PREVIOUSLY ON 24: Steve talked to his hat after he nearly exploded; Jack asked permission to take Kate out so they can go thigh shooting together; Jack then asked Kate to hang out with some of the friends he’s been around recently, but she misunderstood what “hang out” meant; Navid’s perfectly good cell phone was almost thrown away along with his body bag; The Prime Minister proved he has American instincts when it comes to trusting Jack; Rask misunderstood Kate’s request to be drilled on questions for an upcoming CIA test; Rask was so upset by this he pulled the pin on a grenade and exploded into a thousand pieces of confetti; Simone’s sister-in-law didn’t get the point, until she got the point; Simone looked like she got hit by a bus; Steve turned out to be a mole, and while I have this opportunity, I should remind people not all people named Steve are moles.
The following takes place between 5pm and 6pm:
5:00 pm – Simone is in the street being treated for her wounds after getting hit by a bus, so naturally the police continue to ride horses around right on top of her. Simone’s niece identifies her as the killer of her Mom.
Across town, Kate loses count of all the bodies they’re already taking out of the factory they just had a shoot out in, so she’s not sure who’s ahead on the scoreboard, but we think it’s Jack. Jack notices that his friend Belacheck is one of the people NOT killed during the raid, and releases him back into the wild, much to the chagrin of the MI-5 agent in charge. Chloe calls Jack to tell her the results of her “Where’s Simone” game, which turned out to be pretty easy because Simone was the only one wearing a red and white striped knit hat and matching sweater. Also, the only one that got hit by a bus.
While Chloe is on the phone, Chloe’s computer, which is always looking out for her, prints a “GET OUT OF THERE!” message. It’s clearly the computer used to win the Turing contest. She sees the police coming into the building, and gets the heck out of there, while Jack and Kate also get the heck out of where they are.
Back at the President’s office, Mark explains that a message he’s just given the president is coordinates for Margot. The President wants to know if they can trace the video stream back to her, and Mark points out that a piece of paper doesn’t have a video stream, since it is just a piece of paper.
Jack calls the President and tells him about Simone. Jack thinks Margot hasn’t figured out that Simone has been hit by a bus yet, which is a pretty good bet since Margot (for the time being) doesn’t have superpowers to allow her to find that out. The President, under the impression he can do whatever he wants in whatever country he’s in, says he’ll send someone to the hospital to guard Simone. Jack also complains that MI-5 was there, which really put a kink in his thigh shooting, since he couldn’t just shoot everyone in sight. The president says he’ll take care of that, and conveniently the Prime Minister arrives.
The Prime Minister and the President have a yelling match, complete with spit flying out of each others mouths, which is frankly yucky. The Prime Minister pulls out the “hey, tell me about your health” card. Heller says, “If you have a question about my health, you should have come and asked.” This confuses the Prime Minister since he JUST ASKED THAT. The President is really upset by this, enough to say that he’d resign from trying to sell gold to people, if that’s what it took.
The President goes on to explain that Jack has a line on Margot, but more like an idea of how to get to her, rather than something with Cartesian Coordinates. The Prime Minister promises he’ll do everything he can to help Jack.
Meanwhile, on the ambulance, the paramedics talk about all the various injuries Simone has, trying to make each other barf. They even get to the chopped off finger, but neither of them even come close to hurling. Just then, her phone rings! It’s Margot, calling from the House of Don’t Send Your Daughter Out To Kill Her Sister-In-Law Because She’ll Screw It Up. The paramedic explains that Simone challenged a bus to a fight, and lost. Margot says she’ll go to the hospital right away, and hangs up… just as the paramedic asks her name. For some reason, Simone has the only smart phone on earth that doesn’t display caller ID.
Margot, clearly upset that Simone is on her way to the hospital, tells her son, Ian, to send Karem to the hospital to see if anyone knows who Simone is. Ian looks worried that Margot may be catching Heller’s forgetfulness, but makes the call.
COMMERCIAL
5:15pm – At CIA HQ in London, Jordan is playing the ASCII game “Find the Missing Pieces” on the data file that Steve the Mole told him not to look at. He’s interrupted by a creepy guy named Gavin who stalked up behind him, to ask for some “files”.
Steve gets a phone call from “Unknown” which, in every single movie that’s ever happened, is not a good thing. Of course, Steve picks it up. It turns out it’s Husky Voice, who tells him Jordan is decrypting the files using a very recent version of Norton Utilities, so Steve better hurry before Jordan figures out the whole “Mole” thing. Husky Voice turns out to be Adrian! And Adrian really wants Steve to do something about Jordan right away.
