Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (7/14/14)

http://variety.com

'24: Live Another Day' Hours 12-24

Plot: Last night, Audrey got herself stuck on a bench for very nearly the entire episode under the watchful eye of a sniper. Not that watchful though, since she was totally able to keep having speaker phone conversations with Kate in plain sight. Anyway, the deal was, she stays there until Cheng says it’s cool to leave, meanwhile Cheng would be fleeing the country.

                Cheng tells Jack to leave him alone or else Audrey gets it. Jack don’t play like that.

                He finds some way to track Cheng in the Russian mustache aficionado’s house and goes after him. Kate has to go rescue Audrey.

                On the way to Cheng, Jack stops by the wilderness and picks up Chloe, who is conscious again and wants to make up for the whole “accidentally working with the guy who was selling gadgets to the guy who wants to end the world” thing.

                The pair gets to Cheng’s boat and then out of NOWHERE Jack’s helpy helperton guy shows up, making this a triple threat. Chloe sets up shop to provide techy stuff and the two dude start machine gunning their way through the ship.    

                Elsewhere, Audrey sits on a bench. Eventually, Kate shows up and watches.

Cheng’s men realize something foul is afoot, they boot Chloe out of their system and get ready to counterstrike. In a panic, Jack tells Kate to save Audrey before Cheng orders the sniper to take her out.

                Then out of NOWHERE Kate’s own back up team shows up and they all take out the sniper, rescuing Audrey, making the world once again safe for people who try to help but don’t. Backs are slapped, a lot of “Atta boys” are thrown around. Everyone’s happy. Then a car pulls up, one of Cheng’s men gets out and kills Audrey.

                Kate calls Jack to say “her bad” and Jack immediately hulks out and starts killing everyone with everything. He John Cenas his way through the remaining guards, has a brief kick fight with Cheng, before capturing the season’s final big bad. Jack grabs an ill-placed katana (ill-placed for Cheng anyway) coerces Cheng to say who he is on tape so the Chinese know he’s not dead and stop that whole WWIII thing they were on about.

                Once that’s over with, Jack chops off Cheng’s head presumably because there were no windows nearby for him to unceremoniously toss Cheng out of as has become tradition this season. At some point during all this, Chloe goes missing.  

                Everyone is sad that Audrey is dead. The full weight of what awaits him thanks to his Alzheimer’s finally hits home for Heller, the full weight of being a traitor finally hits home for Mark, the full weight of not being able to save Audrey or her own husband falls on Kate and the full weight of being dead really hits home for Cheng.

                In a move absolutely everyone could see coming, Jack trades himself to the Russians – who’d captured Chloe – so they’ll let her go and then he hitches a ride back to Moscow with them where lots of torture likely awaits.  

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (7/7/14)

http://hollywoodlife.com/

“24: Live Another Day” Hour 11

Plot: I don’t want to say things I can’t take back, but this episode wasn’t terrible. Not terrible at all.

                Jack and Kate win their shootout with the Russians thanks to a helping hand from the back up crew that was following behind their car. They soon find themselves in the command center which was recently occupied by Cheng and his cohorts. Thanks to a clever ruse by Chloe involving a cell phone audio recorder app, they find out Cheng is not only not dead, but he’s very much involved in the day’s predicaments.

                While people are finding out stuff, Jack tells the Prez that Cheng is still among the living, Audrey overhears this and then Jack finds out the Russians found him because of Mark. Uh-oh. Jack goes and yells at Mark, the Prez is all “Treason!” and stuff, but Jack has other plans.

                He sends Mark into the Russian guy with two moustaches’ pad to help find out where Cheng is. Russian guy is working with Cheng by the way. Jack and Kate storm the place shortly after, shots are fired, Mark wrestles moustache guy and eventually moustache guy ends up dead with a giant piece of glass in his neck. So … no Cheng.

                Meanwhile, Cheng. He’s driving around with Chloe in tow, planning on leaving the country and then causing more mischief. At some point Chloe elects that she’s done being a hostage. So she beats up a bunch of Chinese dudes with a pipe, jumps out of a moving truck, rolls down a giant hill, hits her head on the ground and goes all unconscious. I guess, as far as escape attempts go, we can call that a … push? Cheng’s dudes are looking for her, but the British army shows up and scares them off.

