Reviewing - 24
Jenna and I both grew up hearing about 24 but never actually followed it ourselves. Even so, we’d heard nothing but good things about it. So when it popped up on Disney+ back in late February, we decided to sit down and give it a shot. Over seven months later, we’ve watched practically nothing else. It’s been night after night of thrills and twists – and honestly, no season has been a dud. It’s been a high-quality experience all the way through, which is saying something considering how many seasons this show went through. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and we’ve gasped – a lot. One of the real treats of watching this show so late in the game is that every few episodes we do the thing where we point at the screen excitedly and say, “That’s that guy from that thing!” There’s so many actors from other stuff I know in this show. There’s a number of ‘The Office’ folks, some ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ alumni, and even one or two significant ‘Lord of the Rings’ appearances. I won’t beat around the bush anymore – this has been an excellent show. Let’s dive in.
Season One
Even before we watched episode 1, I was really intrigued by the idea of a show that unfolded in real time. I knew that each episode was going to cover an hour of real time, and that each episode directly followed the one before it. One season was one full day of time – which is a cool way to keep the tension high. One of the shortcomings of this format is that it’s hard to keep it up without suspending your disbelief a little bit. For starters, not one character in this show ever sleeps. That might be the easiest pill to swallow – if terrorists are on the loose, maybe the guys running the show should stay up until it’s resolved. But you’ll also never see a character leave to take a bathroom break – or at least one that’s ACTUALLY a bathroom break. The idea is that actions like eating, using the restroom, or blinking all take place during the commercial breaks. During that first episode when a commercial break revealed to me that the clock still ticks even during the breaks, I was thrilled. But there are definitely cracks in the system. There are times when a character is about to reveal something dramatic to another character just before a break, and then when we come back, four minutes are supposed to have elapsed. Are you telling me that these two guys just twiddled their thumbs for four minutes? Anyway, at the end of the day it’s a TV show. You gotta suspend your disbelief a little bit. And that’s fine.
Okay. So episode one starts rolling, and we get to meet a few characters. First off, the Allstate Insurance guy is playing David Palmer, running for president. Turns out he’s got a pretty significant role in this series, and all my life I just thought he cared about whose hands I was in or something. Unfortunately for him, there’s a group of assassins out to get him killed. Not only that, but he’s married to a woman named Sherry Palmer, who turns out to be one of the most fun and manipulative characters I’ve seen onscreen in a while. Her development over this series is an absolute blast.
While Palmer Jack’s wife Teri and teenage daughter Kim have been kidnapped by two different people. His daughter got kidnapped by someone she thought was a partier, and his wife got kidnapped (unknowingly for a while) by a guy posing as a father whose kid also got kidnapped. Seeing Jack’s wife figure out her circumstances and take charge was really cool. She was far from the traditional damsel in distress. Kim, on the other hand, started more or less falling in love with her captor because he had nice eyes, which was a bore. When Kim and Teri got reunited, there was a nice arc where the two of them had to work together in order to get out of harm’s way. That was really exciting. We also got to meet Tony Almeida and Nina Meyers, both of whom played relevant roles in this and further seasons. I don’t remember anything of significance that Tony did in this season – but man, Nina was something else.
Let’s skip ahead to the season finale, and spoiler alert just to be on the safe side. The end of this season was one of the most shocking conclusions I’d seen in television since LOST. Nina turned out to be a bad guy, which threw Jenna and me for quite a loop. Then not only did she turn out to be behind a whole bunch of bad stuff, but she murdered Jack’s wife. The final shot of the season is of Jack cradling the corpse of the woman he just spent 24 hours working to return to. Wow, what a finish. It really was a phenomenal first season, and it’s no wonder Jenna and I came back for Season Two.
One other thing I’ve gotta say about this season is the timeliness (either perfect or nightmarish) of its subject matter. Episode 1 aired on November 6th, 2001. Just two months prior, Al-Qaeda terrorists had flown commercial planes into the World Trade Center, killing almost 3000 innocent people. Terrorism was suddenly the only thing anybody was talking about, and along comes a show focused on that very thing exclusively. Not only that, but the very first episode featured a terrorist on a plane who steals some ID before blowing the plane up and jumping out. Obviously the writers couldn’t have known what was going to happen, and by the time 9/11 had occurred, there couldn’t have been enough time to rewrite this out of respect for the situation. Apparently this episode was originally supposed to air in October, but they bumped it forward and cut out some shots of the plane exploding. I don’t know what else they could have done, but right from the get-go it seemed clear that this show was about as relevant as a fictional show could be for its time.
Season Two
Well, Jack’s retired for the first of what will be many times over the course of this series. His pregnant wife was murdered at the end of last season, and the daughter he rescued won’t speak to him. By the way, she got kidnapped like three different times over the course of one day last season. That was laughable. But anyway, I guess that’s traumatized her to the point where she doesn’t want to see her father. I guess I can understand that to a degree. She’s a babysitter now, and within minutes we figure out that the father of the kid she watches is a homicidal maniac. Kim’s arc over this season is an exciting detour as she gets herself into an increasingly complicated mess of a situation. I found myself yelling at the television screen the most whenever Kim was around. That’s not to say that it was all her fault, but she definitely makes unwise decisions on a fairly regular basis.
David Palmer’s President now, and things are going great until he decides to bring Sherry back into the mix. As disastrous of a decision as that is for him, it’s a wonderful decision for us, the audience. Sherry is more and more fun every time she enters. Even without her, though, Palmer has a lot of trouble to deal with. His main arc focuses on his decisions to trust Jack Bauer despite evidence that pushes others in the opposite direction. Palmer’s trying to prevent war in the Middle East, and everyone else seems ready to go in, guns blazing. This was the first full season written AFTER 9/11, so I was really intrigued as to the direction they’d take. What I admired is that the season maintained a balance of evil terrorists from foreign nations with innocent people in America who might have the same skin colour or worship the same god. After an incident like 9/11, a lot of racial profiling and discrimination may have been inevitable. But this show reminded us that its inevitability didn’t make it right, and that’s cool.
I’ve heard that this show has been criticized for its depiction of Islamic terrorists – and I suppose it’s not entirely without merit. There are regularly Muslim villains in this show – this season in particular. That said, this season and others have multiple moments where we’re reminded of Muslims and foreigners who are fighting for the right thing or just trying to live their lives without bothering others. I get why Muslim extremist terrorists were the bad guys a lot in this show – that was a very real and present fear at that point in time. But the writers also showed us Muslims who weren’t extremists, and that’s important. We’ll talk more about some of their missteps later on, but for now let’s get back to Season Two.
We get to meet Michelle Dessler in this season, and her arc with Tony was a lot of fun. George Mason was also a really heroic character, and he had a dramatic story for us for the fifteen episodes he appeared in. Then there was Kate Warner, who I didn’t care for too much. She was the paranoid one who was convinced everyone was a terrorist – and she turned out to be right. The writers built a little bit of romantic tension into Kate and Jack’s relationship, but it’s written out by the start of next season. I, for one, was thankful for that.
Some of the coolest bits this season included CTU getting blown up, Mason’s sacrifice, Jack literally dying, and everything Sherry did. Kim’s brief run-in with a cougar was also unbelievable, but still fun. OH – and Nina came back. That was an absolute blast. This was a great second season, no question about it.
Season Three
Man, this was a great season. First of all, chunks of it felt pretty relevant considering the pandemic my wife and I were in the midst of while watching it. There’s talk of lockdowns, quarantine zones, and vaccines that will take all too long to prepare. But more than that, we got to see the characters we’ve come to love struggle with increasingly difficult decisions. Michelle and Tony are a thing now, and they regularly have to decide whether they value national security as more important than their love for each other. Jack’s struggling with a heroin addiction he picked up while undercover, and his daughter’s dating what is essentially a younger version of him. Kim’s also working at CTU now, which was a cool way to keep her character involved without making her a damsel in distress for the umpteenth time. We also meet Chloe, who’s annoying personality somehow ended up making her a fan favourite. She does grow on you eventually, but for the first little while I was definitely in the “get this lady outta here” camp.