At the hospital, Jack runs in with Kate and yells “Are you in charge?” The Agent there says no, her name is not “In Charge”, it’s Helen.
5:17pm – Helen explains that Simone can’t do much talking, being unconscious and all. Kate goes downstairs to talk to Simone’s niece, who they mistakenly name “In Shock”.
The doctor comes out and tells Jack that he won’t be able to talk to Simone, until Jack uses Jack Voice to explain that he will be able to speak with Simone and this is exactly the droid he’s looking for.
Karem shows up at the hospital, and doesn’t look the least bit suspicious looking all over the place, while he searches for a place to steal a hospital outfit.
Kate finds Jasmine, Simone’s niece, and offers her a butter beer. Jasmine explains everything that happened at her house, and sounds completely normal until she gets a sinister sound in her voice when she says that she hopes Simone dies. Kate relays this information to Jack, and tells him that since Simone was trying to warn her sister-in-law to get out of the city, there’s a good chance she could turn on her mother.
And what do you know, Karem is already finished changing clothes and just happens to overhear this whole thing. Margot gets crazy eyes when Karem tells her that Simone was trying to warn them to get out of London. She tells Ian to move a drone within range of the hospital. Ian thinking about pointing out that it’s more of a fly the drone thing, not move, but thinks better of it, when Margot tells him that Simone is not about to betray her again.
COMMERCIAL
While watching The Prime Minister Channel, Jordan gets called into Steve’s office to “pick up a package” at a houseboat. Jordan thinks this a little weird since he’s not technically a “field op” but more of a “sys op”. He’s pretty excited though, since anything would beat having Gavin sneak up on him again, so he thanks Steve and goes out into the field. He quickly returns and says he’ll head to the houseboat instead of the field, because fields don’t usually have boats in them.
At Mark’s office, he and Audrey watch The Prime Minister Channel too. We see that it has the caption “The Prime Minister Speaks”, which is apparently a new thing, so new that they have to point that out in a caption. The President enters the room and tells him that he faked his way through the whole “health” thing with the Prime Minister. He tells Audrey that it was “Arrogant, vain and stupid” to think that he could remain in office, while simultaneously pointing out that “Arrogant, vain and stupid” is Audrey’s nickname.
The President tells Mark to get the Vice President up to speed on turning over the presidency, which upsets Mark because he’s clearly been sucking up to the wrong person for a long time now.
At the Hospital, Jack looks at Simone’s chopped off finger and is clearly impressed by the blood clotting capabilities of her body. Kate entries the room as Jack wakes Simone. He asks if, since she tried to warn her sister-in-law about the London bombing, it’d just be darn swell if she would help him find Margot.
Simone doesn’t like this at all. Seems her attachment to her finger, or lack thereof, hasn’t made any difference, and she says she won’t betray Margot. Jack presses on what’s left of her finger, and asks if that’s the little finger that went “weeeeee! All the way home”. Simone says that her mother would never hurt her, it was only a flesh wound, and passes out. Kate goes out in the hallway to barf. She appears to be more upset that Jack pressed on the finger, than all the terrorists they shot less than an hour ago.
Out in the hallway, Jack immediately recognizes that a guy in the hallway, who happens to be Karem, shouldn’t be there. Helen, who is talking to a police officer, tries to get Karem to stop right there. Karem shoots! It must have been a heck of a shot too, because the police officer that Helen was just talking to completely disappears! Karem fires a few more times and runs!
Jack and Kate give a short chase, catch up to Karem just as two officers fire on him twice, killing him. Jack’s sure he’s dead because instead of just two bullet wounds, there are three, two in the chest and one in the arm and a gun by his elbow. The gun by the elbow is clearly physically impossible, unless Karem was one of those elbow sharpshooters. Jack finds Karem’s phone, and Margot has posted on Karem’s Facebook page that he has a very short time to get out of the hospital.
Jack uses his Jack Voice to tell Helen to clear the hospital because it’s about to be blown up. Kate runs off to the bathroom. Or maybe to get Jasmine. Maybe both.
COMMERCIAL
5:40 pm – Chloe’s at a place where anyone in their right mind, knowing what was about to happen, would go: a pub.
Back at Margot’s House of No Betrayals Allowed, Ian loves the fact that he spent all the time he did on Air Flight Simulator, because it makes this drone thing a LOT easier to fly. Which is a good thing, seeing how touchy Margot is being today.
At the Hospital, Jack races through while on the phone with Chloe. He runs into Simone’s room and tells her that Margot is about to blow up the place. Simone swears her Mom would never, ever do such a thing. Jack says, “Fine, you believe that? Stay here.” He drops her right there and walks off. Simone says, “Wait… by ‘never do such a thing’, I meant ‘of course she would do such a thing'”. Jack grabs her and gets her moving again.