                Near the end of the episode, China is getting ready to attack America since it thinks America blew up its ship and it’s up to Audrey to prevent this.

                Which means you might as well start the prep work for WWIII now.

Anyway, Audrey goes and meets up with the Chinese leader’s daughter and gives her some evidence that will hopefully get America off the hook. Naturally, since this is an Audrey mission, everything goes wrong, everyone ends up dead but Audrey, who finds herself captured by the enemy and in need of saving. Awesome. 

Good: Cheng don’t care ‘bout China since China don’t care ‘bout Cheng. Cheng teamed up with the Russians and plans to break the world. He’s like a small, Asian version of WWE’s Rusev. Only instead of a gorgeous blonde by his side, Cheng has a portly Russian dude with a moustache on his upper and lower lips.        

Good: Chloe playing games. She picks up that cell phone and the mind reels with possibilities. What’s she going to do? Use it to hack into the CIA database and alert them to her location? Reprogram it to be a laser? Text Jack the word “H3lp?” Nope, she knows she’ll get caught with it, hits record so when Jack finds it, he knows what he’s up against. That’s the opposite of Audrey in every way.

Good/bad: I don’t know. I honestly have no clue what Mark’s motivation is. Sometimes he seems like he was genuinely trying to help by forging the Prez’s signature and turning Jack over to the Russians. Other times, he just seems like a dick who just doesn’t like Jack.

Bad: Jack is now 12 years old. In one episode he says: “I don’t want you to hate me forever” and “He’s a covert Intel operator, you idiot!” You do know that if you don’t show a little hustle here, forever could be like 7 minutes and then the Chinese start nuking everything in sight. You idiot.  

Bad: Not to be outdone, Mark chimes in with a “I know you hate me for what I tried to do to you,” of his own. Well, when you put it like that, it kind of sounds like you tried to hook up with his girlfriend while you were drunk. Not, you know, tried to doom him to a good solid life of extreme torture and prayers for death.

Good: Chloe kicks some butt. Looks like she’s picked up a thing or two after spending all those years hanging out with Jack. Has Chloe rubbed off on Jack? I think the 12:00 that’s currently flashing on his VCR at home answers that question.

Bad: Kate spends the entire episode just scowling in the car and she still did more than Audrey. Zero and angry faces is better than what Audrey managed.

Good: Mark goes into the mustache house. Everything about this is tense and awesome. It’s way too short, but it’s nail-biting, even though I don’t know if I’m supposed to like him or want him dead or not. One of, if not the best sequence of the season. This is “24” at its best.

Bad: Audrey. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey. We need to talk about this “helping” thing you keep trying to do. Sometimes the best way to “help” is to lock yourself in a small room and wait until the coast is clear. Or go somewhere else. Like Kim Bauer is currently doing. That way, no one has to worry about saving you AND the world. Doing one is hard enough.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (6/30/14)

http://www.eonline.com

“24: Live Another Day” Hour 10

Plot: So let’s see, what happened last night?

                Michael Wincott sneakily rendezvoused with Benjamin Bratt. Wincott got the suddenly all-powerful device, Bratt got a passport but no car and then was immediately captured by Jack Bauer and assorted law enforcement officers.

                Wincott gets away with the device and then explains his whole evil plan to Chloe about how he’s going to use the device to give all countries equal footing on the world stage and she’s on board for a few minutes, but then her inner ‘murca takes over and she tries to betray him. Wincott prevents the betrayal, and keeps stringing Chloe along instead of just killing her because he loves her or something and this is the “24” season where the bad guys choose the worst possible times to be noble.

                Our star-crossed lovers go to meet up with the rest of Wincott’s team, but when they get there the rest of the team has been killed and the Chinese are now running the show. I think I’m supposed to remember the crazed leader of this gang from past seasons, but I don’t really so he’s Chinese Leader Guy.

                Chinese Leader Guy doesn’t like Wincott’s plan to make everybody equal either, so he tricks Chloe into helping him reprogram the device then kills Wincott because we can’t have nice things.  

