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| With Live Another Day, 24 regained its limelight. |
I have been a fan of the show since its inception. Its relevance to the Post-9/11 world has garnered widespread attention from all levels of society. Perhaps most prominently, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia praised the controversial antics of its chaotic hero, Jack Bauer, on a panel regarding the use of torture in terrorism interrogations. Scalia remarked:
“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so, so the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”
Jack Bauer's relevance to the ongoing War on Terror even induced a Dean of West Point to visit the set and urge the reduction of torture scenes in the show. Kiefer Sutherland has even gone on to warn cadets not to torture prisoners.
As the old saying goes, life imitates art.
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| Think Jack Bauer, and you think of something like this. |
Yet despite this, the show has not been perfect. Some of the seasons were very shaky, and 24 has suffered from numerous annoying and irrelevant subplots over the years (most famously Kim meeting the cougar in Day 2). The real-time requirement, which is the backbone of the show's structure, has sometimes led to poor pacing, and numerous times the show has suffered from trying to introduce a new plot to the season while it is still ongoing, leaving the viewer scratching their heads and wondering about the importance of the previous plot (such as the FB subcircuit board on Day 6 superseding Abu Fayed's attacks). I have generally been disappointed with Days 6-8, as I thought that they were quite inferior compared to the first few seasons of the show.
Live Another Day on the other hand, reclaimed the show's past shine, and by all accounts. It was one of my favorite iterations of the series.
The miniseries had its strengths on a number of counts. Firstly, I think that the twelve-hour format did a good job at keeping pacing about right. As I have previously mentioned, the real-time requirement of 24 episodes sometimes induced the need to weave in irrelevant subplots, or cause a dramatic shift in the overall plot with the introduction of a new threat. While the latter did indeed happen in Live Another Day, the former, I thought, was kept to a minimum.
The relevance to ongoing political and sociological events I thought was also a nice touch. Since 24 went off the air in 2010, unmanned aerial vehicles, dubbed drones in popular terminology, have widely increased in importance, and in the resulting controversy. Famously, in early 2013, Senator Rand Paul staged a 13-hour filibuster, demanding that drones not be used against Americans suspected of terrorism on American soil. Although this use of drones was rather narrowly-tailored, it received widespread support from the American public. Interestingly, most Americans didn't support launching air strikes via drones against foreigners suspected of terrorism on American soil either. In Live Another Day, these drones are at the center of the plot for the majority of the episodes, with President James Heller in London to negotiate a base treaty with the British centered around their use. This has led controversy in both the political realm, and the dark, shadowy realm of terrorism that is at the core of 24.
This leads to the villain for the majority of the episodes, Margot Al-Harazi, and her cell of terrorists consisting in large part of her family. Margot, played by Michelle Fairley of Game of Thrones fame, is actually an Englishwoman by birth, but married a terrorist named Mahmoud Al-Harazi, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike authorized by President Heller two years before the season began. Margot, along with her children who became Mahmoud's stepchildren, want revenge. To that end, they have arranged for the delivery of the lynchpin of the problems posed in Live Another Day, the Defense Override Module, dubbed the "override device" throughout the season.
Though it hasn't been remarked upon by many critics, this is a subplot that I appreciated. Criticisms of immigration and multicultrualism have been growing in Britain, and I thought that this dynamic highlighted those concerns in a well-put-together manner. The clash between Anglo-British identity and something more alien to that isle is highlighted well by Margot Al-Harazi and her family. It also helped that Michelle Fairley's performance was spectacular.
You know you have a good villain on your hands when you're itching to see that villain get offed in a primal, violent way, and Margot Al-Harazi was just that. 24 has had a number of great villains: Nina Myers, Charles Logan, and one which we will soon see return, like an unwanted phoenix. Margot is one of the better ones, and takes her place alongside that pantheon. She displays her ruthlessness and fanaticism when she chops off one of the fingers of her own daughter's hand and then blows her daughter's husband's brains out later on. Not even her own family is as important to her as her terrorist plot: to use the override device to hijack a number of American drones and assassinate President Heller.
