left, do they have time to cram in a world war as well?
Previews indicate the chief of staff is arrested for treason, the Chinese and U.S. are talking war, and Chole still has to escape her captor.
The digital clock’s beeps are just getting louder and louder.