                Elsewhere, Jack gives a long impassioned monologue about how only he possesses the fortitude to crack Benjamin Bratt and find the all-powerful device before it’s too late. For only Jack is man enough to scare a battle-hardened warrior like Bratt, a man who’s been trained down to his very core to withstand all manner of punishment and torture and who in no way would ever spill his guts to one of the underlings he used to boss around. It would probably take a full 60 minutes of Jack-on-Bratt crime just to get Bratt to say when his own birthday is.

                A few minutes after Jack says all that, Kate runs in with a gun, points it at Bratt and he tells her EVERYTHING. And he does that even though, by giving up the location of the device, he’s effectively sentenced himself to death for treason and murder. That was his only bargaining chip! No matter how PO’d Kate is at him for that whole framing her husband thing, she can’t kill Bratt, he’s the only one who can find the device. But yeah, squeals like a pig at the first sight of a mad blonde woman with a gun. Awesome.

                Mark and Audrey are still fighting and no one cares, the Russians finally get a chance to capture Jack but they seem to be struggling and then the episode ends with the Chinese guys tricking a US sub to blow up a Chinese boat presumably setting the stage for a WWIII-style super power bro-down.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (6/23/14)

www.tv.com

24: Live Another Day Hour 9

Plot: Uuuuuggghhh.

                Perhaps more of an explanation is in order: Uuuuuuggggggggggggghhhhhhhaaaahhhh.

                So last week, President Heller stood in the center of Wembley Stadium and took a full-on Mama Stark drone-strike right to the chest, effectively sacrificing himself to save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives all across England. One old man dies, hundreds of thousands of men and women and questionings of assorted ages get to live.

                In exchange for the right to explode the President, Mama Stark promised to destroy all of the drones she’d hijacked, which she immediately began doing once Heller was confirmed to have been blowed up.

                Only … Heller didn’t exactly keep to his side of the bargain. Thanks to some video trickery by Chloe, he’s alive and well.

                Mama Stark realizes she’s been duped and manages to save one last drone, which she plans to do nasty, nasty things with.

                Since Chloe has totally hacked Stark Terrorism, Inc., she’s able to pretty easily figure out where they’re holed up. Soon Jack lands a helicopter on the roof of the building and begins his assault from up top, while Kate and her team storm the building from below.

                Jack gets there first, throws Mama Stark’s son out of the window, shoots her in the leg, stops the drone from blowing up a subway station and then throws Mama Stark out the window too, because … he felt like it?

                Meanwhile, the mystery of Johnny Depp-bearded tech’s death – he’s dead, by the way – gets unraveled and all fingers point to Benjamin Bratt.

                Bratt makes a deal with Michael Wincott, who’s apparently become a straight-up bad guy at this point: If Wincott helps him get out of London alive, he can have Mama Stark’s drone-control device. Turns out, said device is actually good for controlling all sorts of military devices, which could prove problematic for America and the world.

                The episode ends with Chloe rejoining Wincott (because she doesn’t know he’s evil), who’s on his way to meet up with Bratt and get a hold of the device while Jack is in pursuit of the whole gang.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (6/16/14)

www.24spoilers.com

“24: Live Another Day” Hour 8

Plot: Surprise! In the plot twist to end all plot twists, Johnny Depp tech survived an assassination attempt! And most likely a second one! Oh yeah and some other stuff happened.

                Let’s see, Kate dragged Simone’s mostly dead body into the CIA for resurrecting and interrogating purposes. After a lot of icky medical talk, the doctor gives Simone a shot which wakes her up long enough for her to sell out Mama Stark’s former location and Naveed’s magic disk thing that gives whoever has it access to the terrorist cell’s computer stuff.

                Meanwhile, Jack and Chief of Staff Mark are ordered by President Heller to play nice and come up with a plan to get him to a rendezvous with Mama Stark all without anyone noticing. Jack proceeds to come up with the plan in a second all by himself. It involves extracting the President from the building and getting him to Wembley Stadium in a helicopter. Mark’s role in this? Act like a horrible bureaucrat and hold an endless staff meeting that no one needs while important stuff happens everywhere else. It’s the role both men were born to play and they pull it off without a hitch.

