24 s09e00 Episode Script

Action! Move! Move, damn it! Damn it, move! This is the opening of "24: Live Another Day.
" We start with CIA ops chasing somebody.
The series begins running, you know? Freeze it right there.
That Jack Bauer has survived, intact, to live another day is good news for a lot of people.
What the hell have you been doing the past four years? I was really excited that "24" was coming back.
I couldn't believe it.
There's fireballs.
There's action.
It's all good, "24" kind of stuff.
It's a high-octane thriller with, literally, time ticking down.
- It's a self-destruct program.
- Damn it! Why is he here? Why is he back? Jack Bauer is a traitor and a psychopath.
Is he here to harm the president? Is he here to help the president? We don't know.
If an American president is assassinated on foreign soil, you're looking at a world war.
London and the CIA will never be the same.
Man: Action! It's Bauer.
This year, we have some crazy stuff coming up, stuff we haven't done before.
Coto: It's a story that starts from moment one, this season.
The train is already moving, and you got to run to catch up.
And you're on for a ride from episode one all the way through.
There's not one letup.
Simone: Help me! What's wonderful is it is "24," but it's a new iteration of "24.
" The show is set in London, England.
And it's the first time we've actually shot fully on location.
What brings Jack to London is he's been out of the United States since the very end of season eight.
He managed to escape to Eastern Europe, where he's been underground for 4 1/2 years Man: Target acquired.
And has resurfaced because of the circumstances of the day, to protect the president of the United States.
Katz: James Heller, played by William Devane, was formerly in the series as the secretary of defense.
President Heller, In this case, is in London.
Man: People have never been comfortable with our using drones for targeted assassinations.
Mr.
President? I'm thinking I don't blame them.
Devane: We're here to negotiate a treaty a drone treaty.
It's a precarious situation, so I have to come and actually do it myself.
James: I think the most important thing is for the prime minister to hear the news from me.
Katz: And while he's there, of course, Jack emerges with news of an attack.
The question being asked in the initial part of the series is, "is Jack Bauer there to assassinate the president?" Gordon: Jack is an international fugitive, and he's wanted, not just by our country, but by every country.
I know How many lives you've saved, but they're just gonna see a man who snapped, who went off on a a revenge spree.
A man whose country labels him a criminal.
Coto: Fans of the series remember, you know, Jack left off as a fugitive.
You were really something in your time.
Basically, CTU was turned off, and Jack was left in the darkness.
And now a CIA team is hunting down Jack.
[Groans.]
Man: Cut! But Jack is onto something, and there's much more than just him having been caught.
There's a larger mystery that he's trying to uncover.
Cassar: Why is he here? Why is he back? Does this have something to do with the president? And does it have something to do with these drones? So, really, that becomes our mystery.
Two weeks ago, I intercepted intel framing an assassination attempt on President Heller supposed to take place in London here, today.
- You're gonna help me.
- I'm afraid I can't do that.
But you don't have a choice.
Gordon: Despite being hunted and and being made a pariah, Jack is still a hero.
He cannot help himself.
Has anyone ever mentioned your rather spectacularly rude habit of asking for favors accompanied by the threat of a gun? Sutherland: What brought me back was really Howard Gordon, who was our lead writer.
Called me up and said, "Look, I've I've had this idea "for about 12 episodes for a while, "and it's kind of just gnawing at me.
Would you be interested in doing it?" Gordon: We really wanted to see Jack Bauer.
Look, it's really like seeing an old friend again.
And I have to say, when we saw the dailies of Jack Bauer for the first time, we just all smiled and looked at each other.
Katz: He really looks great.
He's cut.
He looks like someone who's been living raw and on the edge for years.
You know who I am.
Trigger an alarm, and I'll blow your head off.
I think he found Jack again pretty quickly.
Kiefer and Jack Bauer are pretty well connected at this point.
We didn't waste any time.
Our first week, we were just stock blocked with action and dialogue, so he had to fit into and he had to do it quickly, and he did.
Sutherland: And it is very exciting to be Jack Bauer again.
Move! Gordon: It is not just Kiefer, of course.
A good number of the old team are back together.
It was like the band came together for this.
Evan is a is a is a veteran.
He's the most veteran writer on the show was there since season two, and I came in at season five.
Katz: We're lucky enough to get John Cassar back, who was our producer and director for years.
Cassar: I've done 58 episodes and the TV movie, so to have it come back again is very exciting.
Sutherland: Jon directed so many of the seasons of "24" that I really do rely on him greatly.
Action! We're gonna push this as hard as we can.
If we lose the base, those men will have died in vain! Look, I'm not saying we quit.
