Finishing Up The Season: 24

Talk about a ridiculous show. I consider the first season of “24” to be my favorite season of television ever, and the subsequent second, third, and fourth seasons were compelling and entertaining if a bit flawed. The fifth and sixth seasons were devastatingly terrible, and I couldn’t understand how anyone still liked this show. What made it so original, its unique time-stamped format, was disregarded in favor of cheap thrills that happened far too quickly, and I thought it was beyond hope. I was pleasantly surprised at the start of this season, when it seemed that its entertainment value would overshadow its blatant idiocies. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long.

Knowing before the season started that a dead character we saw die on screen would be returning, and as a villain, I was skeptical. Otherwise, the direction of the show seemed to be headed somewhere good: CTU was abandoned in favor of introducing new characters and trying to reboot this series stalled in its own tangled web of impossible plot twists. In the two-night four-hour premiere extravaganza I started to watch during my flight to Italy, I was primed for a surprisingly decent season based on the somewhat fresh, very engaging premiere installments. Unfortunately, I was soon let down, and before I knew it, refugees from South Africa were tunneling into the White House, made all the more shameful because “24” pulled that same stunt last year when the Chinese tunneled under CTU. There’s not even a remote sense of plausibility here. “24” has lost all claims at being a legitimate dramatic series. Early on, like when Renee was buried alive and the end of the episode left her fate open, things were okay, but then it was all about providing preposterous twists for viewers to fawn over and placing an undue emphasis on Jack’s torturing. The initial premise that Jack was on trial for torturing people was intriguing, but then everything with Renee suddenly being unable to resist the idea of torturing someone was just silly. It’s not some sort of irresistible innate craving. I know that my mom got very excited when Jack faked being unconscious and single-handedly took down all three doctors (like when he bit someone’s neck while tied to a chair at the start of last season), and that’s cool to be sure, but Jack’s not some sort of ferocious monster, he’s just a federal agent performing way beyond the level he should be.

The presence of Tony was good once he was revealed to be secretly working with Bill and Chloe, and Carlos Bernard was actually the strongest actor of all this season. Once he double-crossed Jack and killed Larry, however, his character went straight downhill. It’s just too much to take, to believe that Tony could be such an effective triple agent. Additionally, the writers made the same mistake they did with Nina in season one, showing Tony get tricked into getting that Starkwood guy a deal, even though he should have been in on it all along. Tony’s ultimate motivation, revealed in the final episode, seems far too trivial. Tony wouldn’t go to all that trouble just to kill one person and not worry about any mentalities along the way, and those ruthless turncoats in the government wouldn’t let him help them unscreened, and the death of Michelle would certainly have come up once or eight thousand times. Tony definitely should NOT be back in future seasons, because there’s absolutely no way anyone should trust this guy. Trust was a big deal for everyone in this season, as a matter of fact, with President Taylor constantly flip-flopping on whether Jack and Tony deserved eternal condemnation or devoted praise.

President Taylor herself didn’t bring much to the table. The president’s-inner-circle conspiracies have gotten progressively worse, starting out at good in seasons one and two with Sherry’s meddling and then Mike Novick’s ultimate betrayal. Season three took Sherry too far, though season four wisely left the president’s advisors out of the picture and instead went directly after the president himself, shooting town Air Force One with him aboard. Season five was thoroughly unbelievable, with the President himself as the mastermind behind all evil in the world, and I’m glad we’re done with the stupid rivalries between the incompetent Wayne Palmer and the seething Noah Daniels. This season presented a middle-ground; a scenario that wasn’t interesting at all but also wasn’t as completely despicable as in recent years. Ethan was a pretty good character, a million times better than Peter MacNicol’s Tom Lennox, and the fact that he wasn’t actually a bad or corrupt guy made things better. All the stupidity with the bumbling Henry early on was a waste of time, and Cherry Jones, superb stage actress as she may be, wasn’t very compelling or impressive. The introduction of the talented Sprague Grayden as her daughter mid-season seemed to signal a good turn of events, but her character’s stupidity (calling from her phone, leaving records of transactions, talking to Aaron) completely contradicted her cunning cutthroat sensibilities (recording herself having sex for blackmail purposes). The whole character of Aaron Pierce, whose presence was unexplained and pointless, clearly due only to him being a fan favorite, made little sense, and I didn’t know whether he wanted to protect Olivia from harm or actually seek justice. I guess making him wait outside the hotel room for half an hour probably pissed him off a bit. If Taylor is still President next season, which I hope she’s not, then I at least hope that Henry won’t be back in tow, since he’s really a waste of space. I still think there’s no reason the President even needs to be a part of the show, since I doubt that Obama gets updates every twenty minutes from the FBI and actually picks up the phone to debate semantics and offer immunity deals. David Palmer was a player in season one because his plot intertwined with Jack’s, and that’s why he stuck around. “24” still seems to be experimenting with where it’s headed, jumping from place to place and dragging characters and agencies around with it. Who knows if the President will remain germane? I think next season could benefit from a fresh start, minus characters like Taylor, Chloe and Renee, and certainly Kim, and focusing instead on Jack starting anew somewhere, as this show might hopefully be able to do.

Season finale: F
Season grade: F
Season MVP: Carlos Bernard (though he wasn’t superb)