Review Roundup: 24 Live Another Day Episode 9

24LAD Episode 9 Reviews — What did critics think of 24: Live Another Day Episode 9? Find out below.

Here’s a comprehensive collection of reviews and recaps for 24: Live Another Day Episode 9. We strive to collect as many reviews as possible here – both positive and negative opinions from a wide range of sources. This post will continue to be updated throughout the week as more reviews come in.

The A.V. Club (A): “A lot goes down from “7:00 PM—8:00 PM,” and it’s a mark of how well this season has been plotted that most all of it works. The fake-out with Heller was initially a letdown; I’m always disappointed when a show steps away from strong choices, and something about Heller sacrificing himself was so brutal and sincere that it seemed a shame to walk it back. (I’ll also cop to feeling slightly embarrassed that nearly all of my review last week has been rendered moot. You win this round, 24 writers!) But as the hour unfolded, his survival gradually made more and more sense.”

IGN: (8.0/10) “One last thing about the Heller cheat—on the more positive side—is that it gave us not one, but two terrific moments: first Belcheck’s great “I’m not an American and we’re not in America” shutdown and Stephen Fry’s priceless deadpan reaction to Heller saying he’s sure he’d have done the same in his shoes. So whatever complaints I’ve got about this lame trickery, I’m always happy with wonderful moments of humor like this.”

BloombergView: “Let me admit that, like Margot, I was snookered. I believed, or at least hoped, that the show’s writers had actually let President James Heller die.”

Paste Magazine: “It was a disappointing revelation. 24 hasn’t shied away from big, moving deaths in past seasons. In fact, you could argue that the murder of Teri Bauer at the end of the first season was so shocking that it helped keep invested in the show. Now, in the age of Game of Thrones, the idea that any character can die hooks the audience into the series. 24 did something unexpected last week. This week, they reverted to a TV cliché. All our mourning was for nothing.”

TV.com: “And best of all, the news that Heller is actually still walking around was part of a hell of a first 25-30 minutes. Last week’s episode ended with the destruction of a major international landmark and somehow, this one was substantially crazier and more entertaining.”

Yahoo TV: “And, in what is going to make for the best TV GIF of the week, he pushed her over to the window and threw her out of it. Threw. Her. Out. Of. It. With a smirk on his face. Jack Bauer, a different kind of cat these days. Mama Stark, a loser in the Game of Thrones and the game of drones.”

Den of Geek: “I can’t be critical of a show that is brave enough to throw all conceivable logic out the window. I can only give you my commentary, my questions and thought process behind absorbing 60 more minutes of Jack Bauer.”

Screen Crush: “Violent. Silly. Socially irresponsible. Gripping. This episode represents ’24′ firing on all cylinders, doing everything that it does well and making it look easy. After an action-heavy first half (featuring a Jack Bauer at his most hilariously ruthless), the episode did the impossible and managed to tie the seemingly tired mole storyline into the main plot in a way that’s actually satisfying. It’s convenient writing and ’24′ fans probably saw it coming a mile away, but it’s the exact kind of late-in-the-game crazy left turn that every season needs if it’s going to stay interesting.”

FOX News: “This move initially felt like a letdown, like the showrunners had gotten cold feet and decided to keep one of their few ties to the original series alive a bit longer. Not to mention the fact that the closing minutes to last week’s 200th episode now pack a whole lot less punch.”

Vulture: “I wasn’t entirely sure how exactly Chloe did what she did, but it didn’t matter. This hour of 24 was so brazenly confident in its storytelling that you just had to strap in and enjoy the ride. Even Heller was a little confused at what was going on. When he tried to take charge again, Jack wasn’t having it. Jack said, “Let me do what I know how to do.” And with that, we were off.”

Boston.com: “Then … then … comes the greatest thing ever. Jack’s learned his lesson from Nina Meyers. He’s not keeping the bad girls around. Like mother, like son—Margot goes out the window, landing almost hysterically parallel to the other cement-poisoned member of the Al-Harazi family. That’s right. I saw Jack Bauer chuck Catelyn Stark out a window. My apartment could get set on fire, my fish could die, I could get a tapeworm and my car’s engine could fall out tomorrow morning, and my year would still be well in the black just because I got to see that. Bless your heart, “24.” I might need to replay that scene if we lose to Germany on Thursday.”

