Take Three: 24: Legacy

24: Legacy: Season 1, Episode 3 “2:00pm-3:00pm” (F)

I think I need to stop watching this show. There’s absolutely nothing about it that I find appealing, and no traces of the original show to latch on to or look forward to. The format that’s supposed to make this show so unique is barely even being utilized, since things are happening so fast that we don’t even get to see them, which makes let them considerably less exciting and satisfying. When Carter was trapped and was able to talk one of the cops into believing him and helping him, all of a sudden he managed to get out of the situation thanks to a well-timed phone call from Rebecca to the police captain. A splitscreen could have informed us that was happening and that maybe she wouldn’t get through in time before some heroic cop tried to take a shot at him, but instead we’re treated to traditional and very uninvolving storytelling. Since the President being the mole wasn’t enough in season five, now we’re back to such high-level treachery with Henry framing Nilaa for his own act of treason. The problem is probably that CTU is prioritizing tracking calls a drug dealer’s girlfriend made without asking why Nicole was entitled to it and why it wsa relevant, and as a result they’re missing the important stuff that’s going on. You’d think the four terrorists would be a bit more subtle and that one of them would be close enough to cut Ben off when all the shooting started, but the terrorists still managed to get the list and Eric, not to be deterred by, you know, getting hit by a car, wasn’t fast enough to stop them, which means terrorist actions are imminent and there’s no hope to stop them. I don’t need to see this – I’ve had enough of this show.

Round Two: 24: Legacy

24: Legacy: Season 1, Episode 2 “1:00pm-2:00pm” (D-)

Has nobody learned from years of existence and secrets being spilled that whispering to someone without thinking that the person you’re talking about might hear you is a terrible plan? That happened on at least two separate instances in this episode, resulting in Nicole being put in danger because Isaac’s girlfriend is jealous and wants to set him up to get killed, and the student-teacher couple had to kill a snooping kid because they couldn’t find a closet in which to have some fun. I forgot to mention a few unfortunate things about the pilot episode of this show from Sunday night, namely that it’s completely dumb that Ben thinks that his only option is to sell the list either to the United States government or to the terrorists, so those are obviously the people who would pay the most for it, not, say, a news outlet trying to break a big story. This is “24,” of course, and so Eric doesn’t even have half an hour to wait, though he did have the gall to ask for a forty-five-minute extension after his police station heist didn’t go as planned (because that was a great idea in the first place). You’d think that his drug dealer brother would be able to provide a small sum of cash given the manpower he is, but of course it’s been a bad year and he’s strapped for cash. As if the future president being married to a now criminal former CTU director wasn’t problematic enough for PR, it turns out his campaign manager might actually be (but probably isn’t) the very traitor who used Rebecca’s access code to get Eric’s team killed. Keith didn’t even try not to give up his own access code, so you’d think that Rebecca could have trusted him to avoid ending up in the very situation she’s now created for Eric, who I’m sure will find some impossible way to get himself out of this situation.

Pilot Review: 24: Legacy

24: Legacy (FOX)
Premiered February 5 at 10:30pm

I’m not sure whether to classify this is a pilot or a season premiere, but, sadly, it’s a shadow of a once-great thriller and therefore should be considered as part of that original show. Granted, it’s not as bad as “Heroes Reborn,” partially because “Heroes” was never as good as “24” was in its first season, but it doesn’t have much to recommend it. Now, I should note that the first season of “24” was incredible, seasons two through four were pretty good, and everything after that was absolute garbage which pretty much defines jumping the shark, over and over and over again. What we have here is an attempt to reboot a show that signed off long after it stopped being engaging, and it’s back without its best asset, Kiefer Sutherland, love him or hate him. The real-time aspect is cool, sure, but when it’s a truncated twelve-season episode that doesn’t actually chronicle a day, the appeal is reduced considerably. The bigger problem is that the story is far from intelligent, and it’s only thrilling because there are people running around with guns and the music is fast-paced. We’ve gone from Jack Bauer insisting that people had to trust him to Corey Hawkins’ Eric Carter deciding that he’s the only one who can trust. In such an insular world, it’s hard to get attached to anyone. There are a few familiar faces in the cast, like Miranda Otto playing a somewhat similar role to the one she played on “Homeland” last year, Jimmy Smits, Dan Bucatinsky, and Teddy Sears. I think it’s probably better than I don’t start watching this show, but given my initial enthusiasm for “24,” I’m going to give it at least one more hour.

How will it work as a series? Just in this first episode, there have been at least a dozen people executed for no reason, which doesn’t make this storyline inviting, we have a poor student-teacher-terrorist plotline, and Otto’s Rebecca essentially did the same thing to the head of CTU that Jack did in the first-ever hour of the original show. That doesn’t suggest much potential for strength and quality in the future.
How long will it last? The reviews aren’t great, but that’s partially because I don’t think anyone was really clamoring for a reboot of this show after it went off the air less than a decade ago. Sutherland’s absence doesn’t help. Scoring the headline “lowest-rated post-Super Bowl debut in years” doesn’t recommend its enduring nature, and performing equally unimpressively in its time slot premiere in episode two is bad news too. Twelve episodes will be all this show gets.

Pilot grade: D