24: Live Another Day 9.10 “8:00pm-9:00pm”

You’d be forgiven for wondering what 24:LAD was going to do after last week. The Al-Harazis all dead, the President alive after all, Chloe safely having bid Jack goodbye, Navarro about to be exposed as a traitor. I know I’ve already forgiven myself (as apparently has Jack, more on that later), because I needn’t have worried.

Apparently, rather than take a breather at some point doing this truncated season, the producers have decided to fit the remaining 15 hours until the final three weeks. I don’t know if I can recall a 24 episode where so much happened so fast. Of course things are aligning so the worst competing threads are crashing into each at crucially bad times: this week is a real clusterbomb of successive and simultaneous crises.

For example, Steve Navarro continues to flee, relying only on Adrian (double)Cross to guide him through some of London’s most deserted ever streets. You’d flee for your life too if Jack were on your tail, but Cross keeps him on the hook just long enough to take the security device back. Which he thinks of as his, because he had it made, or acquired it before Yates took it (in service of the Al-Harazis). Margot wanted it just to run drones. But everyone else wants it to run (and ruin) EVERYTHING.

And worst of all, information King Cross doesn’t even really know who he’s really dealing with, but Jack would. And Audrey would. And Chloe certainly does, the second (too late) she figures it out. And you and I do, if we’ve been watching 24 since the beginning. When Cross and Chloe stumble into a massacre where the latest arm of Open Cell is supposed to be (in an abandoned research facility), the biggest reveal of the season occurs: oh shit, it’s Cheng Zhi! And there’s like 70 or 80 horrible things he could do with all that power.

He’s who tortured Jack and Audrey. He who’s career (as an embassy security chief) was destroyed by one of Jack’s rule-twisting operations. He who is so long rogue he rivals Jack for crusty craftiness, and bests him at ruthlessness. At least to judge by the bullet that ends up in Adrian’s skull. Mary Lynn Rajskub is amazing this episode, taking in everything Adrian is saying to her, while trying (ineffectively) to flee and to talk some sense into a bunch of assholes. The massacre is truly horrific, as clearly Cross’s culture warriors had not sort of security at all. While she’s mourning them she’s told the death of her family made no sense, and was truly arbitrary.

Things aren’t much better for Kate, who realizes just how badly Navarro screwed with her life. Jack and Kate, having run a believable play on Steve to get his intel for free (bastard wanted immunity), are on the way to confront Cheng (though they don’t know that) when the Russians (informed by Chief Assface Mark) choose that moment to strike (as they’re just as mad at Jack as the Chinese). Jack and Kate somehow survive the stealth car crash, and the Russians really did not want to kick this particular hive of bees, to judge by the seamlessness of the team Jack and Kate have become. They took out an entire building of terrorists last week, are some Russian hitmen going to make them break a sweat?

Jack understands Kate. He treats her with respect and loyalty and even compassion, reaching out to her in his brittle way when she confesses to having doubted her husband, before he killed himself in jail. It’s cold comfort, but Jack tries. Are we to believe this one, or the one that broke Navarro’s hand in petulant anger earlier? Somehow, I think we have to accept both.

To judge from next week’s teasers, nuclear threats are the least of the worries as we move into a triumvirate (at least) of competing countries (or at least countrymen) who feel wronged by Jack and want their revenge. Apparently they haven’t learned (as he did after Renee) that revenge never satisfies, and always costs a lot.