                Elsewhere, Depp survives the aforementioned assassination attempt and calls in to Benjamin Bratt to come get him. Of course, Bratt is a mole, so he tips the assassin off to Depp’s location. Depp briefly gets a leg up on the assassin, but their fight ends with the assassin shot and dead and Depp stabbed and in poor shape. I guess we can count that as a partial win for the pencil-pushers out there?

                I mean, that’s pretty much all the big happenings. Sure, Jack and Heller arrive at Wembley. Sure Chloe tries and fails to use Naveed’s magic disk thing to stop the drones and sure Mama Stark drone strikes the living beejesus out of President Heller as he stands helpless in the middle of the stadium, while Jack watches in the wings.

                But the important thing was totally all that Johnny Depp tech stuff. 

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (6/9/14)

Grantland.com

'24: Live Another Day' Hour 7

Plot: Let’s try to keep this brief, shall we? Part of the reason is that I’m running a little late on this thing. The real reason is that I fell asleep for about 5-10 minutes of this episode. Not necessarily an indication of its quality (ok well sorta), but more of a critique of my sleeping pattern as of late.

So, the condensed version: Simone isn’t in great shape after getting hit by a bus last week, imagine that? Jack and Kate catch up with her at the hospital, but she ain’t talking. Luckily, Simone’s neice is very much talking and she tells Kate all sorts of info about her aunt Simone. Mama Stark finds out Simone was set to betray her and orders a drone strike on the hospital. Jack and Kate get Simone out right as the drone strike hits, but she’s fading quickly. Jack is all set to drop Simone off with Kate at the CIA and go rendezvous with Heller when the episode ends.

                Elsewhere, Heller gives Prime Minister Stephen Fry a stern talking to about meddling in ‘Murka’s affairs and Fry immediately gets all grovely and apologizes. Remember who’s top dog these days, Brits.

                Johnny Depp bearded tech is hot on Bratt’s double agent tail, we find out the mysterious person on the phone with Bratt last week was Michael Wincott and at the end of the episode some crony manages to mess up killing Johnny Depp bearded tech, presumably on Bratt’s orders. Just because, you know, we can’t have anyone being too good at their jobs.

                Let’s see, the Russians want Jack and they’re pretty certain Chief of Staff guy is a lying traitor type person who wanted to put one over on them.

                This whole putting the Brits in their place while Mama Stark drone strikes everything has gotten old for Heller, though. So, he takes off his old man sweater, puts on his President jacket and contacts Mama Stark, possibly to turn himself in to her. We don’t know because the episode ends on this sensational cliffhanger … until the preview for next week’s episode answers that question for us, yeah, he’s going to give himself up to her.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (6/2/14)

Sheknows.com

24: Live Another Day Hour 6

Plot: Don’t worry you guys. No one important (the show’s definition not mine) was killed in that little drone strike from last week.

                Anyway, so after that incident, President Heller is all like “Um my bad” and immediately gives Jack whatever he wants. Guns. Communication gadgets. Kate. And just like that, the two most attractive blondes in the war against terror are not only on the same side, they’re now partners.

                Being Jack Bauer, he decides to immediately push this newfound partnership to the very brink. You see, in order to get the arms dealer who knows Mama Stark to talk, Jack needs to get back in his good graces. To do that, he kinda needs a human sacrifice sooooo … But don’t worry, Jack assures Kate. He’s totally going drug her up before he hands her over to this psycho so he (the psycho) won’t torture her right away. Kate will be sound asleep while Jack helps Chloe hack into the arms dealer’s computer system and by the time she wakes up the world will be saved. Easy as pie.

                Of course, the arms dealer has a drug to counteract Jack’s drug and Kate is immediately woken up and forced to run the gauntlet of torture devices: Electrical shocks, water, drills, knives, being strung up by your arms which are stretched out behind your back.

                Meanwhile, the Brits, who up until this point have been very content to do nothing while Mama Stark threatens to drone-strike their country back to “Game of Thrones” times, have had a change of heart. Instead of doing nothing, now they’ve decided to do nothing helpful. Prime Minister Stephen Fry learns that Heller’s got a touch of the Alzheimer’s, so Fry immediately begins second-guessing everything, including Heller’s decision to put Jack in the field.

