David Farnor | On 05, Apr 2017

Warning: This contains spoilers for Episode 3. Catch up with our spoiler-free review of Episode 1 here.

If you had “hostage scenario” or “star cameo” on your 24 Bingo Card, then good news – you can cross both of them off.

The first will come as no surprise, after last episode’s cliffhanger, which saw Jadalla do the inevitable and render Nicole as little more than a token damsel in distress in the wider narrative – and, to add insult to injury, that wider narrative primarily involves asking for help with that flash drive. Because do you know how hard it is to get decent tech support these days?

And so Carter convinces Andy to go with him to meet Jadalla – but instead of helping to fix the drive, their plan is to put a virus on it. Because those are the only two options you have with computers in TV Land. “I don’t think we’re going to make it out,” admits Carter, but Andy, bless him, is in such a funk that he’s willing to take the risk to make a difference – because all he wants, the poor guy, is to feel valued.

Central to that funk, of course, is Locke, and so Andy goes back into CTU to bid farewell to his former boyfriend, while also picking up his development kit. But Locke notices – and knows Andy well enough to know that when he’s got his dev kit with him, he means business – so he heads them off in the car park, begging Andy to think of another way to resolve the crisis. Maybe he does care after all!

The resulting confrontation is a quietly emotional one, thanks to an intense performance Dan Bucatinsky, even if he doesn’t always have the most convincing chemistry with Bailey Chase’s Locke. Better yet is a brief punch-up between Corey Hawkins and Chase, which leaves Carter, inevitably, on top and Locke tied up and left behind.

Our second car park showdown is decidedly less dramatic, as Eric pretends to threaten to shoot Andy, if Jadalla doesn’t let Nicole and Isaac go. The show tries to give us some emotional stakes in the whole face-off, though, giving Isaac a chance to confess his undying love for Nicole – “For a long time, I blamed him,” he says of his brother, “but you’re not a thing that can be stolen, you’re a woman who made a choice.” – before hvaing a short fight with Jadalla’s men. More successful is Nicole agreeing to give Jadalla some medical attention after their dust-up, while making sure she gives him some sass in the process. (A shame, though, that her sass mostly involves threatening him with Eric, rather than standing up for herself on her own terms.)

Jadalla lets them go, but Eric orders them to drive off, so that he can “finish this”. How many times has he promised to “finish this” now? He was doing that as early as Episode 2 – if he continues to do it for the remaining half of this season, this really will be the longest day of our selves. Isaac, meanwhile, is asked to “take care of her” by Eric – without realising that he’s basically just opened up the love triangle even wider. And so Andy and Carter are whisked away by Jadalla, who also secretly tells his men to kill Isaac and Nicole anyway. That final twist feels like a bit of a cheat, after the show has spent so much time building up suspense around this situation – but if it’s classic 24 tactics you’re after, any weakness in this half of the plot is more than made up for by another classic 24 surprise: the return of Tony Almeida.

Yes, CTU’s answer to Ben Affleck is back – and now, he’s got the facial hair and the greying authority to make him even cooler. What does Almeida have to do with anything? That’s the masterstroke of the 24: Legacy’s guest cameo: after failing to get any answers out of Henry Donovan, Rebecca gets desperate enough to bring in Tony for some extraordinary rendition-style quizzing. Enhanced interrogation for the politically-connected father of a senator? Mullins, surprisingly, is quick to authorise it – with Rebecca asking that she be the one to break the news to husband John.

Tony’s a great pick for the job, not just because he brings with him the whiff of a former relationship with Rebecca, but also because his past (traitor turned hero turned widower turned bad guy turned good guy turned bad guy turned ex-con) means that we know he can really go into dodgy territory to source the answers he needs. Credit where credit’s due, he’s not even a cliffhanger surprise, but appears in the episode almost immediately. Classic 24, yes, but better than the other classic 24 on display in the finale. The episode closes with John heading to the warehouse with Henry is being held, and Jadalla ordering Isaac and Nicole’s extermination. Halfway through the season, it’s par for the course for 24 to have half of its cylinders firing and the other half spluttering. And half of those involving Tony Almeida means that 24: Legacy is performing just above par. Does it make sense that he’s still in touch with CTU as an unofficial torturer? No. Is it good to see him back on our screens? Yes. We’d rather focus on the latter.

 

24: Legacy is available to buy and download as a box set on pay-per-view VOD.

 

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