24: Legacy (12:00-3:00)

When 24 first aired back in 2001 it was unlike anything I had ever seen. Sure, there had been some movies done in “real time” (Nick of Time anyone?) and the entire concept was gimmicky (to say the least), but the writing and action were incredibly well done. 

Also, Kiefer Sutherland. 

And, like many cool things, they took out their clubs, went out to the stables and beat the dead horses for, like, eight more seasons. But it still had Kiefer so I kept watching.

Then it ended and I think I speak for everyone when I say, thank God.

A few years later, someone who obviously did not see The Bourne Legacy thought it would be a good idea to reboot the series. Without Kiefer. 

Bad Idea.

Here’s what we know before it even begins. Corey Hawkins (a.k.a. Dr. Dre) plays Eric Carter, an ex Ranger who is going to try to save the world from terrorists and along the way figure out how many bad guys are disguised as good guys. 

And don’t forget…events occur in real time.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Bee. Bee. Bee. Bee. Be. Be. Be. Be. B.B.B.B.B.B.B….

(explosion sound)

We start at 12 noon as some TERRORISTS are ransacking a house. Thanks to the (over)use of split-screen, we also see a bloodied man tied to a chair. He is/was a Ranger because of his Ranger tattoo on his shoulder. We can assume his family is dead by the blood EVERYWHERE.

They eventually give up the search and say something for the audience like “we’ve searched everywhere. It’s not here.” Okay, so here we go. Then bad guy #1 shoots the Ranger dead. 

Brownie point #1: At least they had them speak in their native tongue with sub-titles (Arabic? I’m really bad at distinguishing middle eastern languages). They could have copped out and had them speak in English with a strong accent. Kudos.

The bad guys grab their gym bags (why they each had a huge bag I do not know) and leave the house. One of them makes a phone call to his brother, Malik, who is sitting in the back of a moving van, presumably to be ready for anything. Malik takes the call only to be given the bad news that “he didn’t have it.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. We killed his wife and daughter. He would have told us.”

And this was the moment I knew I was going to hate this show. Malik looks at his iPad and with a RED STYLUS PEN, makes an ‘X’ over another one of the Rangers in the photographs. As we can clearly see, there are only two left. One called GRIMES and of course, DRE. I just love the idea that the only way Malik can keep track of 6 Rangers is to mark them off one by one. 

Meanwhile, Dre comes home wearing a suit and tie. He obviously hates his current job. He finds his wife in the shower and they kiss. Then Dre finds her birth control pills, opens it up and counts the pills. Uh oh. Shit ain’t right. “I thought you stopped taking these?” *music changes to soap opera* “I did…for a few weeks.” Dre is not happy about that. They go on for what seems like a half hour letting us know that Dre is ready to have kids but Nicole has her reservations because, you know, he was in the shit. Dre also lets us know through exposition dialogue that “it hasn’t been easy living in hiding, changing your name…” bla bla bla.

CUT TO:

Miranda Otto stepping out of limousine talking on the phone about important D.C. policies while putting on her shoes. In case you don’t know Motto, she’s the bad guy from last season’s Homeland. The one who was sleeping with Saul? So, clearly, at some point, she will be bad. Or maybe that’s why they cast her? Hmmmmmm.

Anyway, Motto is running late to meet with her Senator husband (Jimmy Smits – the bad guy from Dexter and the biggest head on planet earth) who is also starting his campaign for…President of the United States. Remember when that used to mean something?

Headface is talking with his campaign manager (poor man’s Rooney Mara who is doing that thing I hate when she acts like she has something to hide with every gesture: see Uncle John Review). And Shifty Eyes and Motto clearly don’t like each other but they work together for the sake of Headface. Got it?

Motto is receiving an award for her role as head of CTU (she’s retired now) and how she led U.S. Special Forces on a raid that killed the terrorist, Ibrahim BIN-KHALID (this name will come up again and again). We are also realizing that this raid has something to do with these Rangers being picked off.

