It's hard to believe the mini-season is more than half over now.
At the beginning of the episode, paramedics are trying to stabilize Simone al-Harazi, who was hit by a bus while chasing down her fleeing niece. Jack Bauer and Kate Morgan are hot on the heels of this incident, having gotten the location via the computer virus that infiltrated the arms dealer Rask's system from the previous episode. And Margot al-Harazi finds out about Simone when she calls Simone's cell phone and has it answered by one of the paramedics. The main storyline for the episode deals with Margot's efforts to silence her daughter and Jack and Kate's efforts to turn the daughter. We get a bit of torture (Jack messing with Simone's bloody finger stump), carjacking (Jack's stealing of cars as needed), "we're running out time!!!" and lots of death and destruction. Margot sends a henchman to the hospital to find out where Simone is being kept. The henchman ends up being killed by British police when he tries to shoot them, and afterward while examining the man's phone, Jack sees the text history and figures out that the man has given Simone's location to Margot, hence the "running out of time!" Jack is able to get Simone out of the hospital just in time, while Kate rescues the niece. Jack, Kate, and Simone pile into a car, but Margot and her son Ian identify them and fire a missile at the car, just barely missing. At a traffic jam caused by road construction, Jack switches vehicles by carjacking a nearby driver, but Margot and Ian spot this. Ian fires when the trio are speeding through a narrow alley and again misses. Down to one missile, Ian brings the drone to a lower altitude. Jack pulls into a tunnel and carjacks yet another vehicle. He sets the previous one on its way, attracting the last missile from Ian's drone. Ian pumps his fist in glee, but Mommy Dearest reviews the drone's surveillance footage and notices that the target vehicle was empty. That drone is out of missiles now, and the other ones under her control aren't in range yet. Jack's plan is to bring Simone to a CIA facility for medical treatment, but he gets a call from the President to come to the Embassy. The President then communicates directly with Margot and asks whether he can trust her to live up to her end of the bargain if he turns himself over to her in exchange for calling off her terrorist attacks....
Subplot 1: CIA station chief Navarro gets a secure call from his conspirator, who wants him to stop tech nerd Jordan Reed from examining Kate Morgan's husband's files. Navarro tries to avoid doing anything, saying "he's just a kid," but the conspirator points out that Navarro will go to prison if it comes out that he, not Kate Morgan's husband. gave the secrets to the conspirator. The conspirator turns out to be none other than Adrian Cross, the Julian Assange-like head of Open Cell. Navarro sends Reed on a seemingly routine mission to pick something up from a dead drop, but when Reed gets there, he's shot and falls into water. Later, we see that he escaped from the immediate area and emerged from the water, wounded but alive.
Subplot 2: Chief of Staff Boudreaux meets with his Russian counterpart about turning Jack Bauer over to the Russians. The Russian intuits that Boudreaux forged the executive order to transfer Bauer and attempts to blackmail Boudreaux. Boudreaux says he can't do anything now because Bauer is acting under the President's authority to try to stop the terrorist attacks, but after those are over, he can be turned over quietly.
Observations:
* I'm not a doctor, but I would have expected A LOT more injury to Simone al-Harazi from being hit by a bus straight on at ~30 miles/hour. Not only that, but even with several compound fractures in her leg, she seemed able to move along with Jack's help without screaming in agony.
* I believe this was the first time ever that Bauer tortures a female terrorist. Previously, he's tortured innocent women, like in season 5 when he shot Christopher Henderson's wife in the leg because he didn't think Henderson would respond to being tortured himself. He's also had painkillers withheld from an injured female terrorist (season 2's Marie Warner) and threatened female terrorists with death (season 4's Collete Stenger and Mandy).
* That was a pretty brutal facestrike that Bauer delivered to the poor guy that he carjacked. I don't think I've seen him beat up (totally) innocent people before. I wouldn't say it's out of character, though, since the past four years (of "24" time) were probably pretty harsh for him.
* British hospital security seems about as (in)competent as the old CTU's. I guess anyone can just waltz into a storeroom and find a doctor's gown to put on, which is what Margot's henchman Kareem did.
* Ian sure could use some targeting practice. True, he hit the hospital, but that was a pretty big target. How did he miss the SUV in the alley? Or is it that the drones suffered from poor craftsmanship? It makes you wonder if Margot was a bit too quick in killing Naveed, the original drone pilot for the terrorists. (Of course, knowing what we know, Naveed wouldn't have agreed to fire on his wife Simone.)
* When the British PM confronted the President about his (Heller's) health condition (developing Alzheimer's), and Heller responded that if he believed for one second that he was endangering anyone because of his health condition, he would resign, I was waiting for the British PM to respond, "Yes, Mr. President, but this is a health condition that could impair your ability to recognize that you are endangering others."
* There was a little scene that followed where the President confided to his daughter and Boudreaux that his health condition was going to get out in the public and make it impossible for him to lead, and to prepare to transition things to the Vice President upon resolution of the terrorist crisis. This pretty much screamed what was going to happen at the end of the episode, with the President agreeing to turn himself over to Margot al-Harazi.
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