By: Brandon Wolfe
‘Live Another Day’ thus far has not been presenting us with an all-new ‘24’, but rather with an optimal version of the old ‘24’. It’s been great about keeping the excitement up while still throwing enough obstacles in Jack’s path to keep things interesting. It hasn’t completely shaken off some of the more frustrating aspects of ‘24’, but the relentlessness of this first batch of episodes recalls the show at its white-knuckle best.
The meat of “2:00 PM - 3:00 PM” concerns what happens after Jack made his way into the U.S. Embassy last week. Attempting to locate accused drone pilot Chris Tanner, Jack knocks out an agent and grabs his jacket and key card. Once he locates Tanner, he gives the man his assurances that he believes he is innocent and then absconds with his flight key, which Jack thinks will prove to the American government that the drones are being hijacked by the override device. Where things get interesting is how Jack’s plan keeps having to modify its expectations. Trapped in a corridor with no possible exit and Marines closing in fast, Jack accepts that he cannot escape this situation and decides his only course of action is to upload the contents of the flight key to Chloe before he is captured, or worse. He makes his way into a room with computer access and takes its occupants hostage, buying him some time to decrypt the information. But then even that ultimately doesn’t work, forcing him to rely on Agent Morgan’s help to get the flight key uploaded after he is taken away. We are so accustomed to Jack Bauer being a miracle man who can make anything happen using his powers of yelling and shooting that it’s intriguing to see what happens when his efforts fail completely.
The Heller segment of the story benefits this week from finally interlocking with Jack’s thread. Jack’s hostage situation means that Boudreau is no longer able to keep a lid on Bauer’s existence from Audrey and the President. Heller gets Jack on the phone and Jack asks that he trust him and give him the time he needs to prove his case. Heller considers this, but is talked out of working with Jack by Boudreau, to Audrey’s consternation. Jack’s history with the Hellers is checkered, but that history gives these scenes a charge. ‘24’ has always kept so few of its older characters around that you really do have to savor whatever preexisting character relationships are left standing, even if they’re as thin as these are. This is especially true in ‘Live Another Day’, where the newbies are basically running the joint.
The worst aspect of ‘Live Another Day’ continues to be the complicated inner circle of the Al-Harazis. Navid is still morally conflicted about Margot’s revenge plot to annihilate thousands with drones and implores Simone to run away with him. Simone chooses to tell Margot of this, forcing a confrontation that sees Margot chopping off half of one of her daughter’s fingers, with the threat of more unless Navid agrees to pilot the hijacked drones, which he does. These scenes drag the episode down, as the Al-Harazis are, thus far, flat characters saying clichéd things, in true ‘24’ villain style. It is interesting that Simone’s finger loss is ‘Live Another Day’s’ second torture scene thus far and neither has been perpetrated by Jack.
The episode ends with Jack taken into CIA custody by Morgan, who has forged a tenuous alliance with him and now stands as his only chance at disseminating the drone information. And where things go from here should be interesting to see because one of the tenets of ‘24’ is that Jack can never be sidelined from the action, which would seem to back the show into a corner considering that Jack has never been in more hot water than he is right now. A fugitive from the start, he has now blown up a large portion of a government installation, taken hostages and non-fatally shot innocent protesters and Marines, and unlike in the President Palmer days, he isn’t operating under a Commander-in-Chief who is blindly allegiant to him (at least not as of this writing). Jack has done countless illegal acts in the past, but the things he’s done today, coupled with the position he’s presently in, would seem to preclude any manner of governmental leeway. That Jack would be put back into active duty on the very same day that all of these criminal shenanigans have taken place would seem to be absurd, but absurd fits ‘24’ like a warm Snuggie.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments