Here’s my humble opinion to preface the future episodes of 24, beginning with tonight:
After the first 6 or so episodes of 24, I was becoming scared for the future. **SPOILERS if you haven’t been watching this current season**
These episodes had an abundance of story lines that competing for precious airtime and useless, boring, time filler story lines. The President's sister watches her Arab boyfriend try to infiltrate his fellow Arab Detainees through surveillance cameras with the FBI. That was just boring diversionary crap. The British guy trying to find a new guy to set up the bomb’s triggers for Fayed was pretty boring but it did end up being important.
Chloe's love angle is too emotional for her character and is distracting. The increased involvement of Morris, Chloe’s alcoholic, ex-husband is a good character on his own and doesn't need all this Chloe Stuff. And there was Kumar and how a nice family was wrong and he was actual a terrorist. Who besides me had forgotten Kumar was on this season until right now?
And seriously, how many more Bauer family members do they have to drudge up for emotional family crap? The only Bauer holding his weight in the show is James Cromwell as his triple-crossing cold hearted father. Now a light is at the end of the tunnel, there is a major ass-kicking, chases and torturing on their way and they are all gonna be by Jack Bauer. Can we lose this Sister in Law, previous love affair crap? PLEASE. JACK DOES NOT ALWAYS NEED A FUCKING BITCHY WOMAN TO TIE HIM DOWN. If you think about it, Jack Bauer would never have the Women weakness, he is a trained warrior who just lusts to save the world, not worry about whiny blondes like Audrey, his daughter, and this new kid who looked like he walked off a beach runway in The OC.
It was all too much; too many boring characters, too many running plotlines but after last week, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
There was much talk with 24 fans of the show “jumping the shark.” But the 2nd half of the season is prepping to re-ascend 24 to the apex of television drama. Jack Bauer has figured out the family dirt and is ready to starting foil multiple apocalyptic plots in a matter of hours while having to fight urges of the necessary evil that is coming from inside his family. And now there has been an attempt on the Presiden’t life. How come we never get a shot at our President?
Anyway, Here’s my list of possible, positive developments:
1. Chad Lowe has been a fucking acting-sibling-revelation with his excellent portrayal of the creepy and conniving Deputy Chief of Staff.
2. Lowe has tied up the Chief of Staff, that guy from whiny Ally McBeal and taped his mouth shut so he can't keep bitching and whining to the president.
3. Jack hasn't been able to stop everything as usual; the vulnerability gives the show a bit of fresh air.
4. The chase for Jack's father should be gut-wrenching and awesome. Cromwell is the 2nd best person that could have been cast as Jack's father, after Keifer's creepy own real father and excellent actor Donald Sutherland. (That might be a bit weird though.) UNNECESSARY CONNECTION NOTE OF THE DAY: Remember Cromwell's excellent portrayal as the crooked and devious Capt. Dudley Smith.
5. Fayed has been pretty inactive for a few episodes, and now that I'm not tired of seeing his face, I kind of miss his devilish attitude. He fucking stabbed Morris in the back with a drill.
6. The collusion with the Russians and the Arabs is very interesting. Ruskie's play great enemy characters, maybe that's embedded in my mind from all that Cold War brainwashing in 60s-80s American film. Gredenko is the cold hearted prototype of a maniacal Russian. He's ruthless, war-starved, and ready for action. Back handed and evil. Gredenko is played by a man named Rade Serbedzija. Serbedzija played one of my favorite villains in The Saint with Val Kilmer. Interestingly, he plays a lot of Russians but he is from Serb born in Croatia and has been a busy man with 13 credits in 2006-2007.
7. Good backstabbing is the key to 24' s success and the most important of the recent backstabber has been reintroduced in this episode. Ex-President Charles Logan, who was responsible for the assassination of President Palmer. Logan claims to have seen Jesus or whatever and wants redemption. (Have you noticed Logan kind of looks like Nixon?)
8. The one thing the writers have done is end some of these episodes on excellent high notes. Giving the audience a taste but making you come back for the results. Think of the mushroom cloud explosion, Curtis’ death and now the attempted assassination of the new President Palmer and Assad. (Did anyone else notice that Assad is the Doctor from Star Trek Deep Space : Nine and now he’s the Hollywood’s go to go guy for diplomatic Arab characters (see also: Syriana) It will be sad to see Assad go, he’d been under-utilized of late, and was a very strong and interesting character. The President too was starting to grow on me in these last two episodes, but there’s no way he’s really dead.
So 24 may be on its way back and I’m looking forward to the next 3 months of action to decide. Remember, you can never give up on Jack Bauer…
TV Squad reviews last week’s 24
What do you think?
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