24 season 8 episode 8 review

UK readers please note: this is the episode that doesn’t screen until late February on Sky1.

Day 8: 11:00pm-12:00am

After last week’s rather slow and plodding episode, Jack’s capture was a hopeful sign that the series was about to pick up a little, and fortunately, this was a correct assumption, mostly. The hour this week began with Jack arriving at the Russian hideout, and we soon got to see the next torture scene of the series as his captors, who don’t believe his cover story, electrocute him.

We’re all too familiar with Jack’s ability to turn a rotten situation into gold, though, and from the very off it was clear that Jack’s interrogator was dead meat. He may as well have been wearing a red shirt. And so, as suspected, but no less enjoyable, Jack managed to escape by, in a show of nimbleness, forcing his foe to electrocute himself and then breaking his way trough the metal pipe he’s attached to, before finally breaking his interrogator’s neck, all while still reeling from a stab wound (freshly poked and prodded at after his ordeal) and electrocution. Surely, Jack’s gotta have an adrenaline gland the size of a bowling ball, as he just shakes off all of this and is up and away to fight the bad guys sooner than you can say “Dammit!”

There were then shades of Die Hard, and Jack goes all John McClane, taking on the rest of Bazhaev’s henchmen barefoot. Sadly, there was no white vest in sight, though. Ah, well.

It’s not long before Jack finds a phone, calls in CTU and then single-handedly kills off the entire Russian group, save Bazhaev, who seemed to be equipped with the most ineffective shotgun ever, as he only managed to shoot a few wine glasses, barely scratching the flimsy wooden tables Jack was hiding under.

Nitpicking aside, though, the whole sequence was pretty good, and much more like the 24 we all want to see, and it’s about time Jack got some time to exercise his trigger finger.

The end of the episode then focused on Josef, Bazhaev’s son. After Jack makes a rather quick and easy deal to get Bazhaev immunity by calling the President (I wonder if she’s one of his friends and family numbers?), CTU goes to intercept the nuclear rods, only to find them gone. Josef has them, and has set out to deal with Farhad Hassan, who made a reappearance on camera this week.

While Jack was busy in the Russian hideout, the rest of the episode didn’t really do all that much, to be honest. The main thrust of the meanwhiles lay with Dana’s side story. In a hugely predictable turn, it turns out that Kevin and his buddy aren’t going to stick to their deal with Dana, and want to carry on pulling jobs with her insider info, although Kevin is now clearly not the man in charge, as his partner takes control of the situation. Well, at least they decided to lay low after killing a police officer. Strip clubs are certainly the choice hiding spot for killers on the run.

This turn of events lead us to a typically EastEnders-a-like conversation between Dana and Cole Ortiz. Dana is about to tell Cole everything when, all of a sudden they’re interrupted, and Dana backs off, claiming her matter wasn’t all that important anyway. Meh. It would have been better to speed this up and get on with it rather than dally any longer. Still, Dana’s now clearly out to kill her former boyfriend, so maybe her story will pick up a little steam soon.

The only other major plot points addressed were with President Hassan and his daughter. Still sealed in his office, and growing ever more paranoid, Hassan finds out about his daughter and Tarin’s relationship. This serves only to further enrage him, leaving Kayla to try to find other ways to see Tarin. All in all, not a story that’s all that interesting at the moment.

Indeed, aside from Jack’s situation, which was, thankfully, the focus of the hour, the other story threads were a little bland this week, and I’m certain critics of Dana’s character will still be unimpressed.

Not a bad episode though, with some decent Jack-centric action, but not a great episode either.

Read our review of episode 7 here.