Uhm, no I haven't seen that episode yet but to be up to date there has been some reading before I started watching season 9. The german channel started airing some episodes from s8 up to Icon/Avatar and then suddenly reverted to s6 eps (sucks to live here sometimes).
I don't know much about that civilian angle, Jack's short time relationship fell apart because of his feelings for Sam and her former girlfriend talked about him resigning to bypass the chain of command problem. Well, to my knowledge this was solved by his promotion to another command as well. There's just the problem of geographical distance from this situation.
