In a rare but welcome change of pace, the show slows down for a gripping conversation between Chloe and Jack. Chloe explains that Morris was driving Prescott home from a soccer practice, a shift she would usually do, when a truck slammed into them. A group that had been plotting to kill her was behind the hit-and-run. “You can’t bring back the ones you love,” Jack tells her, reminding us of the personal tragedies that have pierced every season of 24. “But you can honor their lives by helping others. That’s how you move forward.” So, episode three does not just begin with a pulse but a heartbeat – a formidable combination, even if the attempt to give Chloe more of a motivation to help her pal Jack feels like a stretch.
Nevertheless, 24 and the phrase “suspension of disbelief” usually go hand in hand, and there are a few other matters in this episode that feel too convenient. For instance, why has President Heller “staked his administration,” as Audrey says, on getting a British base renewed? (If that is the biggest matter of the day, things must be going all right, stateside.) Meanwhile, Live Another Day continues the silly assumption that presidents keep track of the diplomatic matters around them by tuning into the news – don’t they have staff to keep them on top of the breaking stories? Another convenience: nobody from a crowd of angry demonstrators, of which there have to be many political affairs specialists, recognizes Jack Bauer, even with the tame disguise of sunglasses.
As for our other storylines this week, the matters with the CIA are not very interesting, although Bashir (Tamer Hassan) gives Kate and Erik a bit of intelligence. Erik, meanwhile keeps pressing his co-agent on her failure to detect her husband’s false allegiance. Mark Boudreau fights with Audrey about letting her dad make a speech at Parliament, due to his deteriorating mental faculties. (Mark, meanwhile, knows how to forge the president’s signature, which ought to make the plot thicken in later weeks.)
24: Live Another Day is on track to be one of the better seasons of 24. These early three episodes have been a tad cluttered with new characters – we hardly get any of Ron, Mark’s aide, and 1Lt. Tanner this week – but the new additions have compelling storylines. Still, for a show that had become so tied to a formula that later seasons were too easy to predict, it is good to see Live Another Day throwing surprises our way – just when we think we are ahead of the action.