Day 9: 10:00PM-11:00PM As soon as I saw in the credits that
Jon Cassar was directing the episode, I knew I was about to be put through the ringer. Jon has been, by far, the absolute best director
24 has ever had for the entire series run. He gets it. He knows the show backward and forward and more importantly, he knows Bauer and what people want out of the character. Last week I said that the show was going to have to kill off either
Audrey or
Chloe. It's the nature of the show and since no one of notable stature had died during the season, it was going to come down to those two. Once they saved Audrey from the sniper, I immediately had it all on
Chloe. She's the one that's going to bite it! Right when I'm zeroing in on her and the potential victim, that's when they hit
Audrey with a second sniper. That's why
Jon is a great director. That's what he does to great effect.
Now it was just a matter of waiting for the show to drop when
Bauer and
President Heller find out the bad news. When
Bauer gets the call, I was literally on pins and needles. I was waiting for his 'Aaarrrrrrrrgggghhh!' moment where all that anger finally explodes in rage. Give the man a machine gun and watch him unload on all the bad guys. It was awesome! Once he finally caught
Zhi, I knew he was going to do some BIG to avenge
Audrey. But even I didn't foresee
Bauer literally chopping off
Zhi's head. It was awesome! The f*cker had it coming.
So with all this sh*t going down,
Chloe is missing. When Bauer gets a cryptic phone call, we are left with "WHO IS
BAUER TALKING TO?" Cuts to commercial. It comes back from commercial with a title card that reads '12 Hours Later', which is a first for the series. Wasn't sure how they were going to wrap it up. Turns out the Russians had kidnapped
Chloe and had brokered a deal with
Bauer, that he would turn himself over to them in exchange for
Chloe's freedom.
Bauer boards the Helicopter with the Russians, and he seemed content. The end is obviously open-ended.
I really hope
24 comes back. I missed the show being around the last 4 years. But having gotten to ride with
Bauer again this year has been great and now I need to have a yearly fix. I still prefer to get the full
24 episodes per season, but that's not likely to ever happen again. So, I will gladly settle for a "measly" 12 episodes. Overall, I thought the season was solid. I think the last half of the season was way better than the first half, which was still great in itself. It's better to end strong which they absolutely did. Very sad and touch moment with President Heller walking alongside
Audrey's casket. His monologue at the end was incredibly sad, alluding to his Alzheimer's would wipe away this tragic end to
Audrey and eventually would wipe her existence away as well.
Season 9As I said earlier, overall, a very solid season and give
Season 9...
Day 9....
Live Another Day, or whatever you want to call it....
4 1/2 Stars.