On the other end of the spectrum, Michelle Dessler absolutely crushed it this season. She was in a key segment of the season where a hotel filled with people suddenly got exposed to a deadly virus. Her work to contain the situation was really exhilarating to watch, especially as she found herself making tough call after tough call. I definitely was hoping for more of her in seasons to come. Her husband Tony grew in his relationship with Jack, particularly in their arguments about when to follow the rules and when to break them. There are a few key scenes where Tony really criticizes Jack’s methods – and what’s great about those scenes is that they’re totally justified. Jack literally never does as he’s told unless David Palmer is asking him to do it. If the person in charge of CTU asked everyone to come into a meeting wearing blue shirts, Jack would storm inside in a red shirt, guaranteed. And he’d yell something about how he had to do it in order to maintain his cover so that he could steal the Declaration of Independence or something. Sweep everything off the table, shove someone against a wall. That’s Jack Bauer.
We can’t talk about Season Three without bringing up Sherry’s descent into madness. Sherry is always fun to have around, but she goes for the gusto here with the murder of old what’s-his-name. What’s great about Sherry is that she’s willing to do pretty much whatever in order to get her way, but she’s simultaneously convinced that whatever she’s doing isn’t really that big of a deal to begin with. She’s always playing a game with someone, and that makes her a real blast. Her arc in this season was just great.
We also can’t forget Nina, who is back with a vengeance for the third time. She and Sherry are both characters you love to hate, and it was so exhilarating seeing her inside CTU again. The end of her story arc with Jack Bauer was also satisfying – like I’ve said in other reviews, it’s always best to leave the party before the fun’s over. Nina didn’t get old, and that’s why her finale was perfect.
Last of all, Jack continues to do ridiculous and death-defying acts in order to get the job done. He puts a gun to the head of his partner and pulls the trigger. He briefly teams up with Nina and goes to great lengths to convince her that he’s loyal. He cuts off a friend’s hand. He murders an innocent man. There is literally nothing that is “over the line” as far as Jack is concerned. It’s one of the things that makes him such a unique protagonist. Whereas some heroes have a strict line they don’t cross, Jack has no line. He’ll throw a puppy into a river without a second thought if it gets him one step closer to taking down a terrorist. Does that make him likable? Not necessarily. Does it make it interesting to watch others react in horror to his actions? Absolutely. 24 has done it again.
Season Four
Season Four started slow but ended with a bang. At first, it felt like the show had more or less wiped the slate. Tony, Michelle, Kim, and Palmer were all gone. Chloe was still around and we got to meet Edgar, but for the most part it seemed like the only constant was Jack Bauer. I also felt like at first he didn’t have much of a reason to get as involved as he did in the circumstances. For the second time in this show so far, Jack’s retired from CTU. He’s gone to work for the Secretary of Defense or something like that, strictly in a non-field-op position. Yet it’s really not more than a few minutes before Jack’s grabbed a gun and shot somebody in the kneecap. I guess shooting people in the kneecap is a habit that isn’t easily broken.
Anyway, Jack’s dating a new girl, Audrey Raines, who has turned out to be a powerhouse in every season we’ve seen her in so far. She’s a talented actress who can really convey a lot of emotion without uttering a word – the grief and horror she experiences this season are really palpable, which makes us really root for her. She ends up getting kidnapped in pretty short order, which gives Jack a bit more purpose. It’s around then that the season really starts to pick up.
Tony comes back, and it’s great to see him. However, since the events of the previous season, he’s not exactly in a great place. He and Michelle split up, which at first made Jenna and I feel like we wouldn’t be seeing her again anytime soon. But the mention that she was working at Division meant she was (narratively) close by, and it wasn’t long before Michelle walked in the door. The tension between her and Tony was really exciting, because we all wanted to see them reconcile even in the midst of everything that was going on. Eventually, of course, they do, but only before Michelle ends up getting put in the exact same place that Tony had been in a season ago. That was another great writing choice – particularly in the sense that Michelle and Tony ended up making different decisions. Long story short, I think Michelle and Tony are great.
