I love “24,” I really do.
But this was the weakest opening they’ve ever done.
Perhaps that’s a tad unfair. To be honest, I don’t really remember any season premiere other than Season One (Death from Above) and Season Five (The CTU Massacre). But this one, despite an abundance of torture (that knife through the kneecap was grueling to watch), not much happened. Well, a lot happened, but very little of it made sense.
President Wayne Palmer (any chance they’ll explain how a former Chief of Staff ascended to the White House in 20 months?) springs Jack Bauer from the clutches of the Chinese in order to use him as collateral in exchange for the whereabouts of the man behind the numerous bombings taking place all over the country. What does this say about the effectiveness of the US government? For things to get this bad, they would have to be either incompetent or corrupt on a scale that this country has never known, which makes the premise a tad hard to swallow. Picture the government offering to allow terrorists to kill you because they have no other scenarios to stop the attacks. The former Eli Cash would call this a You Must Suspend Disbelief moment, and he wouldn’t be wrong.
Boy, have things changed at CTU. Director of Homeland Security Karen Hayes and CTU director Bill Buchanan are married, which means one of them will not live to see the credits to the season finale. Milo is back, and Morris O’Brien, Chloe’s ex-husband, is his insubordinate subordinate. There’s a girl named Nadia above Chloe and below Buchanan. Her most valuable asset at this point seems to be the ability to speak Arabic. But the most entertaining casting move so far is Peter MacNicol (who will be referred to from this point on as The Biscuit) as President Palmer’s chicken hawk advisor Thomas Lennox, a guy who seems hell-bent on using the Constitution as toilet paper. He should be a fun foil, but I have to say that he doesn’t make me miss Agent Aaron “Old Yeller” Pierce or Mike Novick any less.
The most egregious, preposterous character addition, on the other hand, has to be the introduction of Regina King as Sandra Palmer, the sister to Wayne and David Palmer that, mysteriously, had never existed before today. Would it have been so hard to make her a half-sister or an ex-wife? Perhaps a hooker with a heart of gold? Anything but a blood relative to David Palmer. That’s insulting to both his memory and ours.
Oh, and for their big twist? The man giving up the goods on the terrorist is the terrorist, and he’s trying to have his reformed brother in arms dispatched by the very people reformed terrorist is trying to work with. Clever, no? No. It’s easy, that’s what it is. And the reaction by Palmer, Buchanan, Hayes and everyone else when Jack tried to explain to them they were about to take out the wrong man was maddening. This guy has saved the country five times already. I don’t care if he had bamboo shoots stuffed underneath his fingernails for the last 20 months: dude knows what he’s doing. He just bit a guy to death, okay? Listen to him. Oh, and was it just me, or was everyone else screaming, “Hotwire the car and drive, you moron!” after Jack escaped from Fayed’s lair?
Lastly, there’s the former stoner horn dog Kumar Taj as…wait for it…a terrorist. Ho, ho, and indeed, ho, as Will Harris once said. He did have one good line when he pointed the gun at the neighbor kid across the street. “Friend? You can’t even pronounce my name right.” Still, if he’s a terrorist, then so is Jeff Spicoli, or Brad Pitt’s character Floyd from “True Romance.” Puh, lease.
Tomorrow night promises to “change everything.” That’d be a nice change of pace, if you ask me. Not a good start, people. Time to start killing good guys.
