Maybe I should come up with my own list of best moments from this mostly stellar (and unexpected) 9th season of 24. Jack really did live for another day, and he did it by touching on several greatest moments from the past, and basing this new installment on his established history that some of us lived right along with him.
- Finding Chloe undergoing unspeakable interrogation in London CIA offices, and Jack breaking her out with hell-bent vengeance.
- Of course, it wasn’t just to save her, but because he had a use for her. And she had a weird new life with Adrian Cross, whose first big moment was reneging on a promised infiltration with Jack. So Jack had to improvise onsite and shoot two protestors in their legs (non-fatally, as they were ostensibly innocent bystanders).
- Agent Kate, having been won over to Jack’s methods, goes undercover with his weapons dealer allies, and ends up tortured by a sadistic criminal who is clearly planning to kill her. Given the barest opportunity, she escapes her chains, puts him in a headlock, and ultimately stabs him with his own knife.
- I’m not going to include any of Simone’s murders, because she’s mostly a brainwashed cult victim who had to watch her husband be executed by her mother. But when Jack finally finds Margot and Ian, and defenestrates first one, then the other … wow.
- Cheng Zhi!? WTH?! The answer to the question of whether they had a plot for when the drone threat was ended is answered with an immediate uptick in the panic level for all involved.
- I’m not going to count any of Mark Boudreau’s cowardly shenanigans (trying to second guess both his boss and his wife), but two telling looks from Audrey say it all: when she found out he’d lied about Jack, and when she realized Cheng Zhi had her in his sites again.
This week’s big moments were horrible, trying and somehow completely apt for all that had gone before. Jack saved the world. He even saved Chloe (again, as she was held captive by Adrian, then by Cheng Zhi, and then by the Russians); but he couldn’t save the women he loved most.
He put his faith in Kate to do that, which was a wonderful scene where everyone’s values were in the right place. It was amazing to watch Kate lay siege (stealthily, not with the brute force she’d used so often thus far) on the sniper keeping Audrey pinned down on a night-time park bench. She directed her agents masterfully, she called on Audrey to be brave and daring (glad they both had phones that don’t drop calls!), and she took the sniper out with precision. How could anybody expect a 2nd shooter after the first threat was so carefully resolved? And what a shame that such a promising agent was first betrayed by her superiors, and then overwhelmed by Cheng Zhi’s bottomless abyss of hate, so that she decides in the end to turn in her gun.
How foolish of Cheng Zhi to keep samurai swords on his escape ship, but then he did everything he could to prevent Jack from getting on board. Jack and Belcheck infiltrating the Soviet ship with Chloe as their tech support was one of the best missions ever run on the show, gripping from start to finish. But none of it will bring Audrey back.
And that’s why the winning final moment goes to William Devane, whose collapse at learning of his daughter’s fate (on a peace-keeping mission he approved) was epic in its portrayal of loss. As were his bitter final lines, watching her coffin board a plane for home, where he seemed relieved that Alzheimer’s would soon wipe his memory blank. Just destroyed, and a fitting place for the promised 12 hour jump to come, a night of misery after a day of chaos.
Jack traded himself to the Russians for Chloe, and when he saved her (with trusted ally Belcheck) he admitted she was his only friend left. I don’t know if that’s true, but she is the only one who would never blame him for what happened to Audrey, and who understands what he has lost.