The President of the United States gets shot out of the sky by terrorists, and even though he ends up surviving, the Vice President Charles Logan is sworn in. Turns out he’s so bloody incompetent that he begs Palmer to come back – and we the audience are just fine with that. Even though Palmer’s days as President are pretty decidedly over after the last season, it was great to see him take charge with confidence and charisma just as he’d always done before. The tension between him and Logan was a lot of fun to watch. I feel like I’m saying “fun” to describe a show about torture and terrorism a lot, but the key here is that the writers always manage to put characters we love in situations they’ll hate, or with people they won’t work well with at all. Stuff like that is what makes for great storytelling. The season ends with Jack ‘retiring’ for the third time – he’s officially and permanently incognito as a result of his actions during the day.
I don’t think I’d say that Season Four was my favourite season overall, but it definitely meets the high bar that the other seasons set.
Season Five
Apparently, the general consensus is that this is the best season of 24 - and I can definitely see why. That first episode is an earth-shattering wake-up call. David Palmer is assassinated, a move that I never would’ve seen coming. Michelle and Tony get blown up too, and only Tony manages to make it out in critical condition. Chloe nearly dies as well, throwing literally everything up in the air to remind us that Jack is the only certain thing about this show. I’m speaking pre-emptively, but this might be the best premiere of the series.
Jack’s fighting terrorists bent on nullifying an anti-terrorism treaty between the United States and Russia. At first, it seems like your standard run-of-the-mill terrorist who’s just trying to get the U.S. blown up. But then things get really amped up when it turns out that President Logan himself is wrapped up in the attacks. The lengths he goes to in order to keep everything undercover are immense, and his building desperation makes the plot really intriguing. The episode where he nearly commits suicide was incredibly slow – in a good way – compared to the rest of the series, in the sense that they really lingered on the despair that Logan was feeling. Last season he was a bit of a loser, and that’s how it seemed he was at the start of this season. But by the end, he was a true villain – and that change made his character so compelling. The final episode of this season was really satisfying in the way they resolved that issue.
The episode where the nerve gas was released at CTU was another high-octane moment, but it led to the death of Edgar, who had become one of my favourite characters. He’s not the first character this season to be upset by their own death – the actor for David Palmer wasn’t pleased when he found out about the assassination and apparently refused to film it at first. Edgar was a really likable character, and I’m sad we won’t get to see more of him. Same with Michelle – she was a powerhouse, and it hurt that she had to leave. But then again, this show has a knack for killing characters off when you’re most invested in them, which I guess makes for smart storytelling.
Season Five ends on a major cliffhanger, which so far isn’t super common for the series. Season Two ended with a dark turn, but the other seasons more or less concluded their stories without kickstarting new ones. Here, Jack is captured by the Chinese now that word of his survival has gotten out. It was more or less an inevitable development, but after the day he’d had, I had hoped he'd get a bit of a break. It really set the stage for Season Six, and made the ending of this season bitter-sweet to say the least.
Season Six
Jenna and I agreed that this was our least favourite season yet.
Wayne Palmer wasn’t as compelling as President compared to his brother David. And without many of the characters we’d come to know and love over the past little while, it seemed like we were having to make do with some newer characters that we just weren’t as invested in. It was cool at the start to see a Jack Bauer who had lost his mojo, but I wish they’d done more with that than what we got onscreen. As for the nuke going off on American soil, it was certainly a major moment – although not necessarily an emotionally impactful one. We know that the bad guys are bad, but just because they do something really bad doesn’t mean the stakes are going to be higher for us as the audience. Yes, a nuke went off and killed thousands of people. But from the audience’s perspective, we didn’t really know any of those people, nor did we have to watch anyone involved in the cleanup. Think about Avengers Infinity War. When Thanos snapped his fingers, we watched each character die. It was such an impactful moment because of the emotional connection we had with each of them. Here, it was spectacle without much substance, unfortunately.
That’s not to say that this was a bad season. There was still plenty of action, deceit, intrigue, and counter-plotting. There just wasn’t enough emotional glue to tie it all together for Jenna and I. Yes, Jack’s father was in it this time, but what Jenna and I really wanted was more of Audrey. And tragically, it seems like Audrey is just another casualty on Jack’s list of people whose lives he’s screwed up. We weren’t turned off of the show completely, but this season was the one that felt the longest.
