Does Jack finally get his woman? Read on after the jump.
Review by Brandon Wolfe
If there is one ‘24’ hallmark that ‘Live Another Day’ has thus far denied us, it’s with displays of Jack Bauer’s ruthlessness. We’ve seen him shoot a couple of people and he did inflict some light torture on Simone, but Jack has played things relatively straight thus far, not really unleashing his full wrath upon any of his adversaries. But when Jack finally does catch up to Margot Al-Harazi, after he has incapacitated her and foiled her plans, she can’t help but throw in his face the hundreds of lives she was successful in taking on this day, deaths that she claims are on his head. Jack’s response: “The only death tonight on my head is yours” before chucking her out the window. It’s at once shocking, rousing and even a little hilarious in its audacity. Jack murdering a neutralized villain out of pure spite is a character trait that extends all the way back to the first season’s finale, but rarely has it ever seemed as blunt as this. It’s clear that whatever thin line Jack had in the past is completely gone now in light of all he’s been through, his always palpable rage no longer being even mildly restrained. This seething vengefulness doesn’t make Jack a commendable hero, but it certainly makes him a memorable one.
“7:00 PM-8:00 PM” is one of those midstream transitional episodes where ‘24’ decides to wrap up its primary storyline before shifting gears toward something else. The entire first half of the episode is devoted to the breathless rundown of Margot before she can attack again. We open with something of a surprise: President Heller was not actually killed in that drone attack. In a plan that suggests that Jack watched ‘Speed’ at some point during his exile, he had Chloe loop the video feed of Heller to fool Margot, who remains true to her word and begins dumping the drones before realizing she’s been duped and retaining one of them. Heller’s survival might seem like a cop-out, but given that this is ‘24’, it comes as a genuine shock. This show has never backed down from killing a major character. It wants to kill all the major characters (indeed, when Jack later needs to call upon an old friend to run an assassin’s prints, the show has to use a heretofore unseen CIA contact because anyone we know who could have filled that role is dead). A furious Margot decides to target Waterloo Station for maximum casualties, giving Jack a very small window to hunt her down, and this entire segment illustrates that this show, despite its myriad flaws, remains expert at crafting sustained tension. That Jack will succeed is never in question, but the show whips up so much urgency that you clench your jaw all the same.
The problem with wrapping up the Margot storyline is that it isn’t immediately clear what Jack’s next focus will be. For a moment, it appears that the show will fold Jack over into the nonsense to do with CIA honcho Steve Navarro and his efforts to do away with nosy techie Jordan Reed, an assignment that hardly warrants the attention of Jack Bauer. But then the aim of the next few episodes clicks into place when Adrian Cross demands that Navarro secure for him Margot’s override device in exchange for safe harbor. That’s more Jack Bauer’s speed. Navarro does manage to nab the device and escape into the wild, but there’s an even more intriguing wrinkle to the plot. Chloe, who has been romantically involved with Cross, decides to take back up with him, her duties to Jack now complete. Now that Jack is on a path that will see him colliding with Cross very soon, Chloe will find herself directly in the center of a storm between the two gravelly-voiced men in her life. It’s an interesting position for Chloe to be placed. This show has never really known what to do with Chloe beyond having her at her laptop taking Jack’s orders. Giving her direct dramatic stakes in the action for once is a welcome shift from the usual rubric, even if it’s difficult to imagine Chloe ever deciding to oppose Jack.
As ‘Live Another Day’ begins winding down, it seems more and more likely that it will stand as the period at the end of ‘24’. The ratings have not been great and it’s a bit hard to imagine the show being dusted off yet again in the face of such Nielsen apathy. Thus far, the event series has functioned as a mixtape of ‘24’s’ greatest hits, but now the onus is on it to cap off Jack Bauer’s saga possibly for good. It’s been a nostalgic pleasure watching ‘24’ rise from the dead and perform its old tricks, but now the possibility exists for something more substantial to be placed into effect in the coming weeks, for a final declarative statement to be made on what this character’s fate will be. The original series finale was left open-ended, with the assumption at the time that a feature film would pick up the thread. It will be interesting to see how Jack calls it a day without the expectation that his services will be called upon again.
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