24: Live Another Day 9.09 “7:00pm – 8:00pm”

Back to big action this week, but not so much the blowing things up with drones kind. Instead, it’s all dirty street (and invasive building) fighting, with Jack using a helicopter (which he flies perfectly) to attack from above. Stealthily. Who else could manage a stealth helicopter landing in the middle of the East End?

The show still manages to go places it hasn’t been before, and it piles on the good news and the bad news in heavy doses. Should I just mention signature moments, as there’s no way I could capture the tense plot developments as they unfold in rapid succession? Howabout these: the look on Audrey’s face when she thinks her father is dead, as Mark looks to her for even a glint of hope that their marriage is still alive? Yeah, Mark, it’s not.

Margo’s cretinous son Ian, having realized that their gig is up and their secondary lair is compromised, deciding it’s time to flee with their lives at least, and Margo forbidding him at gunpoint? The look in his eyes when he knows they’ll both die anyway if they stay? The weird feeling of caring whether they both die?

The bad news for Jordan, whose wound was fatal even as he killed his murderer in the bike shop last week? Kate is all hard girl as she and Erik (who actually emotes with looks of worry and grimaces, unlike Kate who apparently has an Iron Maiden switch she can flick on) nearly singlehandedly lay siege on Margo’s apartment block lair, but then she’s clearly torn up over being called to identify her friend’s body by a London inspector.

While they’re bludgeoning their way in with bullets (and too few machine guns) from below, Jack rappels down from the roof, having used Chloe (who sadly has to use Adrian Double-Cross herself) to figure out which window to jump in. Sadly for the al-Harazi clan, their pad is a 5^th floor walk-up. Make that fall-from, as Jack defenestrates first with Ian, and then Margot (after she is shot and cuffed, and while guiding the missile aimed at Waterloo Station into the Thames with one frigging hand) deadly!

Their heads bust like melons on the pavement (thanks to a fellow watcher and FB confidante for that line!). And nobody else was alive in the room, so no one questions whether Jack needed to do it or not. I don’t know how to feel about it still, because while she is a mass murderer guilty of probably even infanticide by this point, we saw all the (insanely dysfunctional) familial bonds of her clan all season, and her vengeance was based on rage and loss. It just wasn’t humanly possible to carry out. So does Jack have the right to take her out, even as she threatens and rants unrepentantly? Or is he inhuman now too?

He’s quickly back to business as usual at any rate, turning over the override device to the correct authorities, who turn out to be Steve Navarro, who loses his damn mind and flees with Jack on his tail (Jack, the only one who felt Jordan’s death sounded a very weird note on a very weird day). He also tries to get Chloe to come in to CIA Headquarters to work on the damnable thing, but she picks that moment to sign off and reconnect with Adrian, providing the main reminder that all this just happened in a day, and she doesn’t work there anymore.

This would be a good place for the promised time interlude (since we don’t have 24 hours, but only 12) I suppose: President alive (Chloe totally faked the murder footage, though it was a rush job), Navarro on the run, al-Harazi drone threat contained, with just enough time left for Kate to vindicate her husband, the Russians to get their pound of Mark’s ass-flesh, and Chloe to realize her lover is the devil. Surely a good night’s sleep would be helpful for all concerned?