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24 heads towards the 3/4-done point with Episode 9 and Prime Minister Fry piles on the fake tears as he watches Heller’s smouldering remains, while PM’s PA Caroline says she hopes Margot keeps her word about destroying the drones. However, PM PA has a look of distrust in her face, so what’s she really thinking?
Then, thanks to a confusing and ridiculous twist, Heller’s alive after all, and at the last second, Margot’s seen through his ruse and while she’s ditched most of the drones in the intervening minutes, she still has one card – or drone – up her sleeve and it’s heading back to shore instead of being ditched at sea.
Chloe establishes that Margot’s base is around Hackney in East London, and “around Hackney?” is exactly what I kept getting in spam emails from nefarious ‘women’ who wanted to meet me for discreet evenings.
Another complex plan of Jack’s will pinpoint Margot’s precise location with a view to stopping the final drone before it blows up Waterloo Station, but can they make it with seconds to spare? What do you think. Still, it plays the tension along nicely and makes for an fabulous episode.
And while it was nice to see Ian bumped off by Jack being nifty and pulling him out of a window when our terrorist’s son wasn’t paying attention, that death could be seen a mile off. What wasn’t expected, since I thought she’d be interrogated later, was Margot saying lots of deaths were on Jack and Heller’s heads, to which our hero replies: “The only death that’s on my head tonight, is yours” and out she goes too! WAHAY!!
Later on, when Jack wants Chloe’s help to look at the override device he’s picked up from Margot’s location, she decides she no longer wants to get the band back together and is off to play house with Cross.
Other implausibilities include Jack handling live power cables which he’s just ripped out, without using gloves!
Then Navarro and Cross have a whispering conversation about what do to when it looks like Jordan’s assassin is about to be fingered – and amazingly they can understand each other!
Oh, and Belcheck speaks!
Dammit count: 0
Score: 9/10
Director: Milan Cheylov
Producer: Iain Smith
Screenplay: Evan Katz and Manny Coto
Music: Sean Callery
Cast:
Jack Bauer: Kiefer Sutherland
Chloe O’Brian: Mary Lynn Rajskub
Kate Morgan: Yvonne Strahovski
Margot Al-Harazi: Michelle Fairley
Ian Al-Harazi: Liam Garrigan
Adrian Cross: Michael Wincott
Ron Clark: Ross McCall
Gavin Leonard: Adam Sinclair
Steve Navarro: Benjamin Bratt
Mark Boudreau: Tate Donovan
President James Heller: William Devane
Erik Ritter: Gbenga Akinnagbe
Simone Al-Harazi: Emily Berrington
Jordan Reed: Giles Matthey
Audrey Raines: Kim Raver
Prime Minister Alastair Davies: Stephen Fry
Caroline Fowlds: Miranda Raison
Belcheck: Branko Tomovic
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.