24 – Season 7: Episodes 1 & 2 (SPOILER WARNING)
Season Six was bad.
So bad.
Yes there was lots of “holy shit” moments but who cares about explosions when you don’t care about who’s being exploded? Apart from Jack and Chloe none of the characters had any real depth so it was really hard to give a damn about events at CTU or the White House. The other problem was the overall arc of the series. What was great about Season One was over the twenty-four episodes Jack had one simple goal — to rescue his wife and daughter. Season Six didn’t have that. It had lots of tiny missions that were introduced almost as quickly as Jack completed them or plotlines that would disappear then reappear a few episodes later. Things had to change.
Season Seven is here and guess what — things have changed.
There’s a new President and new White House staff. CTU has been disbanded. The Chloe equivalent character is now played by Janeane Garofalo… “Dammit Janeane Garofalo!”.
But best of all — Tony’s back!
Tony Almada, who was last seen being given a lethal injection by Robocop in Season Five, is indeed alive. This shouldn’t be any real surprise as Tony always had healing abilities that make Wolverine seem like a haemophiliac. In Season Three Tony got shot in the throat but still came back to work and finished his shift. But I always knew Tony was alive and it had nothing to do with Carlos Bernard’s name appearing in the opening credits nor Carlos Bernard giving magazine interviews about being back in 24 and nothing to do with Carlos Bernard appearing in trailers for the show — I just knew.
But however hokey you view Tony going all Lazarus there’s no doubt it’s good for the show. Even cooler Tony’s now a bad guy so gets to hang out with the wonderful Nick Chinlund — The one in Con Air who took “the bunny” out of the box. Tony also has an evil plan. We know it’s an “evil plan” because it’s the same one they used in Die Hard 2 involving planes where lots of innocent people and also Colm Meaney died.
The TV movie, 24: Redemption, may have been the most exceptionally mediocre thing this side of Keane releasing an album called Beige. The one good thing was it allowed for certain plot-points to take root so we can hit episode one running. And we do hit it running. The real time element which stopped seasons ago using the same measurement of time as the rest of the Universe has now gone for good. So a computer programmer can be kidnapped, his finger nails ripped out and yet is still capable of chucking together a load of components to make a device that can disable air traffic control all within the opening ten minutes of the show.
What I enjoyed about the first two episodes is how restrained things are. No big explosions — just a car crash at the start and a near collision involving two passenger planes. Hell, Jack doesn’t even hurt anyone in the first episode, just threatens to stab an informer in the ear with a ballpoint pen. Compared to the Bauer who shot dead an informer and then sawed off his head in the first episode of Season Two and it seems that Jack’s mellowing in his old age. Normal service though had resumed by the end of the second episode with Jack killing two terrorists (one by bullet, the other used as a shield of meat) and getting into a fist fight with Tony. Jack wins.Tony may be a bad guy but Jack’s a badass.
Day Seven may only just be dawning but the early signs are good.
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