Spoiler alert: this blog is published after the first UK broadcast of 24: Live Another Day. Do not read on unless you have watched episode five.
Read Stuart's episode four recap here
Previously on 24
Catelyn Stark's dual plots – to murder the American president with hijacked drones and to be as irresponsible with chisels as possible – both take giant leaps forward. Jack Bauer has evidence that can stop the attack, but it's contained on what may as well be an old Commodore 64 cassette. The president's son-in-law also wants Jack dead, but only because he's a two-dimensional villain and he needs something to do between waxing his moustache and cackling maniacally. Onward!
Jack
Jack Bauer is usually the engine of 24 – an unstoppable superhero who constantly breaks orders and flings himself in harm's way to drive the story forward. Not this week, though. The CIA takes him into custody, and he's held without struggle. He's taken to see the president, and sits there meekly. He speaks only when spoken to. He's little more than a passive bystander.
This leaves LadyBauer to handle the gruntwork. Fortunately, she knows she can contact Chloe O'Brian whenever she likes by magically tapping her ear, and together they achieve more in four minutes than Jack did in a full hour, by assembling all the evidence needed to prove that the attack on the president is real. Take that, patriarchy! And how is LadyBauer rewarded for her efforts? She's fired by her boss, even though he only unfired her about an hour and a half ago. Stupid patriarchy.
Meanwhile, Jack doesn't even speak for the first half of the episode. When he does eventually talk, it's to tell the president that he'll either solve this whole thing all by himself – because this is Jack Bauer, and that's just how he rolls – or do nothing at all. The president might die because of his inaction. London might be destroyed. But Jack doesn't budge. It's a nifty piece of bargaining. He's lost everything, over and over again, and both he and the president know the prospect of death is no longer a deterrent to him.
That's all Jack does, save for a brief encounter with Audrey where she's – it's hard to say – scared? Aroused? I couldn't really get a handle on Kim Raver's delivery here. Let's assume she was both scared and aroused. She's talking to Jack Bauer, after all. She's only human.
Catelyn Stark
Meanwhile – in a break from her usual gibbering insanity – Catelyn Stark hijacks six armed drones and sends them hurtling towards London. That goal achieved, she unveils stage two of her plan: releasing an online video that's part Brody-style justification and part Numa Numa Guy. In it, she reveals that the president will be blown up in three hours. At rush hour. Good luck getting home from work tonight, Londoners.
However, perhaps because he knows what a pain in the arse commuting is at the best of times, her son-in-law deliberately ensures that the CIA can trace the video's location. But Catelyn, always one step ahead, redirects its IP to a different house – a stately home set within woodlands 10 minutes from east London (possibly the glorious forest of Haggerston) – which she promptly blows up with a drone as soon as the CIA set foot inside it. Then, realising that the hour still isn't quite up, Catelyn pays a Hodor lookalike to attack her son-in-law so that it's easier for her to shoot him in the face. Before he dies, the son-in-law pleads with his wife for help. But she just stares at him. As we all know, a woman's empathy gland is to be found in whichever finger she most recently had chiselled off.
President Heller
Finally convinced that he's going to be exploded by a drone, Heller stamps his foot and huffs "Ground the drones" at his military commander, like a four-year-old being told to put away his toys. Then, when he realises that Stark has control of six of them, he throws another tantrum – this time because they're too good at killing people. Silently, he makes a plan: from now on, all new drones will be bright yellow and really identifiable on radar, and will drop jellybeans instead of bombs and play circus music so loudly that everyone hears them coming from 25 miles away.
This isn't enough to convince Prime Minister Fry that drones are a good idea, though. As he watches the mansion blow up, he collapses his jowls in a most disapproving way at Heller. So much for the special relationship.
Wikileaks
Meanwhile, Julian Assange is now so besotted with Chloe that he's actively helping the investigation. He's gone from horny baddie to lovelorn hero in just a couple of hours, which is quite the transformation. Lucky Chloe – after all, doesn't every girl want to find love with a mottle-faced megalomaniac who's got a voice like a snooker commentator?
Notes
• This is an episode set in London between 3pm and 4pm. The fact that nobody had to battle through a horde of schoolgirls Snapchatting each other outside a branch of Chicken Cottage might be the show's least realistic moment so far.
• Remember that LadyBauer's husband committed some sort of horrible crime against America? What was that crime? If you manage to find a single person who even slightly cares, I'll give you a shiny tuppence.
• Google Maps strikes again! Apparently Catelyn Stark's decoy house is on a road called Neilson Way. There's no road by that name in the UK, but it is the name of the road that runs parallel to the beach in Santa Monica. Where was Jack Bauer born? That's right – Santa Monica. It's all connected, people.
• On the plus side, at least President Heller's dementia has completely disappeared without a trace.