CUT TO:

Dre enjoying his breakfast with his wife when his secret cell phone rings. It’s the other remaining Ranger – Grimes. Grimes is essentially a crazy homeless man who is losing his shit. He tells Dre that “they’re coming for us” and how all the other Rangers are dead. Homeless Grimes pleads for Dre to bring in CTU for help. Unfortunately, Homeless Grimes has pulled his routine before so Dre isn’t quite sure what to believe but he gives him the benefit of the doubt and tells him to get somewhere safe for now.

A few seconds later a van pulls up across the street and Dre sees a few men approaching the house so he acts quickly. He shoves his wife into the attic and tries to fight off the men but they overpower him and tie him to a chair. Time to ask questions.

Bauer would have killed them all and drank their blood from a boot. Just saying.

Motto makes her way to CTU (in less than four minutes) because she needs to finish up a few things and is greeted by COMPUTER GEEK who fills her in (and the rest of us) on the goings on. For one thing, Mullins (the new head of CTU) apparently let go of an employee and instead hired a girl who “is so not qualified. We’re talking two years of college”.  Why do we care about this? We don’t. But apparently, the new girl is Edgar Stiles’ cousin and that’s supposed to mean something. All I know is Stiles used to work with Bauer so she’s probably going to impress us at some point.

BACK AT DRE’S, the bad guys are tearing the place apart and interrogating Dre. They ask him where the strongbox is – the one they took from DJ KHALID when they attacked his compound. Ruh Roh. Dre has no idea what they’re talking about. His wife, however, is apparently a trained navy seal instead of a nurse because instead of cowering quietly in the attic (like anyone else would be doing) she decides to sneak down to the first floor, unlock a safe, grab a gun, and try to save Dre. Her actions do distract the bad guys enough for Dre to break free and kill them all but seriously?

Bauer would have already eaten his terrorist stew by now.

Dre and his wife make a run for it, they grab a “go bag” and hit the road. Dre calls Motto and fills her in on the fact that everyone else is dead except for him and Homeless Grimes and that DJ Khalid’s men are looking for a strongbox. Motto realizes immediately that there were only three people who knew the real identity of the Rangers and their new locations: The head of the CIA, the head of the NSA, and the new head of the CTU (which seems like way too many people). So now she doesn’t know whether MULLINS can be trusted or not (even though she was the one who gave him the job).

Time to go behind everyone’s back.

Dre and Motto make a plan to track down Homeless Grimes using his cell phone number (because he’s the one who took DJ Kahlid’s strongbox) while Dre finds somewhere safe to stash his wife (the cops are out of the question because they could be working for the terrorists too). Nope. There’s only one safe place for Dre’s wife…her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend-who-also-happens-to-be-Dre’s-brother-but-Dre-stole-her-from-him. Nicole does NOT like this idea but Dre reminds her that the world’s about to end so maybe she should just suck it up and stay with this incredibly dangerous man (poor man’s Stringer Bell). 

Suddenly, we switch gears and head over to a high school where a young girl and her boyfriend are having a disagreement in the halls. The girl has an accent (no idea where) and her white boyfriend (Pasty) is mad at her because he found some texts on her phone about blowing up the school. A nearby TEACHER sees the couple arguing and pulls Pasty into the classroom to find out what’s going on. Pasty rats her out. He goes on to say how he found some scary shit in Nadia’s phone (I honestly don’t remember her name but it might as well be Nadia) and TEACHER tells him that he will take care of it. Pasty accepts this and goes about his day.

Meanwhile, back at CTU, Motto teams up with Computer Geek to track Homeless Grimes without anyone else knowing about it, especially Mullins (because he might be dirty). 

Back at school, Nadia sits in the back of the classroom and texts somebody while sneaking out the back door. She goes across the hallway and into the library (where there are literally NO OTHER PEOPLE) and meets up with…that’s right…TEACHER! Teacher goes on to freak out about Pasty because he knows too much but Nadia tells him not to worry about it. She will handle it. Then they kiss. And yes, she moved to the school from another country, seduced Pasty and Teacher and now Teacher is willing to join in on a terrorist plot for no reason other than getting his dick wet. 

