What did you think of 24: Live Another Day Episode 7?

*Shrug* We’ll see. I guess Marie Warner and Stephen Saunders were fanfiction then, since it’s a combination of their plots that I’m thinking for similarity to Audrey’s story here…

1) Whether or not Mark mentioned it before or after is ultimately immaterial to the fact that when Ron walked into the room, the “Bauer situation” was already established with whoever he was planning on talking to there, because he had an update on it. Maybe it was as it seemed and he was expecting Mark. Maybe he was expecting Audrey. If he was expecting Audrey, then they already had a conversation about Jack being back in London and Ron had arrived to give her an update. Keep in mind that when Mark first talked to Audrey, she said that she had heard her dad had a slip in the meeting, meaning the Roosevelt mixup. This confirms that Audrey spoke to someone who was in the national security briefing meeting and wasn’t Mark or her father. She did this during the relatively short window between the briefing and the first time we see Audrey at her vanity. That brings us down to pretty much General Useless or Ron Clark, who then showed back up in her room not long later. Ron Clark is the one who knew Jack Bauer was back in London because he was the one standing there while Mark talked to Navarro and overheard all of it.

2) Audrey did not hear it, agreed. But he was walking into the front room of Audrey and Mark’s dressing room/bedroom area in the suite. I’m not saying he walked into her bathroom while she was taking a shower here and was all “Hey Mrs First Lady, nice ass and while I’m at it, I have an update about the Bauer situation!” :) I’m saying this is the only scene we’ve had so far in a room more traditionally private than the offices area or that room with the couches where they prepped Heller for the speech. Ron thought nothing of heading to that area and maybe it was just because he didn’t see Mark in his office and needed to deliver him the urgent Bauer situation update. But maybe it was because he knew that’s where Audrey would be. Maybe why Ron looks so startled when Mark appears is because he didn’t know he’d be there and he covers for it by looking chastised at Mark shushing him to keep the secret. It sticks out a bit for me because this whole bit with Ron was not necessary when Mark was always going to deliver the Audrey backstory conversation and the “as long as she lives…” bit. There’s no reason for Ron and Audrey to have this interaction unless it means something later. Could be nothing but it could very easily also be something.

3) That wasn’t at all what I was saying about Heller and the Alzheimer’s. I believe Heller was going to resign, too, and that the Alzheimer’s was a relatively new development– less than a year, probably more like a few months from what it sounded like when Audrey and Mark were talking about it in the premiere. But the fact that Audrey has known for months that her father is ill and is actively trying to keep it a secret means that she *is* conspiring to keep him in office and her and Mark dealing with it in this way where they are influencing his decisions *is* a shadow presidency. That is what I meant– that Audrey is already doing wrong in the eyes of the law and the fact that it’s her dad doesn’t make any difference. What do you think Jack is going to say when he finds out Heller has Alzheimer’s and that Mark and Audrey have been covering it up? Obviously, he’ll be empathetic towards Heller’s struggle but do you think it’s going to make Jack rush to trust the Boudreaus when he learns of that? What if he finds out that Audrey isn’t all that upset about the coverup of the drone strike that killed Muhammed Al-Harazi? She thinks Mark made the right call and she has such a non-reaction to it (no surprise) that it’s entirely possible that she also knew. But how do we not know for sure? Because Audrey sits back and lets Mark do all the dirty work here for the purpose of hanging him out to dry at some point, if things get hairy in the future.

All of this was shown in Audrey’s reactions to Heller giving the speech to Parliament. From the symptoms we’ve seen him exhibiting, Heller had at best a fifty-fifty shot of making it through that speech. He could have made his goal of securing the base without incident if they had followed Mark’s back-channel idea– and we’re talking not just Heller publicly embarrassing himself but damage done to the U.S. and the Republican party here. Major image problems that affect whether or not the most influential military base the U.S. has gets to stay in their hands. If you’re the Chinese, you don’t want Heller to get this base. Who argues in favor of everything with the strongest outcome of Heller not making it through the speech? Audrey.

She’s willing to let her father publicly embarrass himself and she gets away with it by making Mark out to be the villain in the family– stop making choices for Dad, Mark! It doesn’t matter that he’s losing his damn mind so someone has to help him make some choices– the one choice that is right is the one I’ve decided on! Your logic makes no sense!

The real moment of truth is how she is when they’re prepping him for the speech. Audrey sits there and lets Mark push Heller into doing the speech by waiting until Mark has gone just that bit too far to tell him to back off. She sits there knowing that if she waits long enough that Mark cares enough about her father to try to force him to see the reality of the situation and he’ll not be nice about it because someone has to speak the truth here. When Mark challenges Heller, Heller re-dedicates himself to doing the speech. Mission accomplished for Audrey, who manipulated Mark into goading her father into doing the one thing Mark didn’t want him to do but Audrey *did* want him to do.

It’s also worth nothing that Heller’s Alzheimer’s itself is suspicious. It’s “progressing faster than the doctors had anticipated”, according to Audrey herself. That’s convenient because if Heller had not been already dying by the time this day came around, maybe he wouldn’t have chosen to sacrifice himself. Maybe he would have chosen not to negotiate with terrorists. You can’t really be sure if he’s healthy but you can be sure if he’s sick. And the people involved in the production of the show keep pointing out Heller’s pill bottle, on top of a scene designed just so Jack could see it and see Heller forget something right after it. That has to come up at some point, whether or not Heller makes it through the next episode.

Plus, it’s just good irony. Remember Audrey with Paul in the hotel room on Day 4, when she tried to pretend like she wanted to get back together with him? Even before she became a mole she was a pretty great liar. It would be ironic if after all the hell she went through, she then turned around framed her second husband to be a terrorist after her first husband died after being accused of being one. Remember on Day 5 when Audrey was accused of being a mole and then wasn’t? Yeah. Audrey having become a spy for an enemy country because of the side effects of a life in the orbits of her father and Jack Bauer is the story, not Audrey sitting around for (suspiciously) only about a scene a week, during which she is either crying or being kind of terrible to the guy she married because doesn’t that make her an awesome woman? Let’s give it up for Audrey Boudreau, who married a man she doesn’t love, whom she treats terribly for doting on her and her father, who is fine with any government coverup that benefits her and best of all– the true gem– did not fight for Jack at all. She could have got Daddy to take Jack’s name off the designated terrorist list. She could have made it so that he could be with his home. She did not. Why does she deserve Jack again?