Starpulse: “But what does that say about this season? President Heller’s most interesting moments came when he actually was man enough to sacrifice himself, and now this episode wipes all that credibility out. Is he going to go back to being basically a talking head now? Or will the show find something else worthwhile for William Devane to do? Hopefully it will, otherwise we hate to say it, but the character would’ve had more impact dead.”

TV Equals: “Of course, Jack’s biggest magic trick came in the form of rescuing President Heller from a missile to the face. While I’m thrilled to get more of William Devane in this series, it really makes the big moment at the end of last week’s episode seem cheap. We built an entire episode around President Heller confronting his own mortality and making the heroic decision to trade his life for lots of Londoners. It was really moving stuff, and Devane was outstanding throughout the episode. To have them pull the move from Speed as a work around takes a lot of the power from those scenes last week. More Devane is great, but President Heller’s death really meant something. Now, it feels like that hour was a waste.”

Spoiler TV: “I said in my review last week that I love when 24 does emotional send-offs. It’s one of the greatest aspects of the show. What I loathe is the fact that almost the entirety of last week’s episode has just been rendered null and void. What this fake-out shows me is that the writers lack balls. They lack the balls to actually go through with killing a major character. On a show that is memorable for killing off major characters on a regular basis, this is a terrible misstep in the show’s progression.”

TV Fanatic: “As some fans speculated, Chloe managed to hack into the video feed to convince Margot that she’d gotten her man. Is it bad to say that I was a little disappointed. As much as I love the character, having Heller sacrifice himself like that for the greater good would have been an epic send off. But this twist still managed to illicit some entertaining shock waves that are sure to be felt for the rest of the season. For one, Audrey sees Jack as the hero for saving her father and regards her husband as the man who would have sacrificed him and kept it from her.”

CNS News: “Earlier in the season, Jack made a comment to Kate that he “hates these people,” referring to terrorists like Margot. His harsh words were met with action after the threat had been neutralized. Margot tells him that the people she’s killed means Jack and Heller have lost. Jack gazes into her eyes and mutters, “The only one who’s dead is you,” and tosses her out the window as well. Jack Bauer’s form of justice doesn’t include a courtroom.”

Grantland: ““Something’s not right,” the terror boy says. Margot freaks out and wants to know what’s wrong. Which she has a right to know, because something is very wrong. THEY LOOPED THE TAPE. THEY WENT SPEED ON MARGOT. MARGOT AND SON GOT DENNIS HOPPERED. My thing is, if you’re going to be a terrorist, how do you not watch Speed? It’s almost like you want to fail. And fail they did, because Heller’s definitely still alive and Margot is close to losing the last drone.”

NY Daily News: “Defeated, Margot blames Jack for the carnage she herself wrought: “Hundreds of people died today because of you,” she screams. That leads to the best retort in “24” history. “The only death on my conscience tonight is yours,” he says as he tosses her out of the window to a bloody death five stories below. Screw due process, this is “24!” But fans of the show know it’s premature to celebrate. It’s only after the obvious threat has been defeated that the puppet master behind the scenes will be further revealed and the over-the-top plotting will truly kick into high gear.”

TVLine: “That set up a ridiculously thrilling, edge-of-your-seat sequence of about 10 minutes, as Chloe (with an assist from Adrian) pinpointed Margot’s hideout, paving the way for Jack, Kate et al to storm the place, where they were met with heavy fire.”

Buddy TV: “Turns out Chloe looped some video footage of him so that Margot and Ian thought he was still standing there. Surprisingly, Jack never even let Heller in on the plan! This is a big twist, and even with the speculation, I wasn’t sure until I watched it on screen that Heller was indeed still alive. That doesn’t, however, mean it’s a “good” twist.”

She Knows: “I was flabbergasted when Jack found Margot and Ian just halfway through the episode and very nearly fell off my couch when he killed not just one of them, but both of them — and by throwing them out a window, no less. Jack doesn’t mess around, does he?”

CarterMatt: “The one thing that is crazier? Seeing Jack literally throw someone out of a window to their death. This had to be one of the craziest and most awesome moments on the entire show, as Margot Al-Harazi is now dead! Who thought that she would be going away before the season even ended?”

