The Jack Attack: Hours 1 and 2
24 is back for another action packed day and this year Everything Action is going to be along for the ride every week with our new weekly 24 recap “The Jack Attack”. (Spoilers abound so be warned)
It’s Day 8 and we move from Washington to New York City. As the season opens we find a man being targeted by a pair of assassins. Just as he’s about to be sniped, a truck passes by and blocks the shot. Our lucky stranger makes his way through a seedy crack house until he arrives at a friend’s apartment. Unfortunately, his friend’s shower got interrupted by a bullet and another of his associates got one as well as he find out after making a call. He pulls a fast one and give his red hoody to a crackhead and escapes out the back. The assassins give chase and get a bunch of shots off, with the sniper getting a good one into our man’s shoulder, but he manages to drive off.
Across town, we catch up with our man Jack as he’s babysitting his adorable granddaughter, Teri. Kim, her husband Stephen and Teri are all visiting Jack in NYC but Kim has been tactfully pushing for Jack to move back to Los Angeles to live near them. In a getting up to speed comment, Kim mentions that Jack is done with his treatment and is completely cured from his brush with deadly bio-toxin of last season. Jack surprised Kim by saying that he’s thought a lot about it and he wants to move back to LA, he has a friend who will give him some consulting work and an apartment to rent. In fact, Jack says that he’ll fly back to LA that night with them. Kim is overjoyed but, of course, Jack can’t retire quite that easily.
As Jack is packing, our mysterious stranger arrives at his apartment. It turns out his name is Victor Aruz and he’s one of Jack’s old informants, who helped him most notably in the Salazaar case. Victor says a big hit is going down today as a group of Russians are planning on taking out President Omar Hassan (Anil Kapoor). Hassan, from an undisclosed Middle Eastern country, is in NYC to work out a peace agreement with President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) that could begin a wide spread peace throughout the whole region. Jack tries to get names but Victor refuses to say anything until he’s safely at CTU. Apparently President Taylor decided that the FBI just didn’t cut it last season and CTU is back and bigger than ever. It looks like they spent billions on the interior designer alone as everything is glass and fancy looking. CTU 2.0 consists of “man on the street” Cole Ortiz (Freddie Prinze Jr.), UAV nerd/wise ass Arlo Glass (John Boyd), highly efficient analyst/Ortiz fiancee Dana Walsh (Katee Sackhoff) and big boss Brian Hastings (Mykelti Washington). Of course, it wouldn’t be CTU without our beloved computer expert Chloe O’Brien but she seems to be a little over her head as CTU systems are completely changed (maybe they stopped using sockets?).
Jack calls Chloe and tells her about Victor’s claims. She interrupts Hastings and after hearing the situation, agrees to send a chopper and team to meet Jack and Victor a few blocks away at a local NYPD precinct. Ortiz heads out to leave the team but suggests another team be provided for backup. Hastings denies this and says a drone will be perfectly fine backup.
Over at the United Nations, Presidents Hassan and Taylor are going back and forth about the peace agreement. The current issue is that Hassan agrees to stop his country’s nuclear program but wants an international inspection team, while Taylor wants a completely American team. After taking a break with their respective teams, Taylor learns about the threat against Hassan and gets conflicting opinions from her top men. Ethan Kanin (Bob Gunton) tells her to not tell Hassan because he might run and stop the peace talks while her new chief of staff Rob Weiss (Chris Diamantopoulos) tells her if she doesn’t tell Hassan and he finds out they knew, that would be worse. Taylor says she’ll think about it and we also get more catching up comments where we learn that her husband Henry nastily divorced her after she sent her daughter Olivia to jail for murder.
Jack and Victor make their way to the precinct but Victor collapses before they can arrive. Jack tries to stop the bleeding but his helpfulness looks suspicious to a nearby parking attendant, who calls the police. The bad guys are monitoring the emergency bands so they get the location when the police radio in to try to corroborate Jack’s story. Two of the bad guys arrive and after a quick shootout, kill both the cops and chase Jack and Victor into a nearby apartment building. Jack is out of bullets but Jack is always resourceful. One of the assassins notices that a fire ax is missing a minute late as Jack chops him in the chest and then throws his partner over the railing and down a few floors. CTU finds a nearby parking garage for the chopper to land on and Jack and Victor transfer over. Victor is handed over and Jack tells Ortiz that he did his job and now he’s done. It’s right at that moment when main baddie Davros (Doug Hutchinson) launches a missile and blows up the chopper. Jack manages to save Ortiz but Victor is in bad shape. Jack tries to get information but the only thing he manages to get is that there is an insider close to Hassan who is giving the terrorists information.
Jack and Ortiz head back to CTU and Jack gets debriefed by Chloe while Hastings and Ortiz have an argument about what happened. Hastings wants Ortiz to not mention the fact that he wanted another team instead of the drone, which according to Arlo failed to stop the missile because it’s anti-ballistic software hasn’t been tested in an urban environment. CTU meanwhile, finds that someone hacked into the UN servers and stole security details. Doing some computer magic they learn that the intrusion originated on reporter Merdith Reed’s computer. Reed has been doing a series of articles on Hassan and we learn that she’s also apparently having an affair with Hassan as well. Her security clearance had been revoked by Hassan’s main advisor/brother Farhad but Hassan demanded that it be reinstated. Secret Service jumps her before she can get close and she’s quickly sent to CTU for interrogation.
Chloe feels that all this happened a little too easily and she asks Jack to show Hastings some photos she got from a traffic camera of a man (Davros) entering Reed’s apartment building just before the intrusion and then leaving shortly afterward. Jack wants to leave and half assedly tries to convince Hastings to follow through on Chloe’s evidence. Hastings refuses and Jack finally thinks he’s going to be able to leave. Kim arrives and tells Jack that she called Chloe to ask about what was going on. Kim surprisingly tells Jack that she knows that if something terrible happened and he knew he could have done something, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. She says she’s OK if Jack needs to stay and finish this, which Jack agrees with but promises to fly to LA the second everything is over.
Jack heads back and immediately switches into tactical mode. He orders Chloe to track the taxi Davros used to leave the apartment and also to get him access to the armory. Meanwhile, Hastings is interrogating Meredith and not really getting anywhere while Dana is the early front runner for bizarre side story of the year as she is getting threatening phone calls from her ex-con redneck ex who learned where she was from Dana’s trailer trash sister. Dana also apparently changed her name from Jenny. Chloe finds where the taxi dropped of Davros and Jack loads up on guns but is caught by Hastings as Dana and Arlo found that Chloe hacked into the UAV archives to find the taxi’s location. Hastings is about to arrest Jack when Jack threatens to call President Taylor about his costly decision to not send backup for the chopper team. Blackmailed, Hastings says if Jack wants to waste his time, he’s free to do so.
Wrapping up at the UN, Presidents Taylor and Hastings had a joint press conference where they answered questions and gave statements about what their positions on the peace agreement are. In the first big twist, we learn that Hassan’s brother is the actual terrorist insider, as he gets a call from Davros.
Finally, to end the first two hours, Davros heads over to his friend’s house with a fancy New Yorker accent and an apparent job in the NYPD. He wants to switch shifts but his buddy has a parent teacher conference so he can’t. Davros is dissappointed and goes to plan B which is to force his buddy to cooperate by holding his wife hostage while he calls and switches. Davros steals a move from Jack and shoots his buddy’s wife in the leg and he agrees to make the call.