We get to see Nicole settling in nicely with Stringer who seems like a nice enough guy. He tells her she is safe there but then we see Stringer’s girlfriend, Foxy Cleopatra, who does NOT like Nicole being here. But Stringer makes it clear that Nicole is not to be touched. 

Back at CTU, computer geek and Motto track Homeless Grimes and send Dre in that direction. The problem is, the terrorists have also figured out that Homeless Grimes has the strongbox so they head there as well.

Dre finds him in about two minutes and tells him that they need to go to CTU, together. But first he wants to know what’s in the strongbox so they both open it and find a memory stick. Dre pops it into his phone (you know how you do) and finds (completely unencrypted) a list of terrorist cells in the DC area that are waiting for the signal. Now we know what we’re dealing with. But look out! The terrorist show up and start shooting so Dre shoots back and then does something heroic, killing all four of the terrorist. But when he runs back to his phone both Homeless Grimes AND the memory stick are gone!

Dre calls Homeless Grimes and is like “uh, where did you go?” and Homeless Grimes is like “now that I know what this is, I want two million dollars otherwise I’m going to give it to the terrorists.” Because, you know, the terrorist would probably give him money and pat on the back and send him on his way. And by the way, everyone in the show refers to them as “the terrorists”. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that while all of this was going on, director Mullins found out that Motto and Geek were up to something so Motto had to knock him out and tie him to a chair without anyone knowing. 

When he wakes up he’s understandably upset so Motto lays it out straight for him. “Look, shit is going down and I don’t know that I can trust you yet but I’m going to run a trace (somehow) to find out where the leak came from so once we clear you I will let you go and we can just pretend this never happened.”

Meanwhile we meet a new terrorist who we find out is DJ Khalid’s son and he is the one trying to get the list so he can make his daddy proud. But Khalid Jr is not happy to find out that Dre and Homeless Grimes are still on the loose with the list so he decides he’s going to have to fix this himself.

Dre finds out from Motto that there’s no way they can scrape together 2 million dollars so he needs to figure it out on his own. Once again he turns to his drug dealing brother who informs him that he does not have 2 million in cash laying around but if he really needs that kind of money he should go the police station because they just recently made a huge drug bust and there was 4 million in cash. Dre mulls this over for all of three seconds before deciding that’s the best course of action. To ROB A POLICE STATION. Then he tells Motto what he’s up to and she’s like “okay, I mean, if you think that’s the best way to make this happen”. 

And since cops hate black people, Dre simply needs to walk down the street looking suspicious. And boy does it work! Old White Cop drives past and then pulls over to find out what Dre is up to all walking around in the middle of the day. Old White Cop’s partner, Young White Cop, doesn’t like all this racial profiling and seems a little more reluctant to arrest a guy for doing nothing. But it doesn’t matter because Dre disarms them both and ties their hands behind their backs.

Back at Degrassi High, Nadia finds Pasty and tells him that he misunderstood her texts and she was just trying to fit in. This seems to be a good enough reason so Pasty agrees to let the whole terrorism thing slide. But then, a few minutes later, Pasty walks in on Nadia giving teacher a blow job. Well, you can guess what happens next. Teacher kills Pasty by smashing his skull on the floor of the classroom and now he and Nadia have to get rid of the body. Yikes.

And don’t worry, we didn’t forget about ol’ Headface. He shows up to a fundraiser to find his dad, none other than Rick Simon himself, Gerald McRaney (the bad guy from Justified, Longmire, House of Cards and pretty much everything else). Rick Simon is very proud of Headface, and yes, his Latino mother would have been proud as well. If she were still with us. But Rick Simon needs to have a talk with Headface about Shifty Eyes. He doesn’t trust her. AND they found a photograph of her at a mosque or something (I don’t know why this was so significant but whatever it was, it didn’t look good for Shifty Eyes). But Headface doesn’t want to believe it. He trusts Shifty Eyes because she’s been with him since the beginning.

