’24’ Live Another Day 6:00pm-7:00pm Recap: The Greater Good

The President employs Jack to help him follow through on his deal with Margot Al-Harazi as he scrambles to find information to stop Heller from giving his own life as part of the deal….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Last week on ’24’ — Margot dropped bombs all over town trying to kill her wayward daughter after she got smacked by a bus following her failed attempt to off her niece, which resulted in her getting picked up by Jack Bauer and Kate Morgan. The President eventually came to the decision to go through with Margot’s demands and give himself up as a sacrifice if she vowed to stop her plans of attacking London with the drones while mole man Steven Navarro’s ‘boss’ was revealed (Adrian Cross) and he got his programmer Jordan shot when he got too close to the truth about Kate’s husband when digging through old CIA files.

Wake the Bitch Up!

Back at CIA headquarters, Simone is put into intensive care where the doctors have to induce a coma to help reduce the swelling in her brain because you know, she got hit by a fucking bus. Kate tries to reason with them to wake her up for a few minutes, but that would kill her so she doesn’t press the issue.

Meanwhile, President Heller pulls Jack into his private room and informs him of the deal he made with Margot Al-Harazi and then reveals his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s and how he won’t even remember his loved ones a year from now and that’s not a fate he wants to accept. Instead, he’ll sacrifice his life for the sake of saving London from this terrorist mad woman because he’ll be dead soon enough anyways.

Jack obviously wants no part of the President basically committing a planned suicide, but Heller convinces him that this is the best way to put an end to the madness of the day and bring Al-Harazi’s plan to a stop. Jack finally agrees but he needs help plotting out a way to get the President out of the building without alerting the secret service.

The President employs Captain Weasel Mark Boudreau to pull it off, and he begs the two of them to get along for the sake of his own execution. I mean if you can’t work together to help kill a guy, I don’t know what to do with you two!

Mark helps Jack plan the escape, bobbing and weaving through the building while avoiding security along the way. Before the plan goes into motion, Heller spends a few moments with his daughter Audrey looking back at a picture she keeps with her of their family day on the beach from when she was a kid. This is his way of saying goodbye, although she has no idea what’s about to happen. He pens her a letter that she can read once he’s dead, while he’s also left a letter of resignation so his death doesn’t appear to be a political maneuver, which would make the United States look weak in the face of a terroristic threat.

Jack’s running out of time to save the President before he sacrifices himself so he calls Kate at the hospital and tells her no more waiting around it’s time to wake that bitch up! Simone has information they need and even if she dies, at least she’ll help possibly save the President’s life before she goes. Kate goes all Jack on the doctor in the emergency room, forcing him to wake Simone up and once she comes to, she reveals her mother’s address and the hidden file her dead husband Naveed left behind, which he told her about when he tried to run away with her at the start of the season.

Can Kate get the information needed in time to stop Margot before the President goes through with his plan? Well the tactical team arrives too late to find Margot, but they do get the hard drive filled with the information Naveed tucked away to stop his evil mother-in-law before she kills a bunch of people.

The Terrorist Code

So here’s where the dissention in the ranks happens as it seems to every season on ’24’ — Margot and her son Ian pack up the house and bolt out of there once they realize Simone was captured and not killed. In the midst of leaving, Margot tells her son of Heller’s plan to give himself up so long as she promises to crash the other drones to save lives. Ian doesn’t believe he’ll go through with it, and even if he does this messes up their plans to kill a whole lot of people.

Margot essentially says if you can’t trust the word of a terrorist, who can you trust? It’s almost like she’s walking into a wedding before the Rains of Castamere starts playing except Ian is Walder Frey.

Needless to say the look of disappointment in his mother’s plan pretty much tells the entire story of what’s probably coming next. I’m guessing at some point it means another dead Stark errr… Al-Harazi.

Worst Assassin Ever

Steve Navarro calls up his would be assassin, who missed at basically point blank range from killing Jordan and tells him this job has to get done or it’s both their asses. Thankfully Jordan calls in from a phone booth (those still exist in London apparently) to let Navarro know he got shot and he’s hiding out at an old motorcycle shop and the CIA chief needs to send a team to retrieve him. After reassuring Adrian Cross that the analyst was dead (cause that won’t come back to bite you), Navarro sends his assassin after Jordan in his new location.

The only problem is once the assassin finds the location, Jordan is waiting in the shadows to blast him with a lead pipe to the head. Jordan knows it’s Navarro who set him up, but he wants to know why? Jordan grabs the gun and then the oldest trick in the book still works when the assassin asks if he’s ever fired a gun and he better check if the safety is on or off. Seriously, this trope has been used so many times in movies and TV, you start to wonder if this is so stupid it might actually work.

First off all the safety on the gun can be clicked with your hand already on the weapon so you don’t really need to look to begin with, but of course Jordan falls for it like he’s the Coyote setting an ACME trap for the Road Runner, and a moment later the two of them are struggling on the ground as the would be assassin tries to stab him with a knife he had hidden in his back pocket. The knife buries into Jordan’s torso, but he manages to pull another gun stuck in his pants out and blasts the assassin with two to the chest.

Now here’s another question about this scene – so Jordan is smart enough to have a gun already planted in his jeans, but he needs to use the assassin’s weapon to threaten him once he cracks him with the lead pipe? And if Jordan is bright enough to have the gun tucked in his pants, why didn’t he know how to tell if a gun has a safety on or not? Seriously people if I can think of this, how can’t the producers of ’24’? Anyways, Jordan passes out from what I assume was blood loss and we have to wonder if he’s still alive or not by next episode.

Navarro calls his assassin back, but there’s no answer. Meanwhile, Kate is searching for Jordan to help her decipher the hard drive captured from Margot’s hideout. Navarro plays dumb like he has no idea where Jordan disappeared to, but he’ll get security right on that. Oh Steve, you’re getting discovered inside the next two episodes is my official prediction.

The Greater Good

Back at the President’s lair, Jack slips POTUS out the back door and only has to knock out one unsuspecting secret service agent as they commandeer a helicopter to fly them to Wembley Stadium where Margot has instructed him to wait for her next move.

Mark goes back upstairs to find Audrey, but she’s not in her room and instead a witless agent let her into her father’s room where she’s not supposed to be for at least a few more hours until you know, her dad’s dead. She’s already gone through the letter he left for her and then Audrey notices Mark isn’t all that surprised. Sure enough he knew about this and was in on the whole thing and Audrey is devastated.

At the stadium, Jack talks to Chloe, who now has the hard drive of information from Al-Harazi’s house, but she’s been unable to crack the final firewall that will allow her access to take down the drones. In other words, he’s out of options to stop this assassination from taking place. The President informs Jack that before he left office he signed a presidential pardon for our wayward hero, exonerating him of all charges so he can go home again. Bet the Russians will have something to say about that!

Jack tells the President his freedom was never conditional on helping today, and he says his final goodbyes as Heller walks out to the middle of the field.

Margot and Ian fly a drone overhead and they discover that it really is Heller waiting for them in the stadium. He actually showed up. Margot takes the control — which looks like something out of an 80’s video game — and fires the missile. A huge explosion erupts and a hollow crater is left in the spot where the President stood. Heller is gone, and a wave of relief washes over Margot for what she believes is a job well done.

The only problem is Jack Bauer is pissed off and you won’t like Jack when he’s angry. Something tells me we’re about to witness Jack’s burning need for revenge big time in the next hour of ’24’.