Well, I called it on the death of Chloe's family last week, although I guess it really wasn't that hard to predict. To pick up from the last hour (no time has been skipped yet in this new truncated version of 24, although it has to happen at some point, because the show's producers claimed this was still going to cover 24 hours and not just 12), Jack and Chloe are tracking Yates to the bar he went into, and Jack sneaks in to find the dude's body in the bathroom. Jack quickly figures out that his fake Russian girlfriend must have killed him and stolen the device, so Chloe tracks her into the subway (or the Tube, as it's called in London).
Jack and Chloe head over to the Tube and Jack follows her onto the train. She's ditched her blonde wig and spots him following her so she cuts herself and smears blood on her face, getting off the train and screaming for help when Jack confronts her. The diversion works, as Jack is swamped by people and she manages to get away. Jack orders Chloe to pick up her trail again but Chloe is completely frozen when she spots a family and momentarily believes it might be Morris and Prescott. She loses the girl and when Jack gets back in the car she tearfully confesses to him what happened, and that Morris and Prescott are dead, having been assassinated one night by a truck that slammed into them as Morris was picking up their son from soccer practice. Jack is stunned and gives her heartfelt hug, but Chloe knows that Morris wasn't the target, that it was supposed to be her for knowing what happened the day Jack disappeared. Jack is sad, but gives her the standard lecture about the gravity of the threat facing them (it's the usual of course, thousands of innocent people will die), and that he needs her help to stop this attack. Chloe seems to agree, but something tells me she's going to get the chance to enact some vengeance of her own this season at some point.
Chloe finds out the identity of the girl with the device- her name's Simone and Lady Stark is her mother, but on this show her name's Margot and she's a citizen who became radicalized when she married an Al Quaeda leader. But then the guy died in a drone attack ordered by President Heller, so we now have our motivation for this year's villains (unless they're working for someone even higher, which is usually the case on this show). Jack decides they need help and it has to come from Cross, so they head back to the hacker hideout to ask for it. When they get there Cross is very unhappy to see Jack again, and vice versa, as the two exchange in some seriously awkward stare downs. Jack wants to get into the US embassy in order to get the flight key of the drone pilot, Lt. Tanner, who was framed for the attack.
This will be the proof they need to hand over to the government, which Jack promises to do (it'll go wrong of course). Cross sullenly agrees to do it and Chloe works on getting him credentials for entrance into the embassy. When Jack gets there he has to make his way past the crowd of protesters, and right at the point where he's about to have his false id scanned, Adrian Cross double-crosses him and has one of the other hackers enter a phony code number which will get Jack flagged by security. Chloe figures it out too late and tells Jack to get out of there, but Jack says no, he's got to get into the embassy somehow. And so, in my favorite part of the episode, he pulls a classic Bauer move by knocking out a guard, steals his gun, pretends he's one of the crowd and starts shooting random protestors in the legs, crying out "they're shooting at us!" to incite a riot. In the ensuing chaos he makes his way into the embassy. Boy, good thing the Brits have free health care, huh? You know Jack, I think shooting at the ground or in the air might have had the same effect.
On the government front this week, Boudreau gets an executive order for Heller to sign that will hand Jack over to the Russians, but he doesn't tell him about it yet. He's still trying to persuade Heller not to appear before Parliament, but Heller's dead set on it, and not even Audrey can talk him out of it. Audrey's also getting fed up with Mark treating her like a fragile child, saying she wants to be as much in the loop as him. At the end of the hour, Heller faces Parliament only to be shouted down by angry MP's, who look like they're out for blood over the drone explosion. And regarding our villains, Simone makes it back to Mama Margot, who looks to be running a family business here, with both her son and son-in-law in on the whole plot as well as her daughter. Simone's husband Navid isn't very comfortable with the whole thing though, disliking the fact that Simone had to have an affair with Yates while undercover and uneasy about their plot to kill innocent people in whatever their endgame is. Simone tries to reassure him but Margot has cameras installed in their bedroom and is keeping a close watch, so I'd say Navid's days are probably numbered. Either that or he switches sides to help Jack.
Finally, Agent Kate is on the move tonight, and maybe we ought to call her Jackie Bauer, because she's still defying Navarro's orders, and kidnaps drug dealer Basher from last week's raid, forcing him to talk by threatening to give him up to one of his unsatisfied customers from a previous deal gone bad. Basher tells her and Agent Eric (who's now pretty much on Kate's side- that was a quick turnaround) that it was about drones and Yates mentioned Tanner's name but that's all he knows. So Kate and Eric head over the embassy themselves to question Tanner, but get there just in time to see Jack start the riot instead, before the clock runs out and we have to wait till next week to see what happens from here. The good thing about this shortened season is that we very likely won't have to spend hours with Jack while he gets out of the riot crowd, like in season 3 where he was forced to play russian roulette with those prisoners for an entire episode. Yay for small favors, right? See you next week everyone!