                Sensing Jack may be going off the rails, Fry orders a team to storm the arms dealer’s pad and forcibly take whatever info Jack is trying to acquire by stealth. This turns out to be something that leads to Mama Stark. I think it was Simone’s cell phone or something.

                The Brits show up, the ruse is busted, Jack gets the info he needs, Kate gets her badass moment where she kills a bunch of henchmen, the Brits are all killed and Jack and Kate go about their merry way.

                Elsewhere, Mama Stark decides Simone should kill Naveed’s sister and young niece, Simone is less than thrilled with this and cocks the whole thing up as the Brits would say, managing to accidentally kill the sister while trying to help her escape. Then Simone manages to get herself hit by a bus while chasing the little girl and attempting to explain she didn’t mean it.

                The smarmy Chief of Staff gets himself caught in a lie when the Russians call to inquire about when they can pick up Jack, as per the Executive Order on which Chief of Staff forged Heller’s signature. So that’s not going good, luckily he has an easy out (whisper: Alzheimer’s).

                And just when you thought there couldn’t be more plot: Benjamin Bratt turns out to be some sort of mole who set up Kate’s husband as a traitor (she IS a great agent after all!) and he talks to a shadowy-sounding character on the phone about moley things.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (5/26/14)

TheGuardian.com

Last week’s “24” ended with Jack Bauer about to be murdered by marines until CIA Agent Kate Morgan swooped in and was all “No way brah,” and made Jack her prisoner.

                This week’s episode opens with Jack still not murdered by marines, but Kate seems to have a pretty loose interpretation of what it means to make someone your prisoner. In Kate’s world, it means dramatically announce that you’re making someone your prisoner and then immediately give that person to someone you don’t know and abandon the area.

Jack survives Kate’s indifferent style of prisoner-taking, but he doesn’t do a heck of a lot else. He spends most of it off-screen, in transit from the US Embassy to where the President is hanging out. When he arrives, Jack gives President Heller the old “Bauer Way or the highway” speech about how to handle the whole killer drone situation. Jack’s way, in this instance, means letting Bauer get in touch with an arms dealer who works with Mama Stark and who probably knows where she is. Rather than put Jack back in the field, Heller chooses highway.

Jack is sent off to pretend to be cats with his former lady love Audrey and the pair rub their faces all over each other for an extended period of time.

Over in Mama Stark’s terrorist lair, she’s kinda bummed about that whole cutting off her own daughter’s finger to force her son-in-law to pilot the drones thing. Daughter Simone and son-in-law Naveed ain’t thrilled about it either. First chance he gets, Naveed scurries away to tell Simone he has set up a trap for Mama Stark: Apparently he left a video she made unencrypted so the Feds should be able to find their whereabouts pretty easy. Simone seems on board. But when the Feds, led by Kate’s ex-partner and also Benjamin Bratt, show up to raid what they think is Mama Stark’s terrorist lair, they’re drone-striked all to hell. Mama Stark totally knew about the double cross and she kills Naveed, putting an end to countless more hilariously doomed-to-fail plots. Simone has a chance to save her husband, but she doesn’t because Naveed is/was a miserable judge of character.

Mama Stark is pretty pleased though, as she has successfully managed to take control of six drones before the Feds, with help from Chloe, Michael Wincott and that flight key Jack liberated from the embassy, realize what’s up. Now she wants President Heller to turn himself in or she’ll drone-strike more stuff.

Sadly, Michael Wincott and Chloe part ways when he wants to stop helping the Feds, but Chloe is just too happy to be back into her old role as the voice in an attractive blonde person’s ear, only this time it’s Kate’s not Jack’s.

In one hour, President Heller loses control of six untraceable and heavily armed military drones to terrorists, has to admit this to the British Prime Minister, learns that his Chief of Staff has been keeping the downside of drone warfare (dead babies) from him, then has to watch on TV with said Prime Minister when one of those drones blows up the team Heller sent to reclaim them.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (5/12/14)

www.hitfix.com

24: Live Another Day Hour 3

Plot: Jack and Chloe are hot on the tail of the mysterious blonde-turned-redhead lady currently in possession of some sort of techno-y doo-dad that has the power to control drones. Just when it looks like Jack has the gal cornered on at a subway station, she slices open her own leg and starts screaming at him. Suspecting some form of spousal abuse, London’s finest collection of helpy-helpertons get involved, allowing her to escape.