I'm just suggesting that we withdraw, wait until the rancor dies down.
I don't have time.
Katz: We're doing 12 episodes, instead of 24.
This is a special-event series.
Here we go! Those 12 episodes are still gonna represent one full day.
Somewhere within it, we're going to skip an hour or two, or maybe a big chunk.
Sutherland: We're not trying to change the show.
Jack is not gonna be skipping.
You know, it's not gonna be a romantic comedy.
He's gonna have a crappy day, and he's gonna fight his way through it, and and and that's what the show is.
Certain dynamics are different, but the show isn't different.
You're going after the wrong guy.
Cassar: I think all the action and special effects are what you usually expect on "24," and, really, that's what I'm going for and maybe a little beyond what you expect, and that's what we always, I think, expect our audience to expect from us.
Action! Cut.
Yeah, baby! [Claps.]
That's the one.
[Beeping.]
This year may be my favorite cast that we've ever had.
It's extraordinary.
Cassar: First, we've got some characters that you loved that we've brought back.
My God.
Chloe.
Woman: What happened to you? Coto: The notorious Chloe O'Brian.
Chloe's not nearly the same individual that we saw in season eight.
Rajskub: Chloe is with the group that believes in information being freed.
They have no qualms about letting out secrets.
It's the opposite of how Chloe used to believe.
Coto: She has turned anti-government.
She has become kind of like a darker version of Edward Snowden.
Intelligence agencies keep secrets because what they're doing is criminal.
That's naive, even for you.
You're smarter than that.
You don't get to judge me, not after what I've been through.
Rajskub: Chloe and Jack start out at odds because Jack has kind of come out of nowhere and wants her to go with him and help him to stop this plot against the president.
Jack, in four years of hiding, doesn't really trust anybody, and Chloe has gone through her own evolution.
And they don't start off as the best of friends.
We're not the same Chloe and Jack as we were, and we're not seeing eye to eye.
Chloe: Why are you doing this, Jack? Some fantasy that, if you save Heller, all will be forgiven? You knew Heller.
You know he's a good man.
No, I don't know that.
William Devane is reprising his role as Heller.
Devane: I'm now the president, the most powerful man in the free world.
Katz: His daughter Audrey, who Jack was deeply in love with, and she with him, but who ended up going to China and being tortured for information about Jack.
Audrey is a lot better than when we last saw her.
[Chuckles.]
Audrey is working again with her dad.
I know that look.
What's your problem? Devane: She's like the lady of the White House.
Her mother passed away years ago, so she basically does everything with me.
It's sort of that thing, you know, when someone has gone through a really hard time, I think people are fragile around her and kind of protecting her.
Katz: She's also married to his chief of staff, the man who helped her come back from from a near-catatonic mental breakdown.
Donovan: I play Mark Boudreau, and he is the chief of staff to the president of the United States.
Coto: Tate Donovan is a great character this season, Boudreau.
He's operating purely from pain in his opposition to Bauer, who he sees as a threat, not only to the country but to his wife and to her well-being, to her sanity.
The president should be made aware.
You weren't there.
You didn't see what Bauer did to his family what he did to Audrey.
He really does not like Jack Bauer.
As long as she lives, she's never gonna hear the name Jack Bauer.
Donovan: In the first episode, I order his death or something terrible, and, you know, that doesn't bode well for a character, if you order Jack Bauer's death.
[Laughs.]
Coto: So, it's an interesting triangle that's kind of cracked apart when when Jack appears.
Katz: With Tate Donovan, we have several new people that feel like they were born to be on the show.
Where in God's name have you been? Chloe is working with the leader of a hacker group.
His name is Adrian Cross, and he's played by Michael Wincott.
And he's a charismatic, almost prophet-like figure who presides over this group of misfits who help him dig out information about governments and spread it.
We acquire and disseminate information nothing more.
You make it sound like what you do is benign.
We both know that's not true.
Gordon: The CIA station chief is Agent Navarro, who's played by Benjamin Bratt.
Bratt: For me as an actor, to be invited to come on board and and participate, to really jump on board this roller coaster that is a global phenomenon has been a real thrill.
Man: Cut! With "24," you can never be certain that someone is what they say they are.
But what I know of who I play, at this point, is that he is a calm leader.
He's cautious.
He's very thorough.
Hey, um sorry I shut you down.
Strahovski: I play Kate Morgan, the CIA agent.
When we meet her, she's packing up because she's being demoted.
Coto: Her husband was revealed to be a traitor, selling secrets to the Chinese, and she's about to be transferred back to the States.
