Another Day in the Life of ...

This is a bit late, but after last week’s 24 season finale—a two hour blitzkrieg of unhinged Jack Bauer action—I think the most recent season is the best since season one. For the first time, we managed to go an entire season without major excursions into melodramatic subplots unrelated to the central threat. No Terry getting amnesia, no baby for Chloe to watch, no stupid mountain lion attacking Kim. Heck, not much Kim at all. The writers stuck almost exclusively to the primary threats: President Logan’s traitorous ways and the terrorist nerve gas attacks. Those threats drove the show, organizing the action and keeping the suspense levels, if maybe not the believability, jacked way, way up.

Even better was that, for the first time, each character acted consistently, exactly as you’d expect them to act, at every crucial point. Previous seasons have seen, especially in the supporting characters, contrary viewpoints argued solely for the sake of creating some time-wasting conflict, with characters taking on positions that simply don’t make sense. This season, the writers created a nearly perfect tangle of interpersonal frictions. No, the characters on 24 aren’t terribly complex; even Jack is basically just a justice and vengeance machine torn between duty to country and family. But this year, the squabbles seemed to be about something more than stalling for time while Jack drove the LA freeways.

The show’s biggest strengths are its pulse-pounding terrorist plots and its ferocious, unstoppable leading man. Making good TV out of 24 isn't hard: You throw Jack in a jam and watch him claw, shoot, and torture his way out, sometimes with the help of CTU, sometimes with CTU as the obstacle. Make the choices as painful as possible; keep the body count high (so long Edgar!), and when all else fails, bust out some snazzy techno-gimmickry to save the day. Though this season didn’t quite match the drawn out complexity of the first--the writers have clearly gone for a more self-contained, episodic approach--it managed to stick to its dual strengths and give us 24 of the best Jack Bauer power hours yet.