24 Blog 9.12: I Love You Goodbye/People Who Died

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Okay seriously, remind me to stop trying to anticipate the events of next week’s episode. I’m almost always wrong – they always play it more conservatively than I hope they will. I couldn’t help it, though: I was so excited about the idea of Audrey being a Doll that I let it cloud my judgment. Of course they’re not going to do that; the network has already played that card on another show. If they did it twice, they’d be a laughingstock. I see that now. Mistakes were made.

Either way, though, I knew that Audrey was going to die before the final clock ticked, and sure enough, she did, at the hands of the pesky, unaccounted-for second shooter. If memory serves, that is the first silent clock tick since Bill Buchanan. Even when the show went off the air in 2010, with Jack going off the grid and the show’s future uncertain, Jack’s exit didn’t merit a silent clock tick, something they wisely remedied here as he’s being transported by helicopter to some place where the inmates pray to a god that the Russians don’t believe in to be transferred to someplace less hellish. Like a Slovakian hostel.

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”Aw, darling, look at the poor Goth ragamuffin on the side of the road. We have simply got to help her find her lost Smiths records!”

I call shenanigans on the timing of the second shooter, though. The best time for him to reveal himself was when the first shooter is engaged by Kate’s team. If second shooter pops up then, they mow Audrey and Kate’s team down before any of them know what has happened. However, that makes for bad television, since that means that Jack loses both Audrey and Kate at the same time – as well as anyone alive to give Jack the bad news when it matters – and obviously we can’t have that. So the second shooter comes later, without explanation. It’s convenient plotting, but poor military strategy.

While we’re on the subject of convenient plotting, we should have known that Jack was not going to walk away from this season a free man. The Russians are nothing if not persistent, and even though Fatty McHandlebar bled out last week, the Ruskies got their man by abducting Chloe, Jack’s only friend on the planet, and getting him to agree to give himself up in order to spare her. They share a few words during the prisoner exchange, and Jack mentions that Chloe is his best friend. Even though she is being freed from a horrific future, I still expected Chloe to say, “I didn’t say I was your best friend; I said I was your only friend. There’s a difference.” Because really, how very Chloe of her to say those very words.

When the show actually ran for 24 episodes, this is the part where I would be pulling out what hair I have left, begging for them to stop teasing us and get to the good stuff. Instead, it’s over, woo hoo! Don’t get me wrong, I love blogging this show, but this 12-episode arc angle makes much more sense for all concerned, so let’s celebrate with two videos. The first applies to Audrey’s death; the show’s best moment came when Hercules was trying to get Jack to consider some other option besides sacrificing Audrey, and he resorts to, “But you love her,” to which Jack fires back, “SHUT UP!” And then we saw Jack lose his cool and quite literally go commando on the Chinese goons defending Cheng once he discovers that Audrey is dead. It was nice to see Jack react from a place other than cold, calm, emotionlessness. Thomas Dolby, take it away.

Our final song ends the season on a much more upbeat note, sort of. Thousands of fictional characters lost their lives on this show this season, and we only knew the names of a handful of them. Jim Carroll, on the other hand, made sure to name-check every single friend of his who died, and here’s the proof. Thanks for reading, everyone. See you next year in the gulag.

  

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