24 marks its 200th episode with a spectacular installment. Here's Brad Wilson's review of 6pm to 7pm.
There are very few
moments that make me exclaim out loud in the loneliness of my
apartment, but the 200th episode of “24” did just that. I am
actually shocked it happened. President James Heller sacrificed
himself and is now dead, thinking he saved millions by surrendering
his life. He walked to the center of the pitch at Wembley Stadium and
basically waited for death and Margot Al-Harazi gave it to him.
Jack and Mark, of
course, are against this plan from the start, but President Heller is
resolute and gets them both on board. He tells Jack if the roles were
reversed, he would do the same thing. I think that’s true. Jack has
a long record of sacrificing himself and even those he loves for his
country. Mark, on the other hand, I’m surprised he went along with
it. Though, I guess later in the episode when Audrey finds out, we
too discover how much respect Mark has for Heller. He may be a d-bag,
but he has his moments, I guess. We’ll have to keep a close eye on
how this affects Audrey. Wow. Still can’t believe it actually
happened.
Sidebars on Heller:
- I loved Heller. He had moments of passion and anger as well as moments of levity and insight. Really likable character. Hated to see him go.
- I liked how he did it as a private citizen and not as acting President.
- Does the president really have a tracking transponder, like in real life does President Obama have one of those? Kinda cool if he does. Smart.
Moving on, this episode
was, by far, the best of the season so far and, honestly, ranks
pretty high overall. I thought for sure Chloe was gonna stop it at
the last moment, but no. I liked that. It was a curve. Usually in
that situation the bomb is stopped with one second, or they make it
out just in time, or the computer is hacked and the virus is shut
down, but not this time. This time, a very likeable character is
killed.
This raises so many
questions, especially that bit about Jack’s presidential pardon.
Mark clearly doesn’t know about it, so how does this affect his
supposed deal with the Russians? Where is this pardon? Will Margot
keep her word? (From the preview of next week’s show, it doesn’t
seem like it). Who is the Vice President and how will he/she handle
this situation?
Earlier in the episode
she seems like she would. She kept telling her son if a “murderer”
like Heller can keep his word, so can she. I guess there is honor
among…. terrorists? It does seem like Chloe will give our heroes a
way in using the discs Naveed hid under the floorboards in their
house (the address of which was given to them by Simone). I guess
we’ll see how things shake out next week.
Let’s go to the other
Al-Harazi, shall we? It seems like Simone is done for, but since we
didn’t see her die in this episode, I’m not sure she will die. I
have a feeling she’ll live. (Ha, by the way, did any of you catch
some shades of Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV” from Jack. I think his
exact line was “if she dies then so be it.” Not far off from “If
he dies, he dies.”)
And we’re back into
24. One thing about this episode that felt very, I don’t know, out
of place was Jack’s use of the word “bitch.” When trying to
talk Kate into forcing the doctor to wake Simone up, he says to her
“wake the bitch up.” Jack doesn’t talk like that. Just seemed
out of place, I didn’t like it. But that’s minor.
Really the only other
storyline here is what Navarro is doing. It seems like that may be
the climax of the season. This Margot storyline might get played out
in the next two episodes, with the final couple of hours revolving
around Jack and the Russians, Navarro and Cross, and Chloe. Jordan
Reed proved to be kind of a badass. It looks like he’s dead, but we
didn’t actually see him die. So, he might pop up again. That hitman
sure is though.
Agent Morgan will
discover everything soon enough, I imagine. But what I really want to
know is what Cross is up to. Ha, I keep expecting Charles Logan to
resurface.
As I said earlier, this
was far and away the best episode of the season. I actually said on
Facebook it might trump Sunday’s Game of Thrones season finale.
Don’t get me wrong, that episode brought me some satisfaction, but
this one? Man, I love getting blindsided. Sure, we knew it *could*
happen, but I really didn’t expect Heller to die.
Thanks for a great
200th episode, Fox!
Brad
Wilson lives in Southwest Florida where he writes every day at his job
as a television news producer at WINK News. Follow him on Twitter @bradwilson86 and check out his other articles at geekretaliation.net. You can also follow Geek Retaliation on Facebook at facebook.com/geekretaliation