Kate races through the hospital and can’t find Jasmine where she left her. This surprises Kate, because, for some reason, she expected a little girl to hear sirens and people evacuating the hospital to be right where she was before. Because only a really stupid kid wouldn’t leave. Well, it turns out Jasmine is a really stupid kid, because she’s just about where Kate left her. Kate grabs Jasmine and leaves.
Back at Margot’s House of the Incredible Drone Flying Gizmo, Ian is really excited to try out some of the new features in the program he’s been playing.
The hospital continues to be evacuated, while Margot and Ian launch a missile which hits the hospital. It turns out that Ian is REALLY good at the simulator. So good, in fact, that he and Margot get an image of Simone, Jack and Kate getting into Jack’s car, even though the image is in reverse black and white. This can easily be explained away by the reverse black and white images of her children that Margot has hanging up in her house.
Anyway, Margot tells Ian to fire a missile. Good thing it was one of those discount missiles without a homing mechanism too, because Jack’s car is able to get out of the way of the missile just at the last second. The explosions pretty much convince Simone that her mom is a little bit ticked off. Well, that and the horrific devastation that the missile just caused to everyone at the hospital.
Jack’s not sure where the drone is, so he drives like a maniac, which is to say, like an American driver, through the streets of London. Ian fires, but misses. It’s not a completely loss though, because it takes out a blood pudding factory, which is really gross anyway. The whole building explodes.
Jack turns the corner, right into a traffic jam. He tries to back up, and when he can’t, he does what anyone else would do: He gets out of his car, belts someone in the face, and takes off in THEIR car. Kate brings Simone along. They jump into this new car, and get away. Ian misses his opportunity because he’s more interested in narrating what he’s doing, instead of just doing it and firing the missile.
Jack drives to a tunnel. He jumps out of the car and tells Kate they need to get another car, which happens to drive by just at that moment. Jack orders the guy driving out of his car, which he does. Then Jack goes to a homeless guy, takes the guy’s favorite brick, tells the guy not to move, and uses the brick to press the gas on the first car they were driving. The car speeds out of the tunnel, and Ian takes the shot. The missile hit the car and it explodes. So does the car. The homeless guy is a little ticked off that 1) Jack didn’t even tell him to duck, and 2) that was his favorite brick.
Ian is really happy that the car exploded, and asks Margot how many points that was worth, because the score wasn’t coming up on the screen. These drones have very good cameras, because Margot notices that the car was empty.
As they drive away, Kate mentions that Simone is in rough shape. It was probably the black eyes, the cuts on her cheek and missing finger that tipped her off.
COMMERCIAL
5:52pm – Jordan is still on his way to the house boat, which is named Sophie. The doors, are strangely locked, which throws Jordan off. Then he’s hit in the arm by a bullet, which really throws him off… the boat. The guy who shot Jordan looks for him but doesn’t see a body.
Meanwhile, Mark meets up with the Russian Deputy Minister. The Minister wants “The Criminal Jack Bauer”. Mark tries to explain that Jack can’t really be turned over at the moment, because he’s busy saving the day. And besides his name is currently “The Hero Jack Bauer”. The Minister knows the real truth about the extradition papers though, and tells Mark he’s pretty sure that Heller never signed any papers to turn over Jack. He’s also aware of Jack’s previous relationship with Mark’s wife, Audrey. Then Mark says something we ALL wish would have happened to this season of 24: “Leave my wife out of this”.
Mark explains that he just can’t run out and get Jack to turn himself over. The Russian basically repeats this, and just can’t believe it. Mark says that he’ll turn Jack over as soon as Jack saves the day.
The President watches the report of the hospital attack and calls Jack. He wants to see Jack at his office ASAP, even though Jack is out in the field trying everything he can to save the day. Jack tells Kate that they’re going to a place to try and save Simone long enough to get her to talk, and that he has to go to talk to the president. They might actually slow down the car for one or both of these events.
A minion brings the President a paper on Margot with her channel information. It’s in cartoons so he can understand it. The minion drops off The President’s “good jacket”
5:57 pm – Jordan crawls out of the river! It’s a yucky river too.
The President calls Margot, and they talk pleasantly to each other. He asks Margot if he can trust her! He’s clearly insane. Margot says he can trust her to end this. He says he’s already made his decision about turning himself over.
TIME’S UP!
NEXT TIME ON 24 – SIMONE ISN’T GOOD! GUNS ON DOCTORS! THE PRESIDENT WANTS TO GO WATCH TENNIS! MISSILES! SEE YOU NEXT TIME!