[SPOILERS]
At the end of the last episode, treasonous CIA station chief Steve Navarro, having been outed as the mole who framed Agent Kate Morgan's husband for selling secrets to the Chinese, was on the run with the magical override device, which he was planning to turn over to his mysterious contact (not known by him to be be Adrian Cross) in exchange for a fake passport and way out of London. Navarro gets his passport and delivers the override device, but at that point, Cross abandons Navarro, and Bauer successfully captures him. Meanwhile, the President's chief of staff Mark Boudreaux finds himself in trouble with the Russians, who are going to blackmail him for having forged the rendition order for Jack Bauer; Boudreaux gives the Russians the secret code for Jack's comlink so that they can track him. When Chloe O'Brian, who's with Cross, learns that he plans to use the override device to broadcast the weapons control codes for all nations' weapons, she tries to run off with the device, but underestimates how serious he is about keeping it. Back at the CIA station, acting station chief Erik Ritter orders that Navarro be taken to the lower level for the Special Activities division to prep him for interrogation. Jack says it's a waste of time because Navarro was in special ops and views everyone as his subordinate, except, of course, Jack. Ritter lets Jack interrogate Navarro. Jack starts off in "good cop" mode but gets fed up and starts smashing Navarro's hand with a gun. Ritter and guards rush in, and Navarro gets taken to the infirmary. Kate Morgan then shows up with a gun, forcing the doctor to step back, and she appears prepared to shoot Navarro. Jack shows up, gun drawn, ordering Kate to stand down, but Kate seems out of control with rage over what Navarro did to her husband. Navarro blurts out that he's the only one who can get the override and that he put a tracker on it. Under further pressure from Kate, Navarro gives up the code for the tracker, at which point we see that it was a ruse by Jack and Kate.
Adrian Cross and Chloe go to the new Open Cell hide out, where they find everyone . . . killed. Chinese operatives, led by our man Cheng (Jack's antagonist from seasons 4 and 6), emerge and take the override device. They shoot Cross in the leg to make Chloe help them, which she does reluctantly. They foil her efforts to sabotage them and use the override device to spoof a weapons launch order to a U.S. nuclear sub, inducing it to fire two torpedoes at a Chinese aircraft carrier. Then they shoot Cross in the head. Meanwhile, Jack and Kate are en route thanks to the tracker, but their SUV is hit by a truck driven by Russians intent on killing him. At the end of the hour, the carrier looks like it's about to sink....
Observations:
* Were you expecting Navarro to get hit by a car or bus while running away from Jack? I sure was. I'm glad the writers didn't take the cheap way out.
* Jack's interrogation didn't seem very effective, given what we know about his skills as the MacGyver of torture, which was a clue that a longer game was in play. Again, I'm glad that the writers came up with a new way of getting information out of someone rather than resort to more torture.
* That was a very nice scene in the car between Jack and Kate, where Kate was visibly torn with grief as she confessed that the last time she saw her husband in prison, he could see that she didn't believe in his innocence, and realizing that was most likely why he committed suicide. And then asking Jack how you get over that, and Jack saying "you just do," and then admitting to his having taken as much revenge as any person possibly could, and that it cost him everything he had left, and it didn't help.
* We're still waiting for the time jumps -- 10 hours have gone by, 2 episodes left, and 14 hours left in the "24" day. I briefly thought that the car crash with the Russians could have left Jack unconscious and eaten up a bunch of time, but nope. Perhaps the scene with the President's being told that Air Force One is ready means that 5-6 hours will be occupied by a trans-Atlantic flight back to the U.S.
* The last we saw of Cheng was being taken into custody by then-CTU head Bill Buchanan at the end of season 6. How is he out now? Well, I guess if you total up the time between the end of season 6 until the start of "Live Another Day," something like 9 1/2 years have passed. I suppose he could've gotten a sentence shorter than that.
* When the Chinese capture Adrian and Chloe and take the override device, Adrian tells them that hacker Yates altered it so that it could be used only on drones. Cheng tells him to restore it, and Adrian confesses that he lacks the technical skills to do so. Cheng turns to Chloe and expects that she can do it. Now, I know that Chloe is a tech nerd goddess, but on multiple occasions on this day, we've seen Chloe ask Adrian for help. How is Chloe able to restore the override device when Adrian can't?
* I've been saying this for several weeks now, but I really love how tightly plotted this season has been. There really haven't been any extraneous subplots; Kate's husband, the Russians, the rendition order, Jordan Reed's murder - they all tie in to the main plot.
No comments:
Post a Comment