Here it is. Three weeks after the event and you all probably no longer care but lets pretend that you do…

Things kick off with the revelation that the investigators for Criminal Justice all look like Evil Edna from Willo the Wisp as Olivia Taylor is interviewed by three large flat screen TVs over Jon Voight’s death. Olivia though wasn’t going to break so easier.
Meanwhile Jack was breaking Tony out of custody. This has been the general trend of this season — Jack takes Tony into custody then breaks him out — Jack would have saved a lot of time if he’d just left Tony to his nefarious schemes and focused his efforts elsewhere. Special Agent Walker didn’t believe Jack would go through with it so called his bluff so Jack shot the toe off one of the armed guards which I thought was a tad unfair on the armed guard who knew Jack was serious.
Jack escaped with Tony and met up with “The Assassin of 1001 Wigs” Cara, who wasn’t wearing a wig thus making her new nickname completely redundant. Despite losing the last canister of the bio-weapon, Tony proved again what a great evil genius he now is, he was going to make more of it by harvesting the toxins from Jack’s body! We all knew Jack’s body was a deadly weapon but still…
Aaron Pierce and Slimy Shawshank Guy conspired to bring down Olivia Taylor by getting the recording from the secret date recorder in her office. However Olivia found the device and had Slimy Shawshank Guy arrested before he could leave the White House.
Before Jack escaped with Tony, he told Special Agent Walker that Kim’s life was in danger so she rang Kim at the airport to warn her. Kim, using every ounce of her cunning, distracted her would-be- kidnappers with baby photographs until airport security arrived. There was a shoot-out. Lots of people died. Kim stabbed one of her kidnappers in the leg with a biro while the other ran off. Kim though was pursuit. Run kidnapper, run!
Olivia got the data recording back and promptly destroyed “it”. Olivia though is no Mike Novick and if only she had listened to the recording first she would have probably realised she fell for the oldest trick in the book… the old switch-a-rooney. The real recording was with Aaron Pierce. D’oh!
While Jack was having a sample of the toxin taken from his spinal chord by some nasty scientist people, Tony asked Cara if he could meet with the mastermind behind the conspiracy Jerry Bruckheimer Guy.
Kim’s kidnapper crashed his car turning it into a fireball as she tried to retrieve his laptop. This led to the most unintentionally funny moment in 24 since Edgar Stiles ran around CTU looking for a place to hide from the nerve gas — Kim set her arm on fire and tried to put it out by flapping it up and down like some drunk doing an impression of a humming bird. Fair play to Kim she did save the laptop and gave it to Special Agent Walker so she could do a back trace thingy.
Cara managed to secure a meeting between Tony and Jerry Bruckheimer Guy just as Jack was killing all the nasty scientists with a scalpel — it truly does cut both ways.
The final episode was a very low-key affair. No bomb to stop, no assassination to foil just Jack wandering the streets in the early hours of the morning wearing a pair of handcuffs which is also known as ” just another weekend” for Kiefer Sutherland. Jack didn’t get far before Tony tracked him down. And one mini-skirmish later — involving a taxi rank, a fork-lift truck and a flare — Tony was pistol whipping Jack into unconsciousness.

Back at The White House Olivia was begging Slimy Shawshank Guy not to grass her to the authorities. He though had something worse in mind — she was going to have to tell her parents!!!!
Handcuffing Jack to a wire fence allowed time for Tony to fess up — he is a good guy. Well technically Tony is a bad guy — he is responsible for the death of lots of innocent people — but he’s done it all so he can get close enough to kill Jerry Bruckheimer Guy. Gone In Sixty Seconds was indeed dire but he was alright in Armageddon — strapping explosives to Jack so he can blow Jerry Bruckheimer Guy up seem like an over-reaction. But Jerry Bruckheimer Guy was the man behind it all — the assassination of David Palmer and Tony’s wife Michelle. So if you previously thought Robocop, Charles Logan, Jack’s Brother or Jack’s Dad was behind the assassinations then obviously you were wrong.
Tony, his finger on the trigger, would have detonated Jack if it wasn’t for the pesky FBI showing up.
In the ensuing gunfire Jerry Bruckheimer Guy made a run for it. Tony gave chase, shooting dead Cara — he obviously didn’t like her natural hair colour — and then gave Jerry Bruckheimer Guy a thorough good kicking. Turns out he didn’t only kill Tony’s wife but also his unborn son. Vengeance shall by Tony’s. Well it was going to be until Jack shot him. Tony who had already been shot once today already (by himself), wasn’t going to let a bullet wound stop him from his goal so tried to pick up his gun to shoot Jerry Bruckheimer Guy giving Jack another opportunity to shoot him.
Tony and Jerry Bruckeimer were both arrested. Special Agent Walker wanted to make Jerry Bruckheimer talk but didn’t think she could do what was needed. Jack then apologised for seven seasons of torture when he told her he regretted all the things that he had done but he always did what his heart told him to do — ergo Special Agent Walker should do what her heart tells her to.
President and the First Lady-Man had the conversation that all parents dread having with their children — did they put out an assassination contract on a Government witness? The First Lady-Man stood by his daughter, after all Jon Voight did kill his son. However the President chose her job over her family and had Olivia arrested. In all honesty I’d chose flipping burgers for the rest of my life over her family.
Janeane Garofalo and Chloe said a brief goodbye to one another in a sarcasm-fuelled exchanged of gratitude.
I now accept that Bill really is dead.
In hospital, Jack had a visitor — the Imam who three episodes previously Jack was ready to do very bad things to involving a pair of pliers because his heart told him to. However Jack continued his redemption by confessing he’d led a very bad life and for one moment I thought he was actually going to convert to Islam and change his name to Yusuf.
Interrogating Jerry Bruckheimer, Special Agent Walker looked to her heart and switched of the video cameras, handcuffed Janeane Gafalo and…
Well I don’t know what she did as Special Agent Walker closed the door behind her but needless to say I’m sure Jack would be proud. I just hope she doesn’t lose her job and is forced to seek alternative work in law enforcement — Walker Texas Ranger, just doesn’t work.
Jack made his peace and was ready to die but Kim had other ideas — she was going to go ahead with the experimental genetic treatment to help save her dead. While Jack slept Kim told him “… I’m sorry Daddy, but I’m not ready to let you go”.
I haven’t been so scared for Jack since Season Five finished with him being tortured on a slow-boat to China.

