Ricky Church reviews the ninth episode of 24: Legacy…
Seriously, CTU has the worst security ever. Not even in 24: Legacy have they stepped their security and background checks up one bit.
‘8:00 PM – 9:00 PM’ was still an enjoyable episode, but my oft complaint that the rebooted series leans too heavily on the tropes of the original came rearing back in a two for one deal. Not only did we get a brief assault on CTU, but we got the mole within as well. That’s actually twice now this season we’ve gotten the mole if you include John’s father selling Carter out.
With these tropes come some fairly big gaps in the character’s logic, gaps that don’t make too much sense given the events of the latest episodes. For instance, Carter was very quick to stop pressing the hostage victim about who Neseri was leveraging, or how the guard chose not to tell any of his superiors what has going on with his mistress, or how Carter didn’t speak to Nicole to 1) let her know he was alright and 2) tell her himself it wasn’t over yet, leaving Isaac to do it instead.
These logic gaps simply happened to move the story from point A to B in a need to create suspense. Sometimes the suspense was there, but for the most part it felt unnatural and forced. Carter’s attempts to defuse the hostage’s explosive vest lost tension due to the logic gap, but gained the tension back as she reset the explosive in her struggle to get free. It also got tense towards the end as Neseri launched his assault on CTU to rescue Jadalla bin-Khalid, who surprisingly survived last’s weeks climax.
Speaking of Neseri, we quickly learnt why Carter was so shocked and afraid of Neseri’s presence, but I still think it would have been better had Oded Fehr been introduced earlier to give his appearance more of an impact. It’s at least intriguing though that there seems to be more to his appearance and dual identity than at first glance. Though Raphael Alcoque’s Jadalla didn’t really have much to say or do despite his prominent loss last week. Now that he’s rescued, maybe he’ll get to do more again and also reveal why exactly he turned away from his studies and suddenly embraced his father’s ideology.
One of the main positives, though, was the acting by the cast. Hawkins’ again gave a standout performance throughout the episode, especially towards the end as he dealt with bin Khalid’s escape. Miranda Otto’s body language was also good, showing how much emotion Rebecca was trying to bury in the midst of everything going on.
The latest episode dipped a bit due to the narrative inconsistencies, but it still wasn’t wholly bad thanks to a lot of the acting and the tension it gained back towards the end.
Rating: 6/10
Ricky Church
Originally published March 29, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
