Review Roundup: 24 Live Another Day Episode 4

24LAD Episode 4 Review Roundup — What did critics think of 24: Live Another Day episode 4? Continue reading to find out!

Here’s a comprehensive collection of reviews and recaps for 24: Live Another Day Episode 4.

The A.V. Club (A-): “A good episode of 24 is one that moves the plot forward just enough to make us feel like we’re getting somewhere; it also keeps the iffy personal drama to a minimum. (Good personal drama can stay as long as it wants.) This hour managed both tasks fairly well.”

IGN TV (8.8/10): “This was an hour that featured more smarts than action to achieve its suspense, and came to a close with a slam-bang ending with Kate and Jack barely able to avoid a body count. It was a small-scale episode, but it kept up 24’s trademark intensity… and we found out that Margot’s not Mother of the Year.”

TV.com: “Well, how about that? Last week’s episode of 24: Live Another Day featured quite a bit of movement, particularly of the chasing variety, and yet it still was a bit boring. This week, Jack spent more than 30 minutes sitting at a computer terminal near a landline phone, and it was the most thrilling hour we’ve seen since Live Another Day debuted.”

ScreenRant: “But in addition to delivering a entertaining and compact episode, ’2:00pm-3:00pm’ is the first episode to demonstrate how the switch to a shortened 12-episode season seems to have the show utilizing its time in such a way the pacing feels frenetic but more streamlined than ever before.”

NY Daily News: “Kate’s the best sidekick Jack has had in a while. The show has some issues, but its strong female characters are not among them.”

Screencrush: “After three hours of non-stop action, ’24: Live Another Day’ was due for a slower hour. But thats not necessarily a bad thing. After a couple episodes of non-stop action, a tense, more slowly paced episode set almost entirely in one location is a nice breather. It lacks the “Holy Crap!” factor of Jack opening fire on a crowd of protestors, but it’s a reminder that ’24′ has always been just as good at claustrophobic drama as it is at bombast.”

Vulture: “Finally, last night 24 resembled the show of our memories. It seemed like every segment of the episode had a ticking-clock deadline. It’s now pretty obvious that it was impossible for this shortened season to replicate either the element of surprise of season one or the emotional sucker-punch of season five. Instead, this season has been both fast-paced and grindingly plodding. But this latest hour saw the show in near-top form.”

SheKnows: “This was the most intense episode of 24: Live Another Day so far, which tells me that we’re in for a lot more anxious moments to come before this series is through. This is only the third episode and already I felt like I could barely breathe through most of it.”

TV Equals: “However, once the show puts him into the room with the hostages, it becomes Problematic 24. While Kiefer Sutherland can make a dental cleaning seem intense, Jack Bauer staring at a computer screen waiting for a file to download is not a great use of Jack Bauer’s considerable talents.”

Starpulse (Brittany Frederick): “Now that we’ve dispensed with the backstory and seem to be pulling threads together and giving the other characters more to handle than just milling around Jack, the series is on course to regain some of its old form. Let’s hope that it just keeps getting better next week.”

Starpulse (Paul Levinson): “The 9th Season of 24 really got down to brass tonight, in its 4th episode, as all kinds of relationships coalesce and hit the fan. And significantly, the three most major players other than Jack are women, and that does not include Chloe.”

Den of Geek: “Jack entering a United States Embassy should be like William Shatner entering a Star Trek convention or Robert Plant showing his face anywhere in the beautiful city of London. He has to be immediately recognized. Instead, known “terrorist” Jack Bauer is able to waltz into what is essentially the US government’s London hub and cause havoc.”

Buddy TV: “Yes, at the end of the episode, Naveed says he’s back on the team and will pilot the drone they plan to hijack and use to attack London. That was honestly a subplot we didn’t need in an otherwise tense, exciting and fun episode.”

Pop-Break: “As an episode, this chapter was paced at a tighter and crisper speed. This was aided greatly by the portrayal of President Heller as the Alzheimer’s storyline was put aside for this week and Heller was portrayed as savvy, no-nonsense POTUS. This is exactly what the series needed to keep the intensity up, because this arc really took the episode to a screeching halt last week.”

Polar Bears Watch TV (B+): “This is probably the best episode of the season thus far. The show’s at its best when it has a fairly self-contained locale and storyline that serves as a foundation for the episode’s action and character beats; it’s exciting in its simplicity, what with the whole embassy hostage situation.”

Bitch Stole My Remote: “I figured that ’2:00pm-3:00pm’ would return to Heller after the speech had concluded to reveal that he had somehow, miraculously, swayed the British Parliament. It was pointed out in the comments that, perhaps, we would pick up Heller’s speech right at the start of the episode. Instead, we got neither. We return to Heller well into the episode, and the only snippets of his speech that we see are fairly tame and uninspiring. And yet, after nearly thirty minutes of real time weak speechifying has passed, the British Parliament applauds Heller as he concludes. That’s some really weak writing.”

Boston.com: “There are a lot of great action scenes set in embassies—the first “Bourne Identity” comes to mind right away—and the fourth episode of “24: Live Another Day” carries on that fine bullet-slinging tradition. It’s a rousing hour, easily the best of the season so far, with the same sort of absurd turns and “Holy #*%&” action sequences that marked the better seasons.”

Gotta Watch It: “I had my doubts going into this mini-series. I was mistaken. In its 9th season, 24 still surprises me.”

Geeks Unleashed (6.5/10): “The episode also does a great job bringing Jack Bauer back to earth a bit (well, as close to our galaxy as the show will ever let him be), highlighting his feelings of betrayal over the phone with President Heller while negotiating through his manufactured hostage negotiation.”

We Got This Covered: “While Jack has eased up with the intensity, the fourth episode of 24: Live Another Day is breathless entertainment that breaks ground in all of the subplots without steering too much away from the action inside the Embassy. For a series only giving audiences half of the usual allotted time, things are clicking in place at a terrific pace.”

Kotaku: “Kate Morgan’s sheer badassness (and Yvonne Strahovski’s excellent performance) is a striking contrast to Renee Walker, who just kinda sucked in general. Remember when she stabbed Jack?”

Big Shiny Robot: “Parliament’s being so easily placated bothered me, but in order for Heller to be interesting in this episode, it was needed.”

The Jack Sack: “Finally, a classic episode of 24. This hour had everything- an impossible situation, great character moments, dismemberment, and mother-daughter tea kettle chit-chat. It’s like Quentin Tarantino’s “Gilmore Girls.” That’s how I like my television done, and I’m very much back into this story.”

Grantland: “One thing I failed to mention: Jack beat up a guy guarding Tanner’s room. But that has to be assumed at this point. Just tell yourself that if Bauer enters a room, someone had to get a beat-down in order for that to happen.”

The Guardian: “Still, on the plus side, Jack has now officially teamed up with the agent henceforth known as LadyBauer, which is promising. Eventually she’ll have a breakdown after watching him torture someone, because that’s what happens to approximately 100% of Jack’s would-be girlfriends, but we might get an episode or two of fun before then.”

Paste Magazine: “Belcheck, Jack’s pal, asks why Chloe is going so far in helping out their mutual friend. She replies that she wouldn’t be alive without him. Belcheck responds, “We have that in common.” Jack Bauer has a lot of personality flaws, recklessness and a complete disregard for authority and protocol amongst them, but he does look out for his friends.”