24: Legacy Ep. 9 ‘8:00 P.M. – 9:00 P.M.’ Review
Carter’s explosive hour in the basement.
Warning: There will be spoilers in this review.
All it takes is just a few minutes of “rest” for Eric Carter before he just springs back into action. After getting rescued by his brother, Isaac, still bleeding from his head, Eric is ready to help CTU look for their new bad guy, Naseri (Oded Fehr). Gotta keep the action going, ya know. Well, the action kept moving along, but at a seemingly slower pace this week. Normally, a cool down would be expected after an intense, action packed episode like last week’s hour 8. However, with this being a 12 episode season, things should not be slowing down in hour 9. There is no more time for lag.
By all accounts, Eric should be going home with his wife, and calling it a day. No one is twisting his arm to keep fighting. Yet, he’s still willing to hunt down terrorists and put his life on the line. Of course, we’d expect nothing less from our TV heroes, but for Carter, it’s coming off as an addiction. His heart is in the right place though. He is out to fight the good fight to keep the country safe. But you can’t help but think it’s personal for him at this point. After all, his fellow rangers are all dead. It was revealed through a letter Nicole found that Rebecca offered Eric a job as a full time agent. It seemed as if he’d been considering it without expressing it to Nicole. A quiet life is probably not suitable for Eric. Being a soldier is probably all he’s good at. It’s clearly bugging Nicole, and even Isaac is wondering why it has to be him to stop this treat.
The “greater good” subject was quickly talked about this week. It’s always a running subject with people like Eric and Rebecca. Things they have to sacrifice for the cause, or at least, work extra hard to maintain. In most cases, it’s relationships and personal attachments. That’s because their significant others can never understand the world their lovers live in, as Tony so bluntly put it. That’s why John is so shocked to see Rebecca running an off the books interrogation operation, and Nicole can’t understand why Eric has to chase after terrorists instead of going home to her. I’ve been saying the marriage between John and Rebecca may be ending because of Rebecca’s choices. It seems like they want to work it out, but now that John was taken by Naseri (who didn’t see that coming when he decided to go to CTU?), death might part the two. Let’s hope not. I’ll be surprised if they can get John back alive. In Nicole’s case, she seems like she’s on the verge of leaving Eric and going back to Isaac. Now that would be messed up. Especially since I like the two characters, but not together. As it is, they keep getting closer and closer to kissing. I honestly can’t feel too bad for Nicole crying over Eric’s efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. He might be absent from home a lot, but it’s for the right reasons. As for Isaac, it would be nice if he defended his brother a little more, but it seems like he’s too busy moving in on Nicole.
Marriage dilemma aside, Eric got caught up in a tense situation when he went to the home of a mistress who’s been dating the head of CTU’s security. That guy is being forced to allow access for Naseri to enter CTU because his girlfriend has a bomb strapped to her chest. This was a suspenseful enough set up, but it also feels like Eric could be doing something a little more bigger in scale this late in the season. On top of that, it didn’t need to consume Eric’s entire hour. I mean, I’m no expert on disarming bombs, but it seemed like it took a little too long to disarm Jennifer’s bomb. Eric handled the situation very well, but Jennifer’s final frantic reaction was stupid and almost got everyone killed.
It’s amazing how Henry thinks John still has a shot at the presidency. He says he covered his tracks, but these things always come out. He sounded like a truly crazy old man trying to convince his son that his campaign is safe. With John walking away after having enough of his father’s babbling, it seems like Henry’s story is just about over. His son has to drop out of the presidential run, which sucks for good ol’ Honest John. I honestly don’t think there’s anymore reason to feature Henry other than to be informed of his son’s abduction.
Rebecca’s interrogation of Jadalla didn’t seem to be all that difficult. He seemed more cooperative than most terrorists. This might be a sign that Jadalla is rather weak and not fully committed to the cause. In contrast, there’s Naseri who’s seem’s very committed, very calculated, and shows no restraint to taking American lives. Finding out that Naseri was Jadalla’s father’s lieutenant probably explains why Naeris went through the trouble of saving him. That, and to make sure he doesn’t tell CTU anything. I am left wondering who is really in charge of their operation, and if we’ll find out who any of the other sleeper cells are. There’s still a lot of questions unanswered this late in the game.
The attack on CTU was surprisingly small. In the 24 universe, CTU has been attacked more times than it makes sense, but this attack barely even happened inside the building. That may sound like a bad thing, but it felt refreshingly calculated and subtle in comparison to past CTU attacks. Naseri and his men picked up Jadalla and left, leaving a few dead bodies and a blown up parking lot. Their body count picked up after killing some police officers at a checkpoint. Once again, Naseri is committed. He has proven himself to be a very dangerous man.
This hour of 24 had a lot to live up to after such an awesome hour of entertainment last week. Sadly, it couldn’t fully counter last week’s events. It seemed like there was a lot of talking about last week’s events in some areas of this episode. Acknowledgement is fine, but I’m more interested in moving forward. There were some fast paced scenes spread throughout the hour (mostly in the final 10 minutes), but some scenes seemed to drag. The Nicole and Isaac thing is starting to fall back to a repetitive place. It’s great that John and Rebecca want to work things out, but now CTU must try to get John back alive before Naseri uses him as leverage over Rebecca or even the government. That would be twice something like that has happened this season. There were some really fine performances by Miranda Otto and Jimmy Smits that gave the weight of their situation is nice boost. In fact, acting was strong throughout the episode.
It was kind of strange how the final commercial break brought us back with only three minutes left. I’ve never seen the final moments of 24 play out with that small amount of time. In comparison to 24: Live Another Day, which was also a 12 episode event, episodes 9 through 12 were all very fast paced and began to unravel the events of the day. Legacy has three more episodes to pick up and keep the momentum, as well as give us some answers on what the endgame is. I’m really counting on this show to do that.
Oh, and once again… GIVE US MORE TONY!
