WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS of 24 Season Six
Do not read on if you don’t wish to be spoiled.
that won’t do, pig
Now that Season Six of 24 has ended, I can still say with absolute certainty that it reached its Jump-the-Shark moment early on, with one of the bad guys (from last season as well) revealed to be none other than Jack’s estranged brother Graem Bauer. This plot reveal, 5 episodes in (after a wonderful first four hours) generated nothing but groans from me, as I found the idea that this balding, glasses-wearing, Bluetooth-using middle aged guy is related to Jack completely absurd, even in the 24 universe. What’s worse is we’re told that the real villain of the season is Jack’s father, nicely played by James Cromwell despite the fact that we’re supposed to believe that he and Graem are both evil sociopaths who conspired to assassinate Dave Palmer, engineer Jack’s kidnapping by the Chinese, and facilitate the sale of nuclear weapons to Arab and Russian terrorists.
Ah yes, the terrorists. Not only do we get a rehash of the fourth season with Muslim terrorists, but we find out later that it’s really the Russians behind the whole affair, which is similar to season five. We get a repeat of Jack Bauer storming an embassy (this time Russian instead of Chinese), we get Jack Bauer going rogue (again), we get moles in CTU (and the wrongly-framed CTU employee who gets tortured because of it, again). We also get, unfortunately, ridiculous soap opera plotting involving Chloe and her ex-husband/current-boyfriend Morris, a character who is quite frankly the most annoying character to come out of the 24 universe. He has competition though. Milo, a dude from the first season that nobody expected to see again, is back and he manages to, within the span of a day, go through an entire relationshihp with co-worker Nadia, including flirting, courtship, kiss, jealousy, and breakup (well, he dies, so I guess the breakup part isn’t his fault). We get Silver Spoons Ricky Schroder as a CTU operative, who at first is a real asshole, then is sketched confusingly, seemingly a good guy and bad guy at the same time, before the writers finally break their wishy-washy attitude towards him at the season’s end, making him a certified “good guy” (VP Daniels is treated in exactly the same manner). There are references made to something that went down in Denver, but it’s all vague. There’s a character introduced in one episode used as Ricky’s foil, who attempts to destroy Ricky’s reputation for reasons completely unknown, and who is discarded without a word.
Morris: DO NOT WANT
Speaking of being used and discarded, the season is full of characters who are trotted out for their “hey, remember me!” factor and then forgotten about. Former President Charles Logan is brought back only to get stabbed by his wife two episodes later. We never find out if he lives or dies. Audrey Raines and her father are brought back briefly but are also discarded, with Audrey used as a casualty of Chinese torture. Speaking of Chinese torture, Cheng and his cohorts bring major pain to everyone, basically using Audrey as a hostage for a piece of Russian circuitry that can be used for figuring out Russian codes. Then they break into CTU and start killing people. (CTU never figuring out, after 5 seasons of moles, infiltrations, and terrorist attacks, that perhaps they should have guards and sensors around the sewer entrances underneath their building). And through it all, who gets the blame? Jack Bauer, Karen Hayes, VP Daniels’ assistant, etc.. But the Chinese? Nah, they can’t be held responsible, even though everything they did this season constituted an overt act of war. It’s as if everyone bent over backwards not to blame the Chinese, and instead worried about the Russian president starting a war, even though in real life such decisions are never made so quickly. Ditto the VPs decision to bomb the Muslim country of Un-Named-Istan, a few hours after a nuke is set off in Valencia. That such an act would never be considered such a short time frame is one thing, that nobody even has the balls to name the country being bombed is some kind of PC-crime that I never would expect the writers of 24 to commit.
SuperMilo: Able to hold long-term relationships in a single day
It comes down to the fact that season six blew its wad in the first four hours, culminating in a nuclear weapon going off in LA, killing thousands. So far so good, but it’s all downhill from there. I mean, after you’ve set off a nuke, what’s left to do? The writers never have the guts to set any more nukes off, and the remaining nukes are, surprisingly, rather easily retrieved. Bad guy Muslim Fayed and bad guy Russian Gredenko both kick the bucket by hour 17, and the rest of the season is filled with constant bickering by CTU employees and illogical decision making by everyone in authority. Gredenko switches sides multiple times in the same damn scene, as does White House staffer Tom Lennox. There are long stretches where we don’t even see Jack, instead we’re treated to more horrible dialogue and soap opera intrigue from Milo, Chloe, Silver Spoons boy, and shoe salesman Morris, who unfortunately, survives the season.
CTU Agent Mike Doyle, with Edward Stratton III (rich well-connected millionaire behind terrorist attacks) and Col. Wilma Deering (25th century military background)
Season Six has its moments, including a somewhat satisfying emotional ending that hits just the right notes, but it’s a case of too little too late in a season where the writers decided to throw everything they could at the wall and see what sticks. (At one point, they even go Rain Man on us, giving us an autistic computer hacker!) The problem is that when you’re all over the place, there is no coherent storyline or vision. The use of Jack’s immediate family as evil terrorist masterminds is just simply retarded, but what’s worse is the cause-and-effect blame game that every character plays on the show. If good guy A doesn’t perform act B, bad guy C will commit evil act D, and everybody will blame good guy A, of course. Characters love to accept consequences but they never place blame where it belongs. It’s a kind of twisted utilitarianism that I can’t stand.
Apparently there will be a new direction next season. That would be most welcome. But after viruses, killer gas, and nukes, what’s left? Perhaps aliens.
Just a crazy dream brought about by Chinese prison conditions. That’s all.
~Bill G