                Well, that and the fact that Chloe zoned out when she saw a man and a small boy who reminded her of her husband and son. Her uh dead husband and son. She thinks they were killed in an effort to get to her due to her connection with Jack. There are emotions exchanged and so forth and then, as just as quickly as they appeared, those emotions are bottled up and not mentioned again.  Like it’s supposed to be.

                Jack and Chloe make their way back to Michael Wincott’s Techie Fanatic Pad and use his crew to get more information on the currently-redheaded drone aficionado, like the fact that she comes from a long line of terrorists.

                Meanwhile, Red, who goes by the name of Simone reunites with the rest of her terrorist cell, which includes her brother, her husband and is run by her mum, Mama Stark. There’s some tension with Simone and her husband because Simone has spent the last three weeks in deep cover, the sexy kind, but then it turns out he’s not worried about that, he’s having buyer’s remorse about that whole potentially ending the world thing he’s wrapped up in.  It also turns out besides attempting to orchestrate the apocalypse, Mama Stark is also spying on and threatening the hell out of everyone she knows. Luckily for the world, it’s going to take her crew a little while to get the drone controller to work with their PC. Guess they should have used a Mac to end the world, just like Steve Jobs intended.

                Elsewhere, Agents Kate Morgan and Erik Ritter are still getting in Jack’s way, President Heller decides to speak in front of Parliament and has a hard time of it, things seem conflicted between the President’s daughter Audrey and her slimy, Chief of Staff husband, and that same Chief of Staff husband is working to deport Jack to Russia.

                The episode wraps with Jack getting caught trying to sneak into the US embassy in order to talk to a young drone pilot framed for killing a bunch of folks overseas (it was really the terrorists), and then, in an inspired stroke, Jack creates a diversion by shooting a bunch of protestors in the leg to create a riot, allowing him to sneak in with Agents Morgan and Ritter right up his butt.

Good & Bad: '24: Live Another Day' (5/5/14)

"24: Live Another Day"

Episode 1&2

Plot: It’s been four long years since whatever happened at the end of the last season of “24” happened. I wish I could be more specific, but let’s all be honest, there’s really only so much “24” a man can take. Eventually the wild bi-polar swings in quality from season to season could wear anyone out.

                Good news is, apparently the last season ended like most seasons of “24” did: With counter-terrorist agent extraordinaire Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) wanted by someone for a crime he may or may not have committed, but if he did commit it, you can bet your lollypop it was because he had to, mister.
                So the mini-season movie-thing that is “Live Another Day” begins with Jack in hiding from the Americans this time.  

                Then just like that, in the midst of rumblings about an upcoming attempt on the president’s (William Devane) life, Jack gets himself captured.  This all seems too easy to CIA Agent Kate Morgan (Yvonne Strahovski), but everyone else thinks she’s nuts because apparently no one else in the CIA is familiar with pop culture. Whenever the impossible to track down person is suddenly extremely easy to track down, there’s a reason for it. And it’s not because you all suddenly got really good at your jobs.

                But no, it’s just easier to call her a loon because her husband was a traitor who sold state secrets and then killed himself and now she’s moving on to another job.

                Naturally Jack immediately escapes custody, busts out his old partner in crime Chloe (Marty Lynn Rajskub) – his plan all along - and then uses Chloe to track down some techie terrorist group she’s been working for.

                Apparently one of their ex-members is plotting something about using drones to kill the president – there that is again – and Jack wants to stop it because he feels he owes the president – and his old flame  the president’s daughter, Audrey, (Kim Raver) one.

                But then that techie terrorist is betrayed by his girlfriend who then promises to deliver all of his research on killing sitting American presidents with drones to the mom from “Game of Thrones.”

                Also because it’s “24” and even a short season of “24” needs ample personal problems: there’s the brash young CIA Agent who can’t wait for Morgan to be out of the picture so he can take her job, there’s the White House Chief of Staff who also happens to be married to the president’s daughter (conflict!) and the president is beginning to show the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

                All of that and there are still 10 more episodes to go.