(11:00 P.M. - 12:00 P.M.)
Review/Commentary
Reviewer: D
So who knew that a villain's best weapon could be her stiffie detector? Nina's always good for a surprise but unfortunately she's the only thing that's getting a rise out of me as far as 24 goes right now.
Even the Golden Globe award for best TV drama that the show won last week didn't really rev my engine. I'd be happier about the award if it didn't seem to be coming a season or two too late. Maybe TV dramas are like great painters: they never get the attention they deserve until after they're dead.
OK, so I'm exaggerating; 24 isn't dead. Maybe I'm just cranky because my 1-month old son keeps me up all night. But some things get clearer when you're watching 24 at 2am on another sleep-deprived night and one of them is that this season just isn't rising near the bar set by seasons 1 & 2. In fact, the Globe award was the most surprising thing about the show so far this season.
What is this season missing? Two words: Imminent danger (and you thought I was going to say "Kim's underwear," didn't you? Tsk, tsk.) Wasn't the whole idea of the damn show that something really, really bad was going to happen within 24 hours, with both the seriousness of the catastrophe and the time-crunch giving the show a pee-in-your-pants intensity that no other show had? Well, right now, here are our three big potential calamities:
1. Some really bad virus could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to kill gazillions before we know it. Great idea except that the virus has gone from an imminent threat to a commodity in a complicated business deal. And complicated business deals - even ones where people kill each other - are usually as exciting as Orville Redenbacher in hot pants.
2. After years of pain and struggle, President Palmer could *gasp!* fail to pass a health care bill. I gotta say that this makes his last bit of imminent danger - the accusation of bad judgment for dating Anne seem like a real nail-biter.
3. Chloe could get fired for bringing a baby to work. Come on. Chloe's workplace problems are not nearly as interesting as the questions that remain unasked: who slept with her in the first place and did he kill himself when he sobered up the next morning?
Though the 24 clock continues to tick, it's almost irrelevant now. Even if the Salazars stop shooting each other long enough to steal the virus, they aren't on any clock to get it to anyone. Palmer's health care bill is at the whim of Congress and we all know how speedy those guys are. So the only marginally time-sensitive issue is whether Chloe's baby might let loose with projectile vomit all over some high-tech doodad, incapacitating the entire unit. Luckily, Kim is there and besides being a computer whiz, she also can change a diaper!
I think the 24 writers are suffering from intense subplot management problems. They've already totally dropped a few that seemed like they were integral to the early action (Kyle the non-infected drug flunkie, Anne the Presidential knob-polisher (J: substitute "sweetheart" if you prefer to keep it more PG-13! [Shuddering at the visual -Ed.]), Clowwdia the collagen-enhanced double-crosser, etc.). And just when they start developing a new one, it evaporates. I'm talking about the growing tension between the Salazar brothers, of course. About halfway through this last episode, I was thinking, well, an all-out family feud between Hector and Ramon could make things interesting. But then, boom, Ramon blows Hector away. Fine, sure, moderately interesting twist but why did they waste so much time early on setting up all these dynamics for power struggle between the brothers just to have them blown away with one bullet? Anticlimactic, at least. Freaking annoying, at most.
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