24: Redemption
Although it basically feels like an extended 24 episode, Redemption is a thrilling action-packed film that doesn’t waste time with anything it doesn’t need.
Although I have pretty much only good things to say about this film, I have to admit that it’s obviously a made-for-TV movie that can’t stand on its own. The film works as a prequel to 24: Season 7, but as a result it opens doors that it has no intention of closing. There is a main goal – Jack is trying to rescue a group of kids from being recruited into a child soldier army – but there are other side plots that only end up mattering if you’re planning on watching the season ahead. That makes this suffer as a standalone piece, but as a part of the 24 franchise it’s great. Jack’s far from home but doing everything that we love – protecting people by any means necessary. The emotional stakes are established right off the bat, which means that everything Jack does is relevant and impactful. The climax of the film in particular had Jenna and I on the edge of our seat when it came down to whether or not the kids were going to be allowed to get through the gate – although perhaps that’s because we didn’t realize the film was almost over at that point. In short, I’m glad we didn’t skip this movie – but it’s really for 24 fans only.
Season Seven
This definitely felt more like the Jack Bauer that we know and love. There was a real sense of urgency and movement this season, and a few new and exciting characters added some fresh zest to the series. All in all, this was way more fun than Season Six.
A couple familiar faces joined us this season – some more believable than others. First and foremost, Tony Almeida is back, but you really have to just not think too hard about it. If you remember, Tony died in Season Five. He got stabbed in the chest by the bad guy with the biggest needle you’ve ever seen, and then he died. They put the white sheet over him and carted him away. Now he’s back, and it turns out that the bad guy deliberately missed Tony’s heart. Not only that, but he hired people to cart Tony’s body out of CTU so that they could make him work for them. It’s not just a stretch. It’s an unthinkably large reach. But whatever – I guess Tony’s back. It was nice to see him again, and his presence wasn’t wasted. Tony was someone Jack was rooting for, but he was also unpredictable. I can’t say I love the way his arc ended, but the season was definitely better off for having had him – no matter how unbelievable his return.
Kim Bauer also came back for a few episodes, and it’s always nice seeing her again because she’s one of the few women in Jack’s life who hasn’t been killed or left behind. She unfortunately found herself in the same kind of danger she’d faced seasons ago, but her veteran status on the show helped ensure she wasn’t a damsel in distress. She was a target, but she was also someone who took chances and made decisions. That was great.
Two new faces were my favourite parts of this season: President Taylor and FBI Agent Renee Walker. Taylor was the kind of President that this show had been missing. President David Palmer started off as a sort of uber-righteous leader. He always made the right call – well, at least until Season Three. In this season, Taylor is a leader who always makes the right decision, no matter the consequences. She’s faced with increasingly difficult choices, and every time she does the hard thing instead of the easy thing. I’m not surprised Cherry Jones won an Emmy for her performance as President Taylor. She did an excellent job of commanding the room, and her acting really showed us so much of what was going on in her head. Loved her. Renee Walker was in some ways a spiritual successor to Michelle Dessler in the sense that she’s a female action hero with a leather jacket. What made her character so interesting was the way her ideology was challenged by Jack’s. Over the course of the season, we watched her leave ‘the rules’ behind in favor of getting the job done. She was conflicted every step of the way, and that’s what made her such a compelling character.
On that note, I really liked the way the show started to criticize Jack’s methods to an extent that they hadn’t before. The show’s always been up front about its premise that Jack is kind of messed up, but the pitch has usually ended with “But he gets the job done.” This season, characters are actually starting to say that it doesn’t matter whether or not the job is getting done if the job isn’t getting done the right way. Jack has no hesitation when it comes to hurting people to save others, but this train of thought is consistently challenged. Yes, the season ends off with Jack more or less sticking to his guns, but I liked how the show wasn’t afraid to lean into that discussion a little bit more.
Season Seven didn’t slow down for a second. Each episode kept the momentum going, and the way each character fought the others in order to get their mission accomplished was as exhilarating as ever. Jack hasn’t run out of steam yet.
