By J.E.
The March 19 episode of 24 was number 6×14, and all the action took place between 7:00PM and 8:00PM. If you were looking for a resolution — or even a continuation — of the situation involving the Logans, you won’t find it in this ep. Nope, there wasn’t a single mention of the flatlining ex-President or his looney First Lady, so we’ll have to wait until next week (or beyond) to see what happens with those two. Anyway, here’s what the writers did deign to show last night:
Jack: There wasn’t very much Jack action in this episode. He returned to CTU with Mike Doyle, then went directly to Medical where he got his “floating rib fragment” bandaged up. He then stopped by to talk to Marilyn, who proceeds to tell him that Audrey Raines died in a car accident in China about 10 months ago. It was Audrey, Chloe says, who learned that Jack was in China in the first place, and she went there to try to find him.
Jack is shocked by the news, and then furious that nobody thought to tell him about it. He goes to Chloe and demands that she stop doing everything else so she can go dig up Audrey’s file from the archives. Jack then spends some time looking through the file, which contains photos of a fiery car crash and the remains of both Audrey’s body and her passport. CTU had to send Audrey’s DNA samples to China to confirm the ID.
Gredenko/Fayed: They somehow learn that CTU knows of their position in the desert, so they step up their plan to send the drones into the air. They only have time to get one launched towards its target before they pack up shop and get out of Dodge. CTU learns that the drone is in the air, so they reposition satellites in order to track it. Somehow, the drone is able to avoid being captured on the images, so it proceeds towards its target unimpeded.
CTU: Once CTU learns that a drone is in the air, they set to work trying to identify possible targets. They also try to figure out how it is evading their satellites. Morris soon discovers that the drone pilot is able to anticipate CTU’s satellite positioning and take evasive measures well in advance. That can only mean one thing: There’s a mole inside CTU. Chloe gets to work on identifying the leak and soon sees that it’s coming from Nadia’s workstation. Doyle is all over that and takes her into the interrogation room. Luckily, the writers reminded us that Nadia has been using Milo’s login the whole day, so we see where this is going.
At any rate, the CTU team is able to get a location on the drone pilot, and he obligingly set up shop just a few blocks away. So Doyle gets an assault unit ready and Jack snaps out of his Audrey funk long enough to get himself attached to the upcoming raid. They go in, take down the pilot, and then Jack manages to land the drone just seconds before it was to detonate its payload over San Francisco. He didn’t set it down in one piece, however, so there’s likely going to be some radioactive leakage in the area.
White House bunker: Karen’s back and already arguing with Tom Lennox. VP Daniels calls a meeting of the Cabinet, during which he makes it clear that he wants to prepare a retaliation scenario against Assad’s (unnamed) country. By the end of the episode, Daniels is still intent on moving forward with his plan. Karen, meanwhile, tries to talk a surgeon into waking up Wayne Palmer for a moment so she can apprise him of Daniels’s plan and perhaps get a presidential order to stop the proceedings.
My Reaction: Here was yet another episode without much Jack action to speak of. I think 24 is incredibly boring when the main character sits and mopes over a file during most of his already limited screentime. Other than that, however, I guess the plot did move forward in this ep. I’m not really surprised by anything that happened. I knew the first drone wouldn’t hit the target (that’s why the writers gave Fayed et. al. 3 of them!), I knew Daniels would push forward with his nuclear strike no matter what happened, and I knew they’d pick Nadia as the mole. This show has become very predictable, hasn’t it?
About the only thing I didn’t predict was the stuff about Audrey. But as soon as Marilyn said “Audrey Raines is dead,” I knew she (Audrey) wasn’t. There would be no reason to bring the character up again (the 24 writers are notorious for “forgetting” about characters) unless she wasn’t, in fact, dead. Hopefully they take that storyline in an interesting direction…
