The Jack Attack: LAD “11 AM – 1 PM”

After four year, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) has finally resurfaced in London, trying to stop an attack on former Secretary of Defense, now President, James Heller (William Devane) that could launch World War III.

The London CIA station gets a tip that Jack is somewhere in the city and station chief, Steve Navarro (Benjamin Bratt), sends a team to try and apprehend him, as Jack is technically a wanted criminal and potential traitor.  Jack tries to elude the team but is eventually cornered and taken in custody.  It turns out that’s exactly what he wanted though, as he’s the one who sent out the tip on himself and was trying to get into the CIA’s Special Operations section to rescue Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub).  With some help from a Serbian ally, Jack stages a daring rescue and manages to get Chloe out, with only disgraced CIA field agent Kate Moore (Yvonne Strahovski) having an inclining about Jack’s plan.

It turns out that freeing Chloe was only part 1 of Jack’s plan with part 2 tracking Chloe to the base of her hacker group to find Derek Yates (Joseph Millson), the only name Jack could pull from the intelligence he gathered about the attempt on Heller.  The group’s leader, Adrian Cross (Michael Wincott), tells Jack that Yates left sometime ago, as he started betraying the ideals of the group and sold information to the highest bidder.  Cross gives Jack a possible location on Yates and Chloe, despite being used by Jack, agrees to give him comms backup.  Jack manages to infiltrate the project house that Yates is hiding in but Yates and his Russian girlfriend manage to escape.  Jack gets a thumb drive that contains information about a device Yates created to take over American drones but the data self destructs before Chloe can stop it.  Jack also takes a bullet from local drug kingpin, Basher, who survives Jack stabbing him in the neck and shoots at Jack while he’s stopped by the CIA team led by newly reinstated Kate.

Meanwhile, President Heller is in London to secure an agreement about a strategically important US base on British soil.  He’s brought his chief of staff, Mark Boudreau (Tate Donovan), who is also married to the recovered Audrey (Kim Raver) who was last seen in a catatonic state after being released from Chinese captivity.  Heller is apparently suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s and is forgetting tiny details about things.  Mark takes it upon himself to handle the Jack situation for the White House and is the one who initially orders Jack to be transferred to Special Operations.  The peace talks seem to be in jeopardy when an American drone pilot, Chris Tanner (recent Star Wars cast member John Boyega), seemingly launches an attack on a convoy, killing two American and two British soldiers but it was really Yates taking control of the drone as a test run for his buyer, Margo Al-Harazi (Michelle Fairley).  Unknown to Yates, Margo’s daughter, Simone,  is his girlfriend and, when he believes Margo betrayed him, Simone takes him out and recovers the device he was planning on selling.

• Bad Ass Bauer Moment of the Week: Jack manages to take down arrogant CIA agent Erik Ritter and his team with his hands handcuffed behind his back and puts Erik in a behind the back sleeper hold.
• When wired up to lie detection and vitals monitoring, the tech sounds both worried and impressed that Jack is “unnaturally stable”
• Stephen Fry is the British Prime Minister!
• “You may think you have me outnumbered but I assure you, you don’t”
• When she first appeared on screen, I seriously thought Yvonne Strahovski was Kate Warner, Jack’s love interest from Season 2
• Mark looks at Jack’s file that contains a list of all of his confirmed kills:

• The reason Jack resurfaced for this threat is because he feels he owes the Heller family, especially Audrey.