After the end of yet another far-fetched season of “24,” the show took on a melancholy, overly dramatic tone, with a reeling Jack Bauer gazing numbly off a cliff at the ocean before the fade. Was he contemplating suicide after losing killing his father and losing yet another love interest? Was he wondering if Audrey’s father was dead on when he said that everyone that Jack touches is either killed or ruined? Was he thinking about doing a triple-lindy off the cliff, sticking the landing on the top of a wave and walking across the ocean to stop a volcanic eruption near Iwo Jima?
Early on this season, the show began hitting new levels of ridiculousness, seemingly in an attempt to differentiate this “day” from all the others. The season settled into an entertaining, if familiar, plot, throwing viewers a bone by digging a little deeper into Jack’s upbringing and the odd family dynamics that have edged him closer to monster than human. After all, we’re talking about a man who had to kill a friend, torture his brother, come on to his sister-in-law and assist in the murder of his father in the span of a single day … paging Dr. Freud?
The two-hour finale was somewhat predictable, with the occasional spectacular special effect thrown in. There were also some unintentional-comedy scenes interspersed with the tension, such as Jack and his father sharing a Darth Vader-Luke Skywalker moment, where they both are jolted by the arrival of a furrowed brow and stare off into the distance, in the direction of one another. The consternated looks and abrupt gazes harken back to when Luke and his father felt each other’s minds in Empire Strikes Back. In another scene, Jack is swimming back to shore after leaping off a helicopter’s ladder when he is crushed by a wave near the shore. Here’s a guy who is a cold-blooded assassin, sharpshooter, top-notch communications expert, international politics expert, accomplished linguist, heartbreaker, pilot of 20 different kinds of vehicles … it’s good to know that he has one minor flaw – he can’t bodysurf worth a shit.
Similarly to “Lost,” “24” occasionally suffers from an overabundance of relevant characters, though it does a fairly good job of killing them off at times. In this season, we were often left to wonder what happened to Gary Payton look-alike and President Wayne Palmer after he suffered another brain seizure; what took place with the previous President after he was stabbed in the neck by his crazy ex-First Lady; what the story was with Audrey, who was only cursorily addressed in the season’s final moments; and where the crikey hottie daughter Kim was all day long?
There were a few storylines that were seemingly unearthed to possibly set up and lead into next season, such as Chloe’s pregnancy, the strange appearance and disappearance of Milo’s brother, and Jack’s impending crossroads decision. Is it possible that the Chloe and Milo’s brother backstories are related? How did Chloe seemingly know him so well? Who is really her baby daddy – her ex-husband (how did Chloe get married and divorced so quickly)? Milo’s brother? Jack? Lisping Edgar? The Russian premiere? And what about Jack’s nephew-son? Are they setting him up to be the heir apparent to Jack after he had the stones to shoot his grandfather? How big of a variable will he be in the next season?
The question for “24” legitimately becomes, “How can we possibly fill two more seasons of a show that is losing viewers faster than panties disappearing in a Brit-pari-dsay limo?” And further, “How can we make the show original enough again to placate our faithful viewers while expanding the audience base to include newcomers?” I mean, Jack defies so many orders that he’s to the point where he aims his gun at colleagues and coworkers more often than at the enemy … how many times is this going to be deemed “just Jack being Jack”? In addition, is Bill Buchanan really going to get a free pass after assaulting two CTU agents, stealing a helicopter and attacking an enemy against Presidential order – AFTER he’d already been fired?! The lack of accountability was seemingly justified in previous seasons, but the screw-the-bureaucracy mentality on this day was taken to new, defiant, anarchistic levels. How many times can these people go “off the reservation” before they wake up scalped and drunk in an Indian casino?
The finale appeared to suggest that Jack was ready to take stock of his life and consider a stark departure from what had led him, literally and figuratively, to the edge of the cliff. Yet it felt like a scene we had seen before – like at the end of just about every other season of “24.” In that respect, the ending didn’t make a whale of a lot of sense, but the show has been creeping in that direction for a couple of years now. It seemed to be a fresher, more creative series when it was on a year-to-year leash, but with the announced extension through 2009, it certainly seemed to lose a lot of steam this season in particular.
At the end, Jack, in a rare moment of sarcasm, tells Audrey’s father that he’s “pretty good” at killing and disappearing. But as a producer of the show itself, he’ll have to be pretty good at making a leopard change its spots in order to make “24” relevant again.
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