Strahovski: Before that, she was a pretty great field agent, very impulsive, and one of the best that they had.
- Katz: She sees capturing Bauer - Bang! Bang! - As her way of redeeming herself.
- Drop your weapon! - Turn around! - Bratt: She has instincts that are very in sync with Jack Bauer when he was a young agent, and goes a long way to proving herself to be reestablished as part of my crew.
I'm the one that got inside Bauer's head not you, not Erik, not anybody.
She has to go head-to-head with Jack, and that's not easy to do, for anybody to do.
Erik: What is she doing here? I reinstated her, Just until we get Bauer back.
Erik Ritter arrived at the station to take Kate's job when she transfers out, and he's impatiently waiting.
She might be trying to prove herself.
I don't care.
But you don't expect me to work with her, do you? I expect you to do your job without questioning my orders.
Gbenga, who, of course, everyone knows from "The Wire" fame, is Erik.
Erik thinks that Kate is not fit to do the job.
She may have been at one point, but not any longer, and he is, and he'll do it well.
Navarro: Kate Morgan isn't there.
She's not even on the books.
This goes bad, it's on you.
When it looks like she's gaining traction, he's very threatened at first.
Cut them loose! Kate: Leave him.
Are you out of your mind?! He's coming with us.
He knows something.
This was not your fault.
Margot, our main antagonist, our main villain, is a woman who swears her revenge on President Heller.
Margot is a driven, motivated, passionate woman with a cause in mind, and her cause is revenge.
This family has worked too hard for too long to let anyone or anything get in its way.
Katz: Margot's daughter, Simone, has been raised with not only radical politics and to believe in terrorism, but to obey her mother and do whatever her mother asks.
Simone has a very strong set of beliefs that she's been brought up with.
She would stop at nothing.
She is ruthless, in a way, but I don't see her as, in any way, a bad person.
I think she just genuinely does what she thinks is right.
Simone: That man is trying to kill me! Help me! Help me! Man: Leave the girl alone! [Grunting.]
Sutherland: "24" really is an ensemble show.
It can only be as good as as the cast that takes you there, and we couldn't have asked for better.
Erik: I will shoot you in the back of the head I swear to God! There is something about the UK in many ways, our relationship to the UK is so special and so deep that it felt like the right place.
And it's iconic.
Cassar: This is really the first time we've taken the whole production to another city, so it's very exciting, and I think we picked the right city.
I just love this city.
London's filled with history.
The visuals speak for themselves.
You can point the camera almost anywhere, and it's great.
Our first day, we were right in central London, you know, right off of piccadilly circus.
I was born here, and I was about 3, so there's a kind of a nationalistic pride I have about England.
Not only will it be exciting, as it has been for me to work here as an actor and for our crew, I hope for the viewing audience, it'll be like going on a trip.
You know? We're gonna show you London in a very different way.
B-marker.
Erik: Stop where you are! Stop! Get on the ground! We shot right on the Thames.
We were just on the beach.
And we had boats coming up with guys with machine guys and guys coming down the wharf and another guy coming over down the beach, and so I was in the middle of kind of playing all of that action and getting focused on that.
Man: Cut! Excellent! And then I looked up, and you could clearly see that it was London.
Man: Eight camera, right here.
Exact same thing.
One of the interesting things about "24" was, even when we were in Los Angeles or in New York or Washington, it was never a show about monuments and big buildings.
It was always it took place in the back streets and alleys, and and that's also applied here in London.
Action.
We shot in the back alleys.
We were at a block-housing project.
So, that's all part of "24," also, because people are hiding, and people are undercover, and so you can't be always right in the main streets with all the people.
Man: I've got a confirm on the target.
Hooded sweatshirt, 30 feet from the south wall.
Man 2: And go, go, go! London has been very cooperative about letting us shoot places.
So, we shot on the tube, and we do some terrible things on the tube, but they would not let anyone jump the fare barrier and and and get on for free.
- That was the one restriction.
- One step too far.
- Not having any of that.
- Yes.
Yes.
He's coming your way.
He's probably armed.
Cassar: We're doing, you know, big shootouts, and right on day one, the armorers were showing us guns that I'd never even seen before.
We've got quite a lot of weaponry on this series, and we're gonna start with Jack's gun.
We've updated it for this series of "24.
" He used to have a HK USP Compact.
We now have a HK P30.
He also uses other agents' guns throughout, particularly the Glock 17, which is our CIA weapon.
We've also provided gun cameras, which fit on the front, give something visual for the director to read off.
Our different tactical agents, when we see them in the field they have a HK MP7.