Season Eight
Originally pitched as the final season of the show, Season Eight pulls out all the stops to give us a pulse-pounding finale.
Long story short, this was a great season of 24. There’s lots of action, the energy never dissipates, and there’s always emotional stakes for our characters. Most of all, the final batch of episodes really kept the pressure high right up until the final minutes of the show. I only have two gripes that I need to voice, and then we can move on.
I wrote in my review of Season Seven that President Taylor was a total boss. My favourite thing about her was that she always made the right call, no matter the stakes. That kind of didn’t work out this time around. President Taylor makes a bad decision in the second half of this season, and then sticks with it right up until the finale. Obviously it made things very interesting for Jack, but it just didn’t feel believable to me. This woman was willing to lose her husband and send her daughter to jail in order to do the right thing, but now she’s cutting corners to get a treaty signed? I didn’t really think her switch was justified, although Cherry Jones did as good a job as ever pulling it off.
The other thing that bugged me was how they killed Renee. She was a total scene-stealer in the last season, and reminded me a lot of Michelle Dessler in the way that she kicked butt and held her own as an action hero. But just as things were getting interesting, they killed her off in order to propel Jack Bauer into a state of frenzied madness. I’m all for putting Jack in a position like that, but it felt like a robbery to lose Renee as the price. This show can’t help but get rid of strong female figures. I know that Jack’s the star – I get it. But Renee was the closest romantic interest Jack’s had to an equal since Nina, and we still had to say goodbye to her too soon.
The other supporting cast members were some of the best we’ve seen yet, with Hastings, Cole, Dana, and the welcome return of Charles Logan. He’s been an incredible performer since the beginning, giving us a character with such a range of expressions and motives. The episode this season where Jack went full MCU villain and kidnapped Logan was an absolute blast, and a big part of that came down to how terrified Logan was through it all. That was so great.
If Season Eight had been the finale of the show – as it was for four years – it would have been a great place to leave things. It’s a bummer that they couldn’t give Jack a happy ending – especially when he was just about to get a taste of that, but he’s an action hero. That’s not always in the cards for them. Thankfully for him, he’s got one last chance to get a happily ever after in Season Nine. Here’s hoping that’s what happens.
Season Nine
Well, so much for a happy ending.
Season Nine came out four years after Season Eight did. It was kind of like an encore presentation, both because of the time gap but also because the season was designed to only last twelve episodes instead of the usual twenty-four. Show reunions and comebacks like this have failed before, but I think this season works just as well as any of the seasons that preceded it. Jack does what he does best, and the return of Chloe, Audrey, and James Heller helped ensure that the season felt relevant to the rest of the show. I still don’t understand how Heller survived falling off a cliff, but hey, they brought Tony back from worse. This never felt forced or like the show was past its prime. If anything, it made me wonder why the show ever stopped.
Jenna and I were hoping that Jack would have some sort of meaningful closure to his life of violence and action. He’s worked so hard for the past nine seasons that we really wanted him to be able to put this chapter of his life behind him. Tragically, this wasn’t the case. Jack’s final moments leave us on a highly ambiguous (but decidedly dark) note. He’s been arrested by the Russian government for his crimes from the end of Season Eight. We don’t know if Jack is alive or dead – and worse, we don’t know which one of those is preferable. For all we know, Jack spends the rest of his days being tortured and imprisoned by the Russians. It’s an incredibly tragic end, but it’s also unfortunately one that makes total sense. Right from Season One, we’ve learned that Jack’s story is a tragic one. He makes tough decisions, and then has to pay for it time and time again. If you want Jack to have a happily ever after, then I suppose the right call is to watch until the end of Season Seven and then watch the first five minutes of Season Eight, then call it a day.
It took Jenna and I six whole months to get through this show. It was a great run. We watched it every chance we got, and although Season Six was a bit of a downer, the show remained so consistently competent from beginning to end. It was a show packed with action, loaded with high emotional stakes, and it was never afraid to take bold directions with its storytelling. Thanks for everything, Jack Bauer. Hope you made it out of Russia.