By: Brandon Wolfe
“1:00 PM to 2:00 PM” (perhaps confusingly, a title eight other ‘24’ episodes bear) starts out reminding us what ‘24’ does so well before going on to remind us of the things ‘24’ frequently did to hurt us, or at least make us very sleepy. The show, even at its worst, was always masterful at building tension, even if the things happening onscreen weren’t technically of grave consequence to us, and the entire first act involves Jack’s breathless pursuit of comely, improbably named terrorist Simone Al-Harazi from a subway to a train station. Only the most attentive viewers probably even remember from last week the reasons why Jack is pursuing Al-Harazi, but when ‘24’ starts using its split-screens and Jack is sprinting and scowling his head off, you often find yourself gripping your armrest in spite of yourself. The entire sequence lasts almost 15 minutes, before Jack loses Al-Harazi because Chloe was asleep at the switch, but its effectiveness stands as a sterling example of how this show could always function as a top-notch thriller even when it was bottom-notch in so many other areas.
And we definitely get some of those bottom notches this week to keep things balanced out. Something ‘24’ constantly struggled with throughout its original run was giving us subplots unrelated to Jack Bauer that didn’t come off as tedious at best, awful drama at worst. The best example we have this week is with Simone, who returns to her home life with her mother, Margot, and boyfriend, Navid. Margot’s deceased husband was a high-ranking al-Qaeda official killed three years ago in a military strike ordered by President Heller, and the day’s plot is an elaborate bid for vengeance that she is orchestrating. The glimpse into the lives of these three exemplifies the sort of uninteresting family dynamic among villains that ‘24’ has attempted many times with very little success. These are flat characters and learning that Margot is critical and controlling toward her daughter or that Navid is not entirely comfortable with the situation in which he’s found himself embroiled is met with a yawn. This subplot also has the effect of offering ‘24’ a loophole in that it gets to have its primary villains have legitimate terrorist ties while keeping them safely Caucasian, and putting the moral concerns in the mouth of the only non-Caucasian.
The Heller section of the story doesn’t fare much better, as Tate Donovan’s Chief of Staff, Marc Boudreau, emerges further as the sort of weaselly bureaucrat the show came back to time and again. This week, he’s so dead-set on getting rid of Bauer before Heller and Audrey learn of his reemergence that he’s willing to forge Heller’s signature to get it done. And speaking of new spins on old ‘24’ character types, CIA agent Kate Morgan increasingly seems to be operationally no different than the Renee Walker character from Seasons 7-8. Again we have a pretty American agent dispatched to apprehend Bauer and who, because this is ‘24’, winds up going down the same at-all-costs dark paths as her prey, as when she goes off-book with a suspect, assaulting him and threatening his life to wring information from him. It would be nice if ‘24’ felt like it was saying something when it has its straight-arrow characters adopt brute-force Bauer tactics, but we have barely learned two things about Morgan yet, so her abrupt shift to questionable methods doesn’t register. It mostly just seems like these writers habitually stick to what they know, and what they know is that cracking skulls is the way things get done in this world.
A pretty huge revelation lands this week from Chloe. We find out just why she’s over in London operating as a ‘Dragon Tattoo’ hacktivist. She breaks down in front of Jack as she tells him that her husband Morris and their son were killed years earlier by a truck, and that she believes that it was an assassination attempt meant for her, a notion that even Jack immediately scoffs at, though he isn’t aware that he’s on ‘24’ and that Chloe is almost certainly correct. It’s an extreme development to saddle Chloe with, but I suppose having it where she simply chose to abandon her loving family to go wear lots of eyeliner and steal NORAD documents in a dilapidated warehouse would have landed even worse. I’m kind of sad that Morris is gone. He was one of the few charming, funny characters ‘24’ ever allowed itself. Maybe even the only one. But he was married to Chloe, so he’s in a better place now.
And that leaves us with Jack, who is really the only thing on this show that matters, to the point where it almost seems pointless to even bother cutting to other people. Jack’s goal this week is to attempt to prove that the override device (and ‘24’s’ penchant for repetition is so powerful that this is actually the second terror-MacGuffin in its history to be referred to as the “override device”) exists and is going to be used to assassinate Heller. His plan is to breach the U.S. Embassy using fake credentials created by Chloe’s shadowy boss, Adrian Cross, to confront Chris Tanner, the American drone pilot erroneously accused of initiating the drone strike that killed four soldiers last week. Jack’s plan is patently absurd, as even if you somehow ignore that he’s currently the most wanted man in London, there’s still the fact that Jack Bauer has the recognizability of Tom Cruise in the ‘24’ world, especially in a place like the U.S. Embassy. Fortunately, this plan doesn’t work (though due to Cross’ double-cross rather than Jack being insanely famous), forcing Jack to make his way inside using the much more Bauer-y method of shooting a couple of protestors in the leg and causing a panic-driven stampede toward the gates.
This crystallizes the reason why ‘24’ keep us coming back - despite all the show’s flaws and dead spots, Jack Bauer will always do crazy, shocking things in his fight to win the day. And that will always be entertaining to watch.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
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