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| Margot Al-Harazi. With a face like that, you know you've got a good villain on your hands. |
While we're at it, I'll also say that the presence of James Heller and his daughter Audrey was a nice touch to Live Another Day, and one which made it infinitely more memorable. Jack's history with them spanning Days 4-6 was a significant personal story arc for the tragic hero during the show's run, and his involvement with them was cut off somewhat prematurely at the end of Day 6, when James forbid Jack from being involved in Audrey's life any further, as the latter seemed to be in a permanent catatonic state. There was no true closure, no real heartfelt goodbye. Live Another Day finally brought this arc to a proper end, and as always in the 24 series, it was not a happy one.
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| It's a blast from Jack's past as James Heller, now President, and his daughter, Jack's old love Audrey, return. |
Throughout most of the series' run, Jack transitions from his fugitive status into once again an effective agent of the U.S. government. This he does as seamlessly as always, eventually earning himself a pardon from President Heller for all offenses on Day 8 as well as any he had committed during Live Another Day. However, while Jack as always displays his teflon survivability, he survives only to meet tragedy, as per the norm.
24 throws us its usual curveballs, allowing us at one point to think President Heller had been killed in a drone strike, but leaving out the silent clock so as to make us not quite believe it. Turns out that Jack arranged for a looped video to trick Margot into destroying all but one of the drones she'd hijacked using the override device, but she intends to retaliate by using the last one to cause thousands of deaths at a crowded subway station. Naturally, Jack catches onto her, and in that omnipresent jobber mode for conveniences of the plot that villains throughout fiction often go through, Margot does not decide to turn tail and run to a safer location, as she'd done previously. This results in Jack throwing her son Ian and then her out of a window. I must admit, it was a very gratifying way to kill them off. Jack's been creative with his kills before (the infamous vampire bite at the start of Day 6 was probably the most creative, and likely the best part of that season), but I can't recall him simply hauling someone out a window.
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| Margot and Ian Al-Harazi, after being tossed aside (literally) by Jack. |
However in typical 24 style, just when things seem to be brightening up with the deaths of the Al-Harazis and the recovery of the override device, the cruel gods of the show decide to smack Jack's triumph down to the dust. Steve Navarro, the station chief at the CIA's London headquarters, is in fact a traitor, and he steals the override device on the instructions of Adrian Cross, whose group Open Cell has employed Chloe O'Brian, Jack's longtime colleague, in the leadup to the season. Navarro has before the season been feeding Cross classified information, and then framed the husband of Kate Morgan, the Robin to Jack's Batman throughout Live Another Day. Cross did in fact cross Navarro, and Jack and Kate worked up a scheme to get him to give crucial intelligence as to how to track the override device using Kate's outrage as a deception tool, which made Navarro think she would snap as Jack would and torture him. Clever.
The override device is tracked back to Cross, but herein comes the climax of Live Another Day in the returning form of one of those great villains we all thought was dead: Cheng Zhi.
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| The reintroduction of Cheng Zhi would give Live Another Day a most pivotal ending point. |
Previously in this entry I stated that I generally have disliked the introduction of additional villains and new plots that seem walled off in some ways from the previous plot, but it worked in Live Another Day. Cheng Zhi was the final piece in the puzzle of that arc from Days 4-6, the superantagonist, if you will. He was the one that really made Jack and Audrey's lives miserable in that time span, and his reintroduction into Live Another Day would be the capstone that would end it with a bang.
After it is revealed that he commissioned the construction of the override device, Cheng kills Cross and his cronies and abducts Chloe. His plan is to start a war between the U.S. and China, conspiring along the way with the Russians, who also want to apprehend Jack for his actions against their diplomats on Day 8. The conspiracy between Cheng and Anatol Stolnavich, a minister to the UK (and an undercover intelligence operative) almost succeeds when the override device is used to order an American nuclear sub to sink China's aircraft carrier, the Shenyang, but, to make a long story short, Jack Bauer and crew arrive in time to save the day, first taking out Stolnavich to find out where Cheng is heading, and then pursuing the latter.
However, this pursuit has a high price. When Audrey meets a well-connected contact from the Chinese embassy to try and explain the situation, Cheng sends a sniper who deals with the situation, killing everyone else and taking Audrey hostage. Cheng demands that Jack allow him to leave the country or Audrey will be killed.
