24: Live Another Day 9.11 “9:00pm-10:00pm”

This is a moving the bricks around episode, a little surprising after last week’s game changer, but well, there are A LOT of bricks now! Convincing people that Cheng Zhi is still alive takes massive effort on everyone’s part, mostly because no-one (not the President, not China, not Audrey) want it to be true. He’s one of the uber-horror figures of the show (up there with Mandy and the Logans and Tony Almeida) who arrive just to screw things up, painfully, for the maximum number of good guys.

Jack and Kate report to the President, and then come up with a plan to get intel on the missing device from the Russians. It helps that Mark finally confesses to his forgery of Heller’s signature and his attempts to hand Jack over to the Stolnavich (which led to the attempt on Jack and Kate’s life last hour). The President is disgusted with Mark, but Jack still has a use for him. He can infiltrate the compound of the Russian ambassador with a wire, and get the info they need by pretending to defect!

It’s a great moment when Mark is like “What if they don’t buy it? What if bullets start flying?” And Jack is like “try to stay low.” Like, seriously dude, you tried to kill him like four times already. It’s weird that this is his chance at redemption, but he does man up and do it.

Not that Audrey notices, because when she heard the name Cheng Zhi everything else went silent. She comes up with a plan to reach out to a Chinese embassy ally (I’m not sure what her official role is in the Oval Office, but she’s clearly in the inner circle), and when Jack calls while she’s on her way, her first words are “Kill him for me.”

Damn girl!

Then he and Audrey have one of their fractured tender talks, which Kate overhears and doesn’t know how to process with the Jack she’s seen in action all day long. But I think she approves.

Then it’s all private-compound invading and Jack Bauer Action Hour and Mark gets in on the good stuff by fighting for his life when the savvy Stolnavich figures things out. Unfortunately, Weird Facial Hair Baldy ends up on the floor with glass in his throat, and can’t be much help in getting to Cheng Zhi after all.

Neither can Chloe, who went commando herself in his transport truck and whaled on her captors with a lead pipe until jumping to safety into a convenient obscuring bank of trees. She ended up unconscious, but out of his clutches, thank goodness.

Unfortunately however Audrey’s little peace mission gets derailed (by sniper bullets) when Cheng somehow knows where her meet is and takes her captive again. Jack openly speculates at one point on Stolnavich and Cheng working together, which sounds too implausible until it turns out to actually be true, maybe because they both still want Jack dead. That’s tying up all the bricks pretty tightly in a neat little bundle, but then, there’s only one episode to go!