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Review/Commentary
Season Finale Part 2
Reviewer: D
It may be days (or weeks) after the finale of 24 that you’re reading this. And probably dozens of critics, fan sites, and blogs have weighed in on whether this season of 24 was better than all the previous seasons or not. Let me give you the final word: anyone who tells you that this wasn’t the best season of 24 ever is a crackhead, an idiot, an American Idol fan or an idiotic, crack-smoking American Idol fan. This season was to ‘best’ as Tom Cruise is to Katie Holmes – inseparable (…and a little creepy…and oddly compelling). Day Four is to 24 as Beluga is to caviar, Don Perignon is to champagne, and Lynyrd Skynyrd is to southern rock: simply the best.
Sure, there were some absurd moments and there are plenty of unanswered questions as the day comes to a close (Behrooz? Prez. Keeler?). The countless suicides and random acts of torture might have turned the stomachs of the more squeamish. But the constant tension, the near-lack of random filler (no cougars!), the great characters, the clever parallel storylines (Father-Son stories, Romantic triangle stories, etc.), and of course, all the cool explosions helped make this season continually surprising and tremendously satisfying.
Almost all of what was good about this season was represented in this last hour.
Examples?
- A plot that just kept getting deeper and darker. It would have been enough for me for the Chinese to send somebody to try and grab Jack in an attempt to mete out justice for the (annoyingly repeated) death of their consulate. But no. Instead of making the Chinese the simple bad guys, we are treated to an example of President Logan’s evil side (the fact that he had a side other than a simpering, wimpy one was in itself quite a surprise). The up-til-now VP apparently has a little hit man on the side to do his dirty work. This may be a bit implausible – after all, who would the VP really want to have killed other than, well, the President – but it still was an intriguing new ingredient to add to the soup, particularly right here at the end.
- Exquisite ironies. In a season full of ironic twists of fate, this hour had two great ones: 1) Palmer urges Logan to pardon the woman responsible for his near fatal poisoning, and 2) Jack – who would really want nothing more than to see Marwan die – struggles to save him. Now, it might be easy to engineer one of these twists. Heck, even American Idol had a twist or two this year (Constantine being voted out, for instance. So I hear…not that I ever watched it or anything…) But 24 just kept them coming, one more brutal than the next. My favorite was Jack being responsible for Paul’s death, after Paul saved Jack’s life. I imagine Jack’s dreams are populated by the ghosts of people like Paul (and Chappelle from last season, etc) – good guys that he killed. I spend time imagining that mainly so that my 1 year old waking me up at 3am doesn’t seem so bad.
- The emergence of true characters. Jack (and maybe Palmer) was really the only person allowed to have a full-bodied character in seasons past. Day 4 saw nuance and depth layered into a bunch of folks. We see Tony’s messy house and skanky girlfriend. Behrooz is a terrorist by blood who wields a mean shovel but who finally recognizes that he’s caught up in something real, real bad. And Chloe is more than just annoying, she’s…well, mostly she’s still just annoying but also a little endearing and even a touch vulnerable.
- Real good bad guys. This last hour saw the demise of Marwan and the potential release of Mandy. Though we don’t know a hell of a lot about what motivates these two, they were the King and Queen Bee of a veritable hive of busy bad guys that swarmed through this season. We started with the weird and wonderful Mr. and Mrs. Araz – the suburban terrorists who turned out to be not much more than a couple of cogs in the malevolent Marwan machine. We had the inscrutable flyboy who shot down the President – I’m still wondering what his full story was and whether he might pop up next season. There was even a brief interlude full of corporate creeps, showing that you don’t have to be a terrorist to be an indiscriminate killer. But back to M&M: they were both cold to the bone, intelligent as well as dastardly, and physically intimidating (tell me you’d approach Mandy in a bar, her with the high-heeled leather boots. One hard look from her and I believe my cajones would retract). I was sad to see Marwan’s brains splattered on pavement – it’d be intriguing to have him still on the loose. But I’m thinking Mandy, topless or not, will be back to wreak havoc again.
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