New York Observer: “Exactly how much respect does “24″ have for us, its loyal and devoted audience? Very, very little.”

Uproxx: “24: Live Another Day might honestly be the funniest show on television right now. I mean, I didn’t even get to the part where the president was alive the whole time because Chloe had secretly looped the feed of him standing in the center of the soccer stadium, thus allowing him to sneak away just before impact, even though the terrorists watched their missile hit him, which would only make sense if Chloe had created a perfect CGI facsimile of the president and plopped him into the terrorists’ live feed in the five stress-filled minutes she had before it happened, which is just terrific, especially when you remember she was doing all this from inside a London pub that had free WiFi. Like I said, hilarious.”

Schmoes Know: “Turns out that Heller was never killed in the explosion and instead, Jack managed to send a looping signal of Heller to trick them into thinking they killed him. Granted, it tricked me as well but I didn’t like the decision they made to do that. Honestly, it was such an emotional ending for me, Jack and all the other characters but now all of that is gone. I will say the way they pulled off this trick was effective to what happens later in this episode but I still think they should have killed him. The guys been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s so why make him suffer any longer???”

TVRuckus: “Jack and Kate are two peas in a pod, both no longer officially associated with U.S. intelligence, but there to make things right. Unlike many of Jack’s cohorts, male or female, Kate is ready to follow the leader in bad ass fashion.”

Pop-Break: “This week’s installment, ’7pm-8pm’ was all killer and no filler. It was non-stop action, doing what “it does best” — filling 60 minutes with run-and-gun action, scene chewing theatrics and leaving a whole trail of bodies in its wake.”

Nerdcore Movement: “The ruse Jack concocted was meant to convince Margot that the President was dead so she would follow through on her word and ditch all of the drones into the ocean. Sure enough after looking at the smoldering crater in the middle of Wembley field, she ordered Ian to crash all of the drones. With five of them already sunk, Ian notices a tick in the video when Heller is turning his head just like that idiotic woman on the bus who just had to put her purse in her lap (clearly, I’ve seen Speed too many times).”

HitFix: “On the minus side, to a degree, is the fact that the season climaxed in episode 9, and now we have to do this other story involving Navarro, Adrian Cross and the override device. Now, most of this material was embedded in the season from episode 1, with the introduction of Cross and all the talk about Kate’s husband being a traitor, so it’s not like the show is just pulling something out of thin air to fill time because the main plot ended sooner than expected. Still, I would have liked to see the show make it through this season with just the single A-story, which was part of the point of doing 12 episodes instead of 24. This will give Chloe more to do — especially since we now have a better sense of her relationship with Cross — but at the moment it feels like filler.”

Geeks Unleashed: “Initially, it feels like a hell of a let down: President Heller’s sacrifice was the first real bold step of the season, our first sign that shit was really starting to go down in 24-land, and not everyone was going to Live Another Day (brought to you by Chrysler and Sprint). The writers were clearly cogniscient of this impending letdown, however, and made the best possible choice to distract us: surprisingly bringing the Margot plot line to a sudden close, giving us the full-on dose of murdering, bad-ass Agent Bauer we’ve itched to see for years.”

Idiotbox: “What was that?! In our review of last week we said if Heller isn’t dead they had better have a damn good explanation as to why and they fell short with that. I understand the trick with the video loop, and it’s good that either Jack or Chloe have seen 1994′s Speed but how did that work exactly? Are we to assume that Chloe got it working just in time? Because that doesn’t begin to explain how Jack was able to run across half the Wembley stadium pitch to drag Heller out the way in time before the drone hit. It’s just incredibly sloppy television and to make matters worse it makes all that fantastic character work last week almost pointless.”

Screen Rant: “And with that ’7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.’ becomes one of the busiest, action-packed episodes of 24, and certainly earns its place as the most eventful and entertaining episodes to have been produced this season.”

Pop-topia: “So, it was all a big fake out for Heller’s death. This despite the show’s producers talking it up after last week’s episode as if Heller was actually dead. I get the need to protect the reveal this week, but they should be less focused on flat out lying. I’m glad that Heller isn’t dead since like Jack, I was totally against the plan to surrender to Margot.”