So what do I think of Day Seven?
Well it ended with a whimper but after bringing a character back from the dead, planes crashing in the sky, an armed-siege in The White House and all before half-way what could they possibly do? Explode a nuclear bomb? Been there done that.
Infecting Jack with the bio-weapon was an interesting sub-plot but one I don’t think the writers fully exploited — more could and should have been made about Jack being in a race-against time to find an antidote. This sub-plot also resulted in Jack being, well, a bit-rubbish which is never a good idea for your central protagonist.
Overall I think this season has been one of the better ones (see chart below). The change in personnel on the whole has been pretty good. Wasn’t really too sure what to make of Special Agent Renee Walker when she first appeared. Fortunately she quickly established herself as no damsel in distress and her and Jack have developed a good dynamic based largely on her questioning Jack’s methods. However I think by making her resort to Jack’s methods at the end of the show thus fulfilling her transformation into the female Jack has robbed from the relationship what made it interesting.
President Taylor brought some welcomed calm and stability to the White House and unlike Wayne Palmer didn’t have you counting the seconds for Jack to come back on screen.
Changing the location of the action from Los Angeles to Washington although mainly cosmetic did seem to freshen things up. It also allowed us to finally have the opportunity to see Jack in the White House.
As positive as the changes made to 24 have been where I think the show has suffered over the last few years is a lack of consistency. Each season would establish a new bunch of I.T. jockeys and Presidential staff who it really was hard to get worked up about if their lives where in jeopardy or died or turned out to be the bad guys. Therefore, despite being a little far-fetched to say the least, bringing Tony Almeida back has been the master-stroke of this season.
Tony is a character you care about so you, therefore like myself, you probably breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out he wasn’t “really” a bad guy but deep-undercover back in episode three. Tony finest hour in 24 ever was this season when he single-handily took out the threat of a bio-weapon missile strike from Starkwood. Yet he went from hero to villain within minutes by killing Larry Moss. And you still cheered for him slightly. What I’ve loved about Tony in this season was that he was always one step-ahead of Jack, relying on smarts rather than muscle to beat him. Jack may have stopped Tony but he never defeated him, not even when he was smashing his fist in his face. Tony has become what 24 has sorely needed since Nina Myers — a great nemesis for Jack. Therefore it goes without saying that I’m so glad they didn’t kill him off. Again. Still the reveal at the end of the last episode that everything he’d done was out of revenge for the death of his wife and unborn son means that Tony is still one of the rarest of beasts. A likeable bad guy .
If there has been a negative to Tony’s return it’s that Jack just hasn’t as been as cool in comparison. It hasn’t helped that this season has also seemed to be all about getting Jack to say sorry for his past antics. For the first time in 24, it has asked of its audience to question Jack’s methods. In fact, in some scenes, Jack was depicted as a bully with his torture now, ask questions later approach. In previous seasons, I was never concerned about Jack’s actions because Jack was always right — he always interrogated the guilty party. This season Jack seemed fallible. Is this 24’s way of dealing with the Obama effect? Whatever the reason, I don’t think it’s been good for the character.
What I’d like to see in Season Eight is a return to those really good cliff-hanger endings where you can’t wait for next week. One of my favourite endings of an episode was way back in Season 1 — Jack disguised as a chauffeur driving off in a limo with a man in the back who knew where Teri and Kim were being held. I think 24 worked best when it kept things simple. What made it suspenseful and exciting wasn’t the threat of a nuclear bomb to the lives of millions of people it was about a man trying to rescue his wife and daughter.
BEST 24 SEASONS
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 5
- Season 7
- Season 4
- Season 3
- Season 6