Dammit, There’s No Time!

Phones will all be turned off during tonight’s sign-off of 24 – in an electric perimeter than I can guarantee will be a lot more effective than any the Los Angeles Police ever set up in six seasons.

The first three Days of the Fox counterterror drams were as close to “Must-See” as any TV has ever been.  Four and Five were both decent.  Six was abysmal.  Seven was a worthy comeback, and eight has been almost back to early form.

For me, it’d be hard to top the first two seasons for personal immediacy, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (Day One was actually produced before the “man-caused disaster”); a guy fighting for his country on the one hand and his family – his aggrieved wife and his bratty teenager – on the other, and his comrades at CTU (implausibly mole-riven as they were) on the third; the demands frequently conflicted with each other.

In other words, just like life for most of us, except with nerve gas and bullets instead of angry principals and tax bills.

As the show got further and further from the immediacy 0f the three way network of loyalty and duty – to country, family and comrades – the flabbier and more West Wing-y it seemed.   In the earlier Days, Bauer’s loyalty to his nation (wrapped up in the logically-stretchy but dramatically brilliant relationship with Dennis Haysbert’s President Palmer, and then the even-better one with the reptilian mass of gray areas, President Logan – bounced off his troubled family, Teri and Kim, provided a constant tension that, by Day Six, had decayed into the sloppy, formulaic ones with Wayne Palmer and Audrey Raines, whose coma was the only interesting thing about her on The Longest Day.   On Day Six, Bauer had no personal skin in the game; the day’s biggest failing was that it was all about a scenario, not about Bauer’s personal conflict.

In a way, one of the show’s most ridiculed moments – Tony Almeida’s resurrection from the dead on Day Seven – was one of its best.  For the first time, really, since Day Four, Bauer had an immediate, personal conflict – his longtime loyalty to Almeida – along with a judicious return of a personal life, loyalties and conflicts  in the form of Annie Wersching’s Renee “Agent Hotpants” Walker.  And implausible as it was (“What?  24 implausible?”), it worked, and the show pulled off the impossible – it actually re-jumped the shark, in the right direction this time.

And so 24 actually is going out on top (barring a Newhart-like dream sequence ending of some kind).

So leave me alone starting at seven tonight.  Dammit, I won’t have time.

6 thoughts on “Dammit, There’s No Time!

  1. “Establish a perimeter! Chloe, open a protocol, get a satellite over the scene, and send the imagery to my PDA!”

    Season 8 has brought back the intimacy and urgency of the first 3 seasons. The long goodbye. Dammit.

  2. I am part of the 24 Fan page on Facebook. This appeared last Thursday:

    Tweet about the 24 Finale with Mary Lynn Rajskub http://www.twitter.com/rajskub this MON, 5/24 at 11am (PT)! Tag your tweets in Twitter with #dammitchloe to ask her questions.

    I had to laugh.

  3. DiscStoo – When season 8 started to get iffy Logan returned. Its been a thrill ride ever since. You should have given it another episode or two.

    Mitch – I’ll be home as well, neighbor. Decided to stay put and not be distracted. Will split time between 16×9 HD in A/C and 27″ SD in the garage near the tapper.

    Great catching up yesterday. I look forward to talking about raising our ‘works in progress’ in the past tense LOL 358 days Boop Beep Boop Beep Hahahaha About the time the ’24’ Movie comes out

    Flash

  4. I’m happy its going out on top, 8 seasons over 9 years and I’ve been a rabid fan since day one. I only gave up on season 5 because as Mitch noted it sucked. but hey 7 out of 8 for a series ain’t bad. I might have to go watch Lost now that its also over. I will happily be saying goodbye to Jack Bauer until the (potentially very crappy) movie comes out.

  5. Overall I enjoyed it but I did have a few observations:

    Jack’s on the run (again) but this time his enemies know he’s still alive. Pity that Taylor didn’t think to pardon him on her way out so at least he wouldn’t have to be on the run from his own government. I suppose we should be grateful she called off Logan’s assassins at the last possible moment.

    So Arlo and the drones weren’t completely useless but it might have been nice to keep the up in the air until the Russians arrived and take out some of Jack’s pursuers.

    Another President is forced to resign and face criminal charges. I think that the Taylors may give the Palmers a run for the title of Worst 24 First Family Ever.

    Rather than simply smashing or erasing the data card, Logan turned it over to Taylor and set the wheels in motion for bringing her and himself down. Seriously, who knowingly turns over potential blackmail material to someone who you know doesn’t trust you?

    Jack repays Jason’s sewing his knife wound by pistol whipping him unconscious and later biting his ear off. Logan repay’s Jason’s loyal service with a bottle to the back of the head and a bullet in the brain. Well at least he got to “enjoy himself” with Chloe and had a glass of whatever Logan was drinking.

    As soon as he put the gun under his chin, I figured that Logan was going to (improbably) survive. If he was going to off himself anyway, why bother to murder his loyal assistant?

    The entire peace process was undone by Taylor’s ham-fisted blackmail of the IRK by threatening them with a military attack if they didn’t sign the treaty. So instead of a “partner in peace,” she basically turned the new President Hassan into a believer in restarting her country’s nuclear weapons program and she will likely be even more repressive than her husband was after seeing how he was betrayed and assassinated by his own people. It seems to me that if she had come clean to Dalia Hassan as soon as she learned the truth, not only could they have worked out a treaty, she might have brought the IRK into the United States’ sphere of influence and gained an ally or strategic partner against the Russians.

    Wouldn’t someone have noticed that Chloe’s weapon hadn’t been fired when she claimed to have shot Jack? Or looked at the angle of the shot? I’ve never shot anyone before or been shot but I would think that law enforcement personnel are trained to notice these sorts of things.

    Cole Ortiz was totally badass the way he handled Jim the Mercenary. Seriously, this is one of the few new characters from this season that I would like to see return for the 24 movie. Okay, make that the only new character.

    What do you suppose the odds are that, given its track record of airtight security and utter trustworthiness of personnel, that CTU will be able to successfully protect Jack’s family even with Chloe running CTU NY?

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