They also have an M4 derivative, and this is a bit of fun, which is a corner shot 9-millimeter Glock 17, but if I show you how it operates, it just comes up like that.
Come back around and you can fire around corners.
Camera mounted on the front with a monitor here.
- Drop the weapon! Put it on the ground! - Putting the weapon down! Get on the ground, Bauer! - [Gunshots.]
- Aah! Here we go.
Action! [Screams.]
My name's Mark Mottram.
I'm the stunt coordinator on "24.
" Jon moves so quick.
He knows where he's going, knows the shots.
We just got to be on top of everything, you know? And it's got to be ready.
If I'm holding him up, he's kicking me up the butt.
Do you know what I mean? So Kiefer picks it up so quick.
Do you know what I mean? I mean [Scoffs.]
he's done this a million times.
It's like driving a car to him, you know? We literally set a few moves.
He comes in, picks it up like, you know, nothing, which is really quite cool, yeah.
Mark and his team, I think, are really good, and they really are a team.
They're shooting at us! Move! Move! They've had a very busy episode one and two.
[Indistinct shouting.]
It was filled with fights and action, so they've hit the floor running, and and the poor guys, I don't think, are gonna get much of a break.
I think I think they're gonna be very busy through the 12 episodes.
3, 2, 1, action! Cut! Man: All right.
The guys that do our special effects they've been a crack crew.
It's very important for "24.
" We blow things up.
It's what we're known for.
And so, coming to the UK was not gonna change that.
Bullet hits, things breaking, atmosphere, obviously, in all our sets, which is smoke and water.
In the first two episodes, we've already had, I think, probably over a dozen explosions.
Man: Cut! That was awesome! [Indistinct shouting.]
Gordon: "24" sort of was created in the context of 9/11, but Jack really has become, in some ways, the lightning rod and the litmus test for this very complicated world we're living in.
So I think, culturally, he really came to be this reflection of what we hoped a hero could be in these very complicated times.
- We all wish - They're shooting at us! Move! we knew a Jack Bauer, had a Jack Bauer protecting us.
He really is A pretty classic American hero.
Jack Bauer is the kind of character that has universal appeal in that he is a man of principles.
Come on, Mr.
Bauer.
His principles drive his every action.
Now or never.
Katz: The character has taken on kind of a little bit of a mythic status, a little larger than life.
There's a lot of speculation about what's happened to him, who he is after he fell off the deep end at the end of season eight.
Kiefer's playing it with an incredible amount of intensity and need to succeed and a need to be a hero.
The character is it's like a kind of this fantastic long-lost friend, you know? And so we got to see each other again.
Fox was very, very gutsy to to do a show like "24.
" Raver: "24," for me, was really a catalyst for how television was viewed and is viewed.
"24" was one of the sort of first, like, binge-watching of shows.
Classic "24" kind of had that addictive, you know all the plots leading to the end of that episode.
You couldn't wait you know, the binge-watching.
And now that's become the model, and we have so much great programming that came after that.
Television, to me, is the most exciting medium, and I'm telling you this as an actor who does films and television.
For all of those reasons that television has become as exciting as it is, "24" was one of the aspects that helped shape that, and for that, I will always be proud.
Cassar: We were fortunate to just be right at the leading edge of that wave.
It was kind of a new age of of, you know, television.
It was really exciting to keep pushing the limits, and and I don't think that's gonna stop.
I mean, I think "24" is still one of those shows, and and even though we're coming back after being, you know, after being laid off for a while, I think we're still gonna be on that leading edge.
Rajskub: What's cool, I think, about "24" is that it reflects the issues that are going on today.
Cassar: "24" was always dealing with stories that were ripped right out of the headlines, and so I think that's always part of what we give you when when we give you "24.
" Katz: Several things that really have become bigger issues in the four years since the show's been on drone warfare, the advent of WikiLeaks, and hyper-government surveillance and people revealing that.
It's thrilling that there are so many story lines started and in gear right here in this first hour.
It's just amazing.
Certain facts have been covered up by us.
I think, you know, most television would like to be this relevant.
You don't need to have watched the show before to watch the show now.
We're designing it so that you can just, you know, get on board the moving train.
Cassar: It's very quick.
- It gets your heart racing.
- Get down! Get down! It's been described as a soap opera on crack.
Sutherland: We shoot it faster.
It's more instinctive.
It's just simply more exciting.
Coto: It becomes an edge-of-your-seat experience.
This is gonna be so satisfying to the fans of "24.
" The show's coming back, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
Hey! They want blood! Stop, stop.
Jack: This is bigger than President Heller.
They're planning a full-scale attack.
[Projectile whistling.]
[Beeping.]