Tuesday, August 17, 2010

The Sixth Season of 24

I was dreading this day ever since I decided to go down this never-ending path. For me, the sixth season of 24 is where the greatness died. The show was never The Wire when it came to tightness of storyline but this season felt like they took whatever was left and threw it all together. It doesn’t help that there was a fantastic 24 idea sitting there for them at he end of Day 5. 24 was still a ratings winner after Day 5 so they should have had the money to make Day 6 be Jack’s escape from China. Instead of truly doing something new, Jack is brought back and just another day of 24 occurs. This time with evil families, pregnancy reveals, recovering alcoholics, Presidents rising from the dead, and a variety of other last second ideas.

It’s still Jack Bauer running around saving the day. That can never be a bad thing. We did get to see Jack eclipse his season 2 beard with his new and improved Chinese incarceration beard. And is he going to have those scars for the rest of his life? That is going to make taking his shirt off for Renee years later very awkward. Jack was also forced to kill another “friend” this season. I wonder if Curtis was a better friend than Ryan Chappelle. He definitely knew Chappelle longer but he was a dick. Hmm. And for a lackluster season, his climatic fight with Fayed was one of the best 24 has ever staged. Of course, Jack single-handedly mowing down all of Fayed’s guards preceded it. Then they went and tried to top everything they’ve ever done with the last hour’s oil platform sequence. It was such a huge set piece and fun to see blow up but Jack was more badass freeing the Hellers in season 4 or taking on the LA Coliseum in season 2. And even in a shit season, Jack’s speech to Heller at the end of the day was one of Kiefer’s great monologues. He finally said all the things we’ve watched him go through all these years and how people just continue to take advantage of him.

On the other hand, Day 6 had most of the dumbest shit involving Jack that 24 will ever do. Turning his mentor, Christopher Henderson, evil was fine as a one-time plot idea to torture Jack. But to come back one season later and reveal that Jack’s immediate family consists of people he has dedicated his life to stopping. Maybe if it were just his younger brother rebelling against his family and perfect older brother, I would have accepted it. But then they went and turned Phillip Bauer into a complete evil bastard and I lost all interest. What a complete waste of James Cromwell’s skills. In a world where they wouldn’t bring in Donald Sutherland to play Jack’s dad, Cromwell did the best he could with bad material. His reasons didn’t even make sense! And that wasn’t it for the crap involving Jack. After 2 solid seasons of Audrey as the woman in Jack’s life, season 6 felt it necessary to destroy that in a monumental way. After all my crazy plans for a Chinese storyline season 6, what I was given was Audrey being tortured into insanity and Jack is mad about it. This day sucks.

No other character stood out during Day 6. I would assume that the Wayne Palmer/Noah Daniels plotlines were supposed to hold up the other half of the hours. Even though I like both actors, they were given nothing to work with. They gave Wayne the soap opera arc of rising from the dead to save the day before succumbing to his injuries. While Powers Boothe was brought in to give the standard Powers Boothe performance, he spends half of his episodes on the warpath demanding that America drop bombs. And he would repeat this over and over and over again. It was tiresome and is even worse to look back on when his character became less rage-filled at the end of the day. I wrote about it in the episode but I feel that Assad could have been the standout character but all of his potential was wasted. Tom Lennox was close to being a great 24 character. As usual, he started as a complete cliche of a scheming politician but once he started not being a 100% dick Lennox became the best thing inside the White House. Ghostbusters 2 will never die!

So I have to have some good to say about the characters this season right? For the third season in a row, Bill Buchanan proves himself to be the most competent man to ever set foot inside CTU. And I feel the need to point that out because every other character seems to exist to get in Jack’s way. So Bill stands out because he talks to Jack and trusts his opinion. It’s very refreshing. Sadly, Day 6 was one of the weaker days for Chloe O’Brian. She seemed to exist only to react to Morris throughout the day. When she was involved with what Jack was doing, the greatness of Chloe would come back but the rest of the time was just filler leading to the ultimate filler idea of her being pregnant. That being said, Morris O’Brian is a fun character. He is consistently funny and somehow worked through the alcoholic storyline without making me despise him. Hey look it’s Milo Pressman! After seasons of people asking about Milo, he is brought back just to snipe with everyone working at CTU. Then he was killed. Milo should have stayed far away from CTU LA. I still don’t like Karen Hayes and thankfully this will be the last time we see her. The Logans and Pierece were brought back for a weird storyline that existed on an island just so we could see them again. And Audrey was brought back to just stare off into the distance and Heller only had about 10 minutes of screen time. It was not a good day for returning favorites.

I'm not even interested in the rest of the crap that took place in this season. That's what the next post is for. Day 6 is the reason why 24 should have ended after Day 4. Who wants to watch their favorite show drive into a ditch? This will be the low point for the series. Sadly, instead of being bad the show will become boring from here on.

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