’24: Live Another Day’ 7:00pm-8:00pm Recap: Out the Window You Go

A major surprise, Jack goes hunting for Margot Al-Harazi, someone goes splat and another big bad is revealed….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Leave it to Jack Bauer to head fake us all with a Presidential assassination when in reality he went to the old ‘Speed’ playbook to save Heller’s life and put one over on Margot Al-Harazi. Yes, Jack used his years of intelligence training, life in the field, and countless missions to search his archive of a mind when he pulled out the scene from that bus movie where Keanu Reeves is trapped with Sandra Bullock as Dennis Hopper watches from afar via a remote camera and the only way they can escape without him knowing is to hack into his video feed and loop in a recorded version so he’d think the people were still on board when in reality, Neo had long since taking them out of harm’s way.

Well while Margot was celebrating her victory over the evil President Heller, Jack was getting him out of Wembley stadium where he was safe and sound and never in any real danger at all. The brief period of mourning shared by the Prime Minister, Audrey and everybody else back at home base was relieved when Jack called in to let everyone know that the President was alive and well.

The ruse Jack concocted was meant to convince Margot that the President was dead so she would follow through on her word and ditch all of the drones into the ocean. Sure enough after looking at the smoldering crater in the middle of Wembley field, she ordered Ian to crash all of the drones. With five of them already sunk, Ian notices a tick in the video when Heller is turning his head just like that idiotic woman on the bus who just had to put her purse in her lap (clearly, I’ve seen Speed too many times). Ian is able to save the last done and course correct it back to London.

Jack finds out that there’s still a drone in play so he sends Heller with his friend Belcheck, who has instructions to keep the President dark and off the grid until this situation is resolved. And now our hero is off to the races to find Margot and take down the last drone before she can do any more damage to the city of London.

Closing the Loop

With Chloe’s help, Jack was able to find the feed into the drones while also starting to triangulate the real location where Margot and her goons were hiding out playing war games. Unfortunately, Chloe can’t crack the specific location so she has to call in help from her old pal Adrian Cross, who uses one of his hack programs to find Margot’s building. Sure enough a few seconds later, they find the building while Jack calls in reinforcements from Kate and the gang back at CIA headquarters.

When they arrive, Margot’s guards open fire and it’s a good old fashioned gun fight right in the middle of London! Jack and Chloe figure out a way to find her exact spot in the building if they can shut down the power even momentarily because she will undoubtedly have a battery backup going to keep her equipment running no matter what. Kate grenades the hell out of that power box, and Jack has his location but he can’t get in by walking up through the stairs and down a hallway because there are goons waiting with automatic weapons. Instead, Jack files away his best Keanu tactics and instead pulls one from the Bruce Willis files as he ties off an electrical cord and proceeds to rapel down the side of the building until he reaches the fifth floor where Margot and Ian are praying they have enough time to fire off the missile before agents storm the room.

Well, Jack popping up on the outside of the freaking window wasn’t in the plan so Ian opens fire and manages to hit everything within about a six foot radius except you know who. When he goes to the window to check it out, Jack grabs him and tosses him out. Margot’s enraged watching her son get tossed out the window like a water balloon and before she can grab her gun, Jack pops her with a bullet and cuffs her while he tries to see where this missile is headed. Thankfully the missiles are laser guided so as he grabs the NES controller currently doubling as a weapon of mass destruction, Jack sends the missile crashing into the ocean and saves the day (as if there was ever any doubt).

Margot berates Jack and Heller for costing numerous lives already that day and the death of all those innocent citizens were on his head. Jack replies that the only death on his head was hers before chucking her out the window as well where she goes splat. Seriously, Michelle Fairley cannot die in a reasonable way! They might as well have had the ‘Rains of Castamere’ as their soundtrack as he launched her out the window. I looked in the credits, but didn’t see George R.R. Martin as a writer on this episode so I’m not sure what to think.

Anyways, override device captured, terrorists dead, all in a days work for Jack fucking Bauer. And in case you wanted to see what Margot looked like after going splat, gaze upon the image. At least she didn’t have to watch her son die first like on ‘Game of Thrones’….oh wait….never mind.

Still Another Loose End

Jack and the rest of the gang are celebrating the win, but Kate isn’t so lucky because she gets a call from her police contact in London who has discovered Jordan’s dead body in a motorcycle repair shop. She calls it in and of course Navarro acts like he has no idea what’s happening, but his ears perk up when he hears that Jordan’s body was found alongside another unknown assailant. Now Navarro has a reason to be worried because his assassin (and I use that term loosely considering what a moron that guy was) can be traced back to him if the authorities discover his identity. So Navarro calls into his secret handler (Adrian) who promises him a new cover, money and safe passage to a different country all for the small price of stealing the override device Margot was using to hijack the drones. He agrees (like he has a choice) and now it’s all about stealing a piece of highly guarded hardware right out from under the noses of the CIA.

Back at the murder scene, Kate sends Jack the prints of the other man who was dead alongside Jordan after her first search turns up zero results, which only means one thing — this guy was covert ops. Jack uses a contact back in Washington D.C. to dig up the info on on his identity while Navarro starts sweating like a block of ice on a patch of blacktop in the middle of summer.

In the middle of this, Jack gets two calls of equal importance — first Audrey calls to say thank you for not allowing her father to get hurt so these two are totally still in love and Mark is really, really the third wheel in this relationship. Second, Chloe calls Jack to say she’s done. She helped him stop the drones but she has to get back to her life as she climbs back into a car where Adrian awaits her arrival.

Things only get worse when we learn that the override device isn’t just capable of flying drones — it can literally hack into any defense department database and control whatever device the person in possession of it wants it to do.

The Great Escape

Navarro’s plan has to move now and he has to move fast before Jack tracks the assassin back to him, so he chokes out the analyst, steals the device and bolts for the door. Sure enough seconds later (always just too late), Jack gets the information back and the assassin was a covert ops agent and Navarro just happened to be one of his handlers when he was still active. Jack goes on a mad dash to find Navarro, but he’s escaped with the device and this day just got a lot more interesting.

Navarro calls in to Adrian to find out where they can meet, and he gives him a location. With Chloe back in the car, he says he has to go meet a friend and with that hour No. 9 comes to a close.

Was Chloe in on the entire operation or does she just have no clue what Adrian is up to when they finish with pillow talk? Also let’s not forget Adrian keeps saying he’s just a middleman in this whole operation so either he’s lying or the wizard of Oz is hanging out behind a curtain somewhere on this show.

Tune in next week when the shit hits the fan once again as Adrian gets control of the override device and it looks like’s in the mood to drive a submarine with a full compliment of nuclear weapons cause who wouldn’t want to do that?!?