I haven't decided whether or not to add this to the regular recapping slate but after having plowed through the four hour season premiere of 24, the first episodes of the show proper in almost 20 months, I must say I'm more pleased with 24 than I have been in a while.
When last we left Jack Bauer, he had boringed his way through Africa before coming back to good ole US of A. The show picks up a few months later, with Jack testifying before the Senate about the "enhanced interrogation" from his days at the now disbanded CTU. The show has often been quite casual about all the torture stuff, so it was weird to see it addressed directly. Even weirder, however, was how overtly, angrily right wing it all was. From Jack's petulant defense to the straw man pomposity of the Senator to the gratuitous scene with the appreciate cop in the car, it seems that the creators of 24 are very pissed off with the shifting of public opinion and the impending closing of Guantanamo Bay. These scenes were pretty unpleasant, even by 24's vaguly fascist standards, but they were mercifully contained to the first hour.
Instead, we quickly shifted focus to the terrorist threat of the day: Jack's presumed dead BFF Tony Almeida. 24's biggest problems have always come when it gets too bogged down in its own internal logic. This is never going to be The Wire, but at its best, its a cracker jack action serial, which is why I have no problem with the way they casually brushed aside the fact that we watched Tony die in order to give Jack a more personal stake in the matter. Jack angrily discovers that not only is Tony alive, but he's working on an evil plan involves the kind of super-hacking technology that only exists in 24.
Of course, if you've made it to the end, you know that all is not what it appears. After an awesome interrogation sequence, Tony slips Jack an old CTU code word and a number that leads Jack to his old friends Chloe and Bill Buchanan. Yes, Tony is deep deep undercover trying to expose a conspiracy that goes deep inside the President's circle. But this isn't CTU. Instead, Jack, Tony, Chloe, and Bill end up forming a sort of A Team, operating outside of the government for the good of the country. Jack proceeds to bust Tony out of FBI custody in the most exciting sequence of the premiere and the two start working with the bad guys in an attempt to get to the man behind the attacks.
Meanwhile, that fictional African country (heretofore known as FAC) from the movie has descended into genocide and since that wimpy UN won't do anything, President Cherry Jones has decided its time for Team America: World Police to invade. The bad guys, who are behind the genocide, don't want that to happen and they tell her if she doesn't stop the invasion, bad things will happen. Honestly would there really be massive riots if there was a blackout for a few days? I thought that was a little overblown, but the other stuff they could do with that device seemed scary enough.
Meanwhile, the President Cherry Jones' son killed himself...OR DID HE? The First Gentleman certainly suspects foul play when a PI finds out that the son's girlfriend recieved $400,000 just a couple days after the death. It takes four hours but she finally comes clean that the son had discovered a conspiracy, THE SAME ONE JACK BAUER IS TRYING TO STOP. Yeah, it wasn't really that shocking (especially since it was information we learned in that lame movie from November), but it at least provided some hope that this storyline may get more interesting soon.
And finally, there's the FBI, which is the new CTU and features both Janene Garafolo and Entourage's Billy Walsh. Walsh seemed like an early favorite in this season's molestakes, but it turns out he was just worried about his wife, who was stuck on an airplane. So he interfered and lied to get her plane on the ground. Surely nothing bad will come from that. Meanwhile, the main character at the FBI is a female agent who I'll be calling Jack Jr. until I can remember her real name. Jack Jr., in the course of four hours, goes from by-the-books Constitution lover to a paranoid torturer. That Jack sure is persuasive. She clashes with her boss, who clearly has the hots for here, and Garafolo, who is the FBI's Chloe equivalent.
Its pretty exhausing to go through all that and it leaves precious little space for analysis but, despite myself, I have to admit that I kind of like it. Taking all the wackiness with a grain of salt, its actually pretty great to have Jack and Tony back together and the fact that they're no longer working for anyone is very interesting. It also says a lot about how 24 sees itself in Obama's America. Here's Jack Bauer, defender of the American way, deciding that his authority superceded the government, the military, or law enforcement, taking it upon himself to remove elements of power that he sees as dangerous or threatening. It is undeniably fascist and reactionary, perhaps moreso than the show has ever been, but its also a shocking amount of fun. Ultimately, the writing on 24 has never been its strong point and despite the bonkers political stuff, Jack is more human and interesting than he's been in a while and the greater the odds are against him, the more exciting it is. The first four episodes of season 7 may be a lot of things, but they aren't boring and, as far as I'm concerned, that makes them a vast improvement over season 6, as well as a lot of the TV that I watched last fall.
B+
