The failed CIA sting pushes Prime Minister Fry into demanding access codes and schematics for the drones and he also gets his first inkling of Heller’s deteriorating memory. Now that his only other lead is gone Heller pulls a spectacular U-Turn and gives Jack exactly what we always knew he would, absolutely everything, including Kate.

The terrorists seem to be entering a very famiiar phase for 24 as the family fractures a bit with the daughter now getting cold feet after being sent to deal with her sister in law. 

Mark has a bit of a whine at Jack about Audrey and is summarily shot down in flames as Jack dismisses him completely out of hand. There will be a reckoning between these two later when Jack finds out that Mark’s planning to hand him over to the Russians. Bringing the Russians into play seems like a bit of a strange move, especially given recent tensions, but I imagine that the writers and producers couldn’t have predicted the recent situation so it’ll be weird to see how this plays out.

Prime Minister Fry takes the normal decision of assuming Jack is going to fail and send a squad after him. Here we go again… Will these people ever learn to leave him to his own devices. I fully expect this to go very badly by the end of the episode. Plus, it looks like series crossover isn’t limited to the Americans as Jo from Spooks seems to be on payroll with British Intelligence. 

Jack and Kate undertake a very risky plan with Jack selling the mission by telling her that they will likely both be killed. Nice bedside manner as usual sir. The plan goes fairly well with Jack passing the usual undercover tests as Kate gets the thumbscrews applied and MI5 step in to fuck everything up. Long and short of it is that all the baddies die, Chloe’s computer plan works and they get the data, loads of the british troops get blown up. It’s great to see Yvonne Strahovski pulling off some serious fu again, it’s a damn sight more visceral than Chuck and whets the appitite for more of this before the end of the season.

One of the CIA computer geeks uncovers some evidence that may exonorate Kate’s husband and the first mole of the season is uncovered as well as a sinister British sounding baddie on the phone. 

All in all, another pretty slow episode with some very familiar ground being trodden. Once again, I’m left hoping that things pick up a bit an we get a few genuine surprises before the season is out.