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Review/Commentary
Season Finale Part 1
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Reviewer: D
Rich, baby. That’s what 24 is. Oh, it’s got the bracing sweetness of a Dairy Queen sundae but what makes it so satisfying is the profound richness, filling you up like the finest chocolate mousse.
What the hell am I talking about? I’ll tell you what – 24 is clearly the best show of this TV season (“Lost” and “Desperate Has-Beens” be-damned) and these last two hours delivered the goods in spades. I’ll talk about the grand finale soon (I can’t wait to slather praise all over that) but first there is plenty to relish in this penultimate epi.
First off (and demonstrative of this richness of which I speak) is the perfect placement of Michelle in the same situation Tony was in just last season. And does Michelle blow it all to hell like Tony did. No she doesn’t. But then, thanks to a clever (though pretty obvious) misdirection, she is made to regret that she didn’t do exactly what Tony did just last season. I’m sorry folks, but that’s some emotional / logistical mirror-work that Shakespeare would have been proud of.
Of course, only return viewers to the show can fully appreciate this richness; newbies – particularly ones who haven’t clued into the various recaps of last season provided by Audrey and Chloe at various points – were probably saying, “what the hell is Mandy going on about?” Well, if you are one of those folks, I strongly recommend you dial up your NetFlix and order up last year’s 24 so you can truly enjoy this feast.
And while you’re at it, might as well put selected disks from seasons 1 and 2 in the Queue so you can see what tantalizingly little we saw or knew about Mandy before this epi. It’s not like we get a whole lot of background on her this hour but still she’s an intriguing character to hang around with.
This epi was more singularly focused than a lot of them – it was mostly about dealing with the Mandy-Tony situation – but there were some other tasty tid-bits as well (sorry about all of the food metaphors; this diet is killing me). A couple of pretty intense scenes at the presidential bunker and then, of course, the scenes that led up to the zinger at the end with Bern selling out Jack.
But wait, I of course am getting ahead of myself again. Might as well start at the very beginning which consisted of what seemed like an extended “previously” intro (I guess to clue in the newcomers). This was nice because a) watching that missile take off never stops being cool, b) watching Michelle and Tony kiss never stops being hot, and c) the last shot showing Reiko looking all hot and bothered when she finds out Tony’s missing is, well, hot. And now, having used ‘hot’ more often than Paris Hilton does in an average day, I think I’ll go kill myself.
So Mandy hasn’t left the apartment complex which sets up the subsequent cat-and-mouse game. A couple notes from these early scenes: when did Novick get into the position to be bossing Audrey around? And have you noticed that he always seems to have his hand halfway blocking his cell phone mouthpiece? I’m thinking if he held his phone like that in real life it would be like listening to him through a pillow.
In fact, Audrey kind of becomes the whipping boy for everyone in this epi. Palmer tells her to come up with disaster scenarios for 20 of the biggest cities in the country? Audrey may have a enormous brain in that skinny little body (all evidence to the contrary) but she’d have to have a fleet of magic gnomes and a Cray supercomputer at her disposal to get that cranked out in less than a weekend. And, frankly, magic gnomes are notoriously undependable.
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