Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.Okay, so, um… never mind, I guess?

"I'm alive and ready to sing my favorite Enrico Pallazzo song!"

After last week’s remarkable, tense, heartrending farewell to president Heller culminated in the fatal drone attack on Wembley Stadium, this week 24 returns to take a mulligan his death. The only more egregious example I can think of the writers pulling like this was Tony Almeida’s reanimated corpse waffling through season 7. The reveal that, wait, no, we take it back, Heller’s totally still alive, isn’t that great? wasn’t nearly as bad as all that, but it was still a completely unnecessary cheat. More than that, it was a lazy cheat that they never bothered explaining the logistics of. I guess Chloe told Jack they were set, he charged onto the field and ran Heller off while the video loop played? The way the end of last week’s episode was edited, that sure didn’t seem possible.In fact, I found the whole thing more puzzling than aggravating. The season had, in some ways, been steadily building up to a hero moment where Heller could go out on his own terms and that’s exactly what we got last week. But now I’m no longer sure what purpose he serves on the show. He recognizes that it was arrogant to think he could still function as commander in chief and, even worse, his last-second reprieve almost cost everyone in Waterloo Station their lives. He’s presumably still going to resign due to his health issues, so the only storytelling advantage I can see is that it keeps Boudreau’s goodies very much in a vice after forging the old man’s signature on the rendition order, but that’s already well on its way to undoing him.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.All right, with that crap out of the way, we can focus on what the show does best—what the whole point is, really—which is to be the best thriller on television. And, boy howdy, was it ever on this night. The episode seemed to go by in a flash between the hunt for Margot’s location, the action set piece at her building and the transition into the kitchen getting too hot for Navarro.The assault on Margot & Co’s impromptu headquarters was such a tight, well-executed action sequence that the biggest shock is how quickly it came to an end. Jack, in fine Bauer fashion, rappels down the building to not only save the day but really give Margot the worst ending she could have imagined. Not only does she watch her loyal son get tossed but she’s kept alive just long enough to see the last drone fall harmlessly before she herself gets on the express elevator to the parking lot. I know murder is wrong and we’re not supposed to cheer it, but that was an awfully satisfying series of events.But, oh, poor Jordan. I sure didn’t see a scenario where he’d be dead but Heller would be alive and yet here we are. We never got to know him well, but it sure highlights what scum Navarro is and always has been. Benjamin Bratt’s performance was right on the money when he got the call from Kate, as he swung from the biggest sigh of relief (played off as grief) to the butt-clenching terror of another body being found on the scene. Also effective was the skin-of-his-teeth escape with Jack right on his trail.So that’s our cliffhanger for the hour—one that saw the end of season’s biggest villain (so far) in a rousing action sequence smoothly followed by the cat and mouse game with Navarro. I’m looking forward to the home stretch of these last few episodes despite losing some trust with the writers. The degree of difficulty for this series is absurdly high—an action/thriller/suspense show in real time with cliffhangers every hour—and it’s a tricky balancing act to keep the excitement from tipping over into cheesiness or straight-up absurdity. If not for Heller’s inane reprieve this would be one of the best episodes in this terrific year. It’s definitely a misstep, but hopefully not a fatal one as they barrel towards the finale.