tvthatdoesntsuck

REVIEW FOR

24
Season Seven
Episodes Three and Four
“10:00am-11:00am” and “11:00am-12:00pm”
Written by Manny Coto & Brannon Braga / Written by David Fury & Alex Gansa
Directed by Brad Turner (both)

While less intense and emotional as Sunday’s episodes, the third and fourth episodes of the new season of 24entertained.  As expected, revelations are made, explosive action explodes, and boring new characters bore.  A bit unexpected, however, was that some old characters make an early return.  From the months old spoilers and the opening credits, we all knew that Chloe O’Brian and Bill Buchanan would be back in the fold.  They delivered just what the episodes from Sunday were missing, and that’s a feeling of connection to the other seasons.  With Jack Bauer, Tony Almeida, Bill, and Chloe all as the major characters, 24 feels like it’s supposed to.  Like 24.

 However, as glorious as the glorious reunion was, there was also some not-so-good stuff that put a bit of a damper on the episode.  The first hour climaxes in a huge action sequence, which was going fine… until it got ridiculous.  Jack Bauer wires a car in literally a second, breaks through concrete by pressing the pedal with his hand, lands safely on a car below, and slides out of the car in time to escape from FBI agents who are more than a little pissed at him.  Now, I get that Jack is the bad-assed BAMF on television, that’s true.  But being a BAMF means that he can bite people in the neck like a vampire, like he did in Season Six.  But this was a bit beyond my suspension of disbelief.  So I’m not buyin’.

On the plus side, there is some exciting Tony stuff here.  We get a final verdict on whether he’s good, bad, or somewhere in the middle.  And it’s gonna make for a great plot.  This is what will keep viewers coming back every week.

On the opposite of plus side, the side characters aren’t getting better.  President’s husband is boring as hell and the FBI agents all need to be smacked upside the head.  Except the hot lady who Jack choked out in the first hour.  She’s got Bauer girl potential, way more than Audrey Raines ever did.  But with the amount of new characters, only one good one is nothing to write home about.

Overall, good, but not quite where it should be yet.  With the potential they have set up though, it would almost be impossible for them not to go somewhere great.  They just need to concentrate less on the supporting character, but when they do switch focus to them, they’d do well to make them not suck.

7/10

REVIEW FOR

24
Season Seven
Episodes One and Two
“8:00am-9:00am” and “9:00am-10:00am”
Written by Howard Gordon & Michael Loceff & Joel Surnow / Written by Howard Gordon & Evan Katz
Directed by Jon Cassar (both)

I really like how 24 does premieres.  While it can be said that the show’s weakest point is its opening episodes, they’ve been making up for that a lot with the past two seasons.  Giving us four episodes over the course of two days is brilliant, and almost makes up for the year we spent without Mr. Jack Bauer in our lives.  After seeing the first two episodes of the season, which aired last night, I have high hopes for the seventh seasons.  I have to reiterate, though, that the sixth season had the best premiere of the series… but ended up being the weakest season yet.  However, this time, they had more than enough time to make all the story and character arcs perfect, and there is so much potential here that it’s nearly impossible for them to mess it up.

The return of Jack is something to behold, and he’s way more interesting here than he was in the mediocre 24: Redemption.  Jack gets a lot of awesome lines designed to make people talk about how badass Jack was, and while it does sort of make me yearn a bit for the days when 24 was a more humble show, it is also really gripping to watch.  The court scene in particular, when Jack is confronted about CTUs illegal actions, is insanely intense.  But that leads me to something I found to be really off about the episode.  CTUs protocol being a violation of the law is a huge retcon, and not one that I’m keen to let slip by without rolling my eyes.  I get that they’re revamping the series, and having the actions of CTU being put into question is an interesting way to reveal that the organization has been disbanded… but again, that’s a huge retcon.  CTU was in constant contact with the President and all sorts of official organizations throughout its six full seasons, and there was some stuff going on that they wanted to keep on the DL.  But the premiere of the seventh season operates under the assumption that the audience will buy the idea that CTU was never allowed to torture terrorists, when six seasons of the show argue the opposite.  That was a bit sloppy.

What’s not sloppy, though, is the thing that I was most worried about.  The “resurrection” of Tony Almeida, which could have felt like another campy soap opera twist from the sixth season, feels totally organic.  Jack’s disbelief is sort of a nod to the audience, because bringing back a character assumed dead is always risky, but the way it plays out from the beginning of the first hour to the climatic end of the second hour is just fantastic.  It’s emotional and intense and just really cleverly done.  While Tony does seem to be pretty far gone down the road to villainy, the writers leave it up in the air whether he’s truly evil or if he can somehow still be a double agent… by having him do bad things, but not things he can never come back from.  He kidnaps a guy and has him design dangerous technology to break into the government systems…. and then just manipulates two planes to deliver a warning shot, instead of killing anybody.  Whether he’s truly bad or not, the fact that he hasn’t really done anything unforgivable is so gripping, because at this point the story could go anywhere.  If he is bad, I hope he’ll be the Big Bad of the entire season, because he’d rival Charles Logan as best villain in 24 history.  But if not, they better keep his character around this time, because despite Bauer still being the main character and the show being entertaining, so much has changed that it doesn’t really feel like 24.  Janeane Garofalo’s character feels like a poor man’s Chloe, and all the new supporting characters at the FBI have this lame office drama that is really annoying to watch, especially knowing that Jack is apprehending Tony Almeida in the main plot.  Can’t wait until some of the regulars come back so this could actually feel like 24.

As it is, the premiere episodes were solid, probably the second best in the show’s history.  While it doesn’t yet feel like the show we know and love (or, in season six, knew and tolerated), it was still a really good two hours of television.

8/10