Meanwhile Stringer is about to go out for a big drug deal. He tells Nicole not to worry and that he’ll be back soon. There was also a weird moment where Nicole opened up to him and told him all about Dre acting weird after coming back from the war, etc. Who cares, right? Let’s go back to Dre…

Who is strapping an explosive device to Old White Cop and tells them that they’re going to march him into the precinct so he can steal the drug money and if they don’t do exactly as their told, he’s going to blow them up. All in all, not a bad plan, but I still don’t understand why he thinks he actually needs real money. Just show up with a giant bag and then grab Homeless Grimes and force him to give up the shit. Anyway, so they do as their told and bring him into the precinct and CTU helps by “looping” the security footage in the evidence locker.

OH DAMN, I completely forgot about irrelevant-subplot-now-but-may-be-relevant-later. Back at CTU, a Bauer wannabe shows up ready for his instructions and GEEK tries to delay him so he doesn’t find out that they, you know, knocked out Mullins and have him tied to a chair. But then we find out that Geek and Bauer Wannabe are actually gay lovers who broke up recently. Talk about going against type. But then the new girl ruins everything and eventually Motto and Geek get in trouble and Mullins is freed but once everything is explained they all get on the same page and work together.

Back at the police station, Dre finds the money and puts it into his bag and just as he’s about to make his escape (I’m still unsure what his original plan was here) all hell breaks loose and it turns into a hostage situation. Luckily for Dre, Young White Cop believes his story and tries to help him by going out the back way. This doesn’t work to well and Dre is quickly surrounded by cops with guns aimed at him and just when you think there’s no way out for him…

CTU makes a phone call and the cops “stand down”. Whew. That was a close one. The cops are like “Some guy at CTU called and said we are to let him go and assist him in anyway.” So Dre walks out of the station with millions of dollars and heads to find Homeless Grimes.

Meanwhile, back at Riverdale High, Pasty lies dead on the floor and Teacher is freaking out (remember, it’s like 2:00 or something). Another student knocks on the door and Teacher opens the door but just slightly so the student doesn’t see the dead body behind him. He eventually gets rid of the student but when they turn around…PASTY IS GONE! That’s right. One second he was dead and the next second he’s halfway through the school grounds, trying to make his way to the soccer field where a bunch of students are having a practice. He can’t yell though because he’s in too much pain (I guess) and eventually he collapses behind the bleachers. Unseen. Teacher and Nadia catch up to him and thank their lucky stars that nobody saw Pasty because they would have some ‘splainin’ to do. And just as they’re about to pick him up (yes, their plan was to pick him up and carry him back inside the school) they are spotted and quickly act like they just found him there. He looks injured. So the ambulance is called and Nadia jumps in the back telling everyone that she’s his girlfriend. 

Back at CTU they somehow trace the source of the leak (the thing that set this whole thing in motion) and it turns out it came from MOTTO’S computer. “That’s impossible” she says. And then they hack further and discover that Shifty Eyes was the one who accessed the information. Oh man, things do NOT look good for shifty eyes now. Motto calls Headface and tells him not to trust her and that the police are on their way to apprehend Shifty Eyes and put her in Gitmo (not really but kinda).

Dre finally has his meeting with Homeless Grimes (who, even though is probably on drugs and has been out of his mind for years is still very skilled at surveillance so Dre insists that he needs to go alone). 

Homeless Grimes takes the cash and is just about to hand Dre the memory stick when Khalid Jr and his men interrupt them and a huge shootout begins. 

Grimes grabs his money AND THE MEMORY STICK (honestly, why???) so now Dre and Bauer Wannabe AND the terrorist all chase after him but the terrorist get there first and kill Homeless Grimes. Then I think they set off a bomb or something to make their escape.

AND THAT’S WHAT CAN HAPPEN IN THREE HOURS…

More to come…