Not one to give in so easily, Jack dispatches Kate to rescue Audrey, and meets up with Chloe (who has escaped Cheng's custody). Kate does rescue Audrey, kind of. However, she did not anticipate that there would be a second gunman. Once the sniper is killed, Kate, her team, and Audrey are ambushed by an uzi-wielding shooter, who kills two people on the team and fatally wounds Audrey, who dies in Kate's arms in what was undoubtedly the saddest scene in Live Another Day, and in one that probably has no equal since the emotional events of Day 5.
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| Audrey's death signals the tragedy of Jack's life. |
When Jack is informed, he goes into a rage and turns on his Rambo mode, blasting the remaining gunmen on board the ship he's on and confronting Cheng. After a hand-to-hand fight, Jack breaks Cheng's arm and apprehends him. A video message is sent to the Chinese showing that Cheng is still alive and was responsible for the sinking of the Shenyang. World War III is averted at the very last moment. Then, in typical Jack Bauer style, he kills Cheng, beheading him with a sword that just happens to be laying around on the ship. To my knowledge, this was the first decapitation seen on 24. At least, I can't recall anyone else dying in this way off the top of my head. Jack gets creative again. The scene gives Jack an air of nobility too, like a knight or samurai of old honorably killing a defeated opponent. It is more than Cheng deserves.
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| Cheng Zhi before Jack offs him in a most noble style. |
However, the end has not yet come. President Heller is informed of Audrey's death and collapses. In the meantime, Jack receives a phone call. Chloe is nowhere to be found, and it is quickly apparent she has been abducted again. We all know by who.
Enter the time skip that we all heard was coming. I think it occurred fairly well. Twelve hours are skipped over, and the mystery as to what Jack was doing in those twelve hours should be a source of many a fanfic.
After a scene flirting with the possibility of President Heller's death from shock, we see that the flag-draped coffin on screen is actually for Audrey. The President speaks somberly with the UK's Prime Minister, Alistair Davies, telling him that he can take some solace in the fact that his Alzheimer's will soon render him incapable of remembering that he outlived his child.
Meanwhile, Jack arrives at a discrete location just outside London. There he meets Chloe, and, after a short but emotional goodbye, wherein we are reminded with an emotional scene that Chloe is the only real friend that Jack has left, the former voluntarily gives himself over to the Russians in exchange for the latter. Live Another Day ends with Jack in a helicopter, a surprisingly content smile on his face, as he heads for an undoubtedly horrible prison in Moscow.
The ending of Live Another Day was, I think, one of the most powerful in the entire series, only rivaled by the death of Teri Bauer at the end of Day 1. We are reminded, once and for all, that Jack Bauer is misfortune itself. Become attached to him too closely (or even on a tertiary basis, as in the case of Mark Boudreau), and you will meet with tragedy. The tenth law of power in Robert Greene's world-famous 48 Laws of Power instructs readers to avoid "infectors" - the unhappy and the unlucky, at any cost. Jack is unhappy, and certainly unlucky. And Jack, like the eye of the storm, can only watch as his own winds tear apart anything and everything that he cares about around him. It's unfair, because it's not really his fault, but The Fates just decree that he will bring misfortune to anyone in his path. Perhaps a Moscow prison is truly the safest place for him to reside, not just for himself, but for everyone he cares about. Perhaps that is why he seemed so contented and calm at the end of the miniseries.
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| Jack looking oddly content and calm despite knowing what he's about to get into. |
Where does Jack head from here? Will there be another prisoner swap like in Day 6? Unlike after the end of Day 8, when we knew that something was in the works for 24 (an aborted attempt at a feature film, which turned into this miniseries), there is as of now no indication that any new material will emerge in the world of 24, at least taking place chronologically after Live Another Day. Is Jack fated to spend the rest of his life in a gulag?
Possibly, but I wouldn't be too surprised if something happens, sometime. Something needs to go down after Live Another Day, and if there's one thing we know about Jack Bauer, he is like a hurricane, which gains strength in warm waters. The warm waters in the world of 24 are terrorist threats against the United States. There will be no shortage of those in the future.
