(12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M.)
Review/Commentary
Reviewer: D
I can pretty much sum up Hour Six in two words: “YEAH, baby!” This episode kicked some butt and took some names. I don’t want to get too over-the-top or anything but it was definitely the best episode so far this year, possibly one of the best hours of 24 ever. Maybe even one of the best hours of TV ever.
OK, maybe that was over the top. But really, this hour demonstrated how, when it’s firing on all cylinders, 24 is truly the only show of it kind (and no, I’m not getting any kick-backs from Fox’s PR Department; though, Fox, if you’re reading, I’m not above bribes…). Here are a few of the ways hour 6 rocked my world:
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-- Heller on the rampage. Can you tell William Devane has done this kind of thing before? He and Jack were like a well-oiled machine the way they cleared the building on their way out. Old Rumsfield seems like a tough customer but I can’t see him flashing a machine gun the way Heller does. The Fox web site lists in Heller’s bio that he was an Air Defense Artillery Officer. I don’t know – I’m thinking he could pass for a covert ops guy. If this is the way he played cowboys and Indians around the house when Richard was a boy, it’s no wonder that his son is such a jerkwad.
-- The Jack-n-Audrey knife act. Something about knives is just more visceral than guns. I like it that Audrey proved herself no wuss when it comes to protecting herself and, in addition to his laser-like marksmanship, Jack can throw a knife better than a circus magician. Do you think they regularly go to LaserQuest on dates?
-- No let down. After the first 12 minutes, I half expected the rest of the show to be about combing through the rubble, with snippets of random debriefing and folks back at CTU standing around the water cooler saying stuff like, “damn, what a morning, huh?” The show deserved a little downtime, what with the entire Marine Corps showing up, not to mention its main character catching a bullet. But no, this hour just didn’t let up. In quick succession, we have the introduction of new integral characters (Audrey’s dweeb of a husband), new mysterious characters (Marwan?), and new threats (we’ll get to that in a minute). A guy barely has a chance to take a leak before there’s a whole new slate to catch up on.
-- Characters with insight. A lot of shows, including 24, often have characters that somehow remain oblivious to the obvious things going on around them. It seems they do this so that the one character that does have insight will seem like some kind of a genius in comparison. This is frustrating because you end up yelling at the TV stuff like, “You idiot, Palmer, don’t you realize how STUPID it will be to bring Sherry into this?” Which is all to say that I like it that they had Heller figure out the Jack-Audrey thing before he had to walk in on them dry-humping in the CTU bathroom or something.
-- The new threat. Nuclear power plant meltdown – yep, that’s scary enough. In fact, given that we may be talking about dozens of power plants, it makes the single nuclear bomb two seasons ago seem like a cherry bomb in the boy’s bathroom. I was also impressed that the techno-geek mumbo-jumbo around this actually made a little bit of sense. I’m paid to worry about these kinds of things in my day job and one common web site “invasion” is a denial of service attack that could kinda-sorta be carried out in the way the bad guys do it here. Doesn’t that you make you feel all cozy about the nation’s security?
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