tvthatdoesntsuck

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

Trackback URI | Comments RSS