Dear '24' Writers: The Clock is Ticking

Dear '24' Writers:

You've almost lost me. While I'm well accustomed to wearing a series of bemused smiles on my face as I watch Jack Bauer achieve superhuman feats (this week's deadly accurate knife throwing comes to mind), as others routinely travel faster than the speed of light to get around places (with no traffic tie-ups or bathroom breaks), I'm not used to openly guffawing at the show, repeatedly, to the point where I'm wondering if I'm actually watching a spoof of 24 instead of the real Jack Bauer power hour.

"I don't know if I'm gonna make it to the end of this season," my husband said about 20 minutes into the latest hour of Jack Bauer's eighth bad day. I concur. Why? Let me count the reasons:

The Dana/Jenny storyline is abysmal. Just atrocious. Worse than the Papa Bauer debacle.

Chloe O'Brian, once a source of quirky brilliance, has been reduced to the embodiment of a snarl who walks around the office and delivers messages to others. I so want the old Chloe back. (Maybe you can resurrect Edgar while you're at it. It'd be as believable as some of the schlock that's on this once gripping show this season.)

President Allison Taylor talked openly, in the middle of the UN floor, about the fact that there are unsecured nukes on the loose in New York City.

And the clueless head of New York's CTU bureau, Brian Hastings, is even more clueless than the usual supervisors featured on 24. I know that by-the-books bureaucrats are often portrayed as one-dimensional cardboard cutouts and are routinely skewered on the show, but, in watching Hastings, I've been scratching my head at the inanity of what he says and keep wondering when he's going to stand up straight. When Hastings questioned how undercover agent Renee Walker could've stabbed the arms dealer named Vladimir when, less than an hour ago she'd been "having sex" with him -- she'd been coerced, under threat of violence by a gun-toting guy with henchmen, to have relations with Vladimir, something known as rape, not "having sex" -- I went ballistic. (There's a thoughtful piece about this issue on the Women & Hollywood web site.) They've sunk to a new low with incompetent supervisors here.

You don't have much longer before I decide that 24's not worth my time any longer after having watched it faithfully for years, even when it veered into wildly uneven territory that massively strained credulity. It had better get better soon. The clock's ticking.

Sincerely,

Meredith

For those of you watching 24, feel free to weigh in on your thoughts on the eighth season.

Image credit: Fox.

A Few Questions About '24's' Eighth Day

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of 24*

I'm willing to suspend all manner of belief for the sake of enjoying a creative product (it's kind of necessary when you're a fan of Lost), but I had a bit of trouble doing so with the recent fifth hour of Jack Bauer's eighth bad day, where Jack, disappointingly, spent most of that hour sitting in a car while Renee "I'm just getting started" Walker did all of the legwork. Kind of unusual for our favorite, butt-kicking super-agent granddad, don't ya think?

Anyway, onto my questions about this season's 24 (in no particular order):

Am I sensing a trend here . . . that when a character on 24 wants to go someplace -- even though this season is set in New York City -- that it only takes 10 minutes to get anywhere? In Manhattan? It took President Omar Hassan (of the "Islamic Republic of Kamistan," otherwise known as Iran) "10 minutes" to go from CTU to the UN (seemed like less than that). It took Sark, wait, I mean the blonde son of the Russian mobster guy whose younger son has radiation poisoning, mere minutes to haul his brother to a doctor's office after fleeing the Russian mobster's lair. And it seemed like a breeze for Dana/Jenny Walsh to go from CTU to her apartment so she could be extorted/threatened by her former boyfriend. Can it really be that easy to get around Manhattan these days, particularly after there was an assassination attempt on a foreign leader and the U.S. president is in town? Maybe there are secret CTU-only tunnels under New York City that we're not aware of. That must be it.

As a faithful 24 viewer, I'm finding it hard to buy into the notion that Renee, who was a by-the-books FBI gal last season, had previously worked undercover with a ruthless Russian crime syndicate and now -- post-nervious breakdown -- seems to have no problems with severing a guy's thumb. Maybe she and Jack should have a "Who Can Torture a Suspect Better" contest. She'd probably win, even though Jack did sink a fire axe into a guy's chest a few hours ago.

Another eyebrow-raising moment: Given the fact that Chloe O'Brian was able to track down the name of some random, crooked Mexican politician who runs a particular hotel in less than a minute, it seems, what's the word, uh, insane to assert that CTU never figured out that they've employed a former convict as a data analyst . . . unless, of course, they do as good a job of vetting potential hires as the real TSA does in stopping a guy with a one-way ticket to Detroit who had no luggage, whose dad warned government officials that he'd become radicalized and hid a bomb in their underpants.

Ah, but what's 24 without its zany moments and Chloe's snarl to lighten the mood?
In the meantime, Fox is demonstrating that it has a sense of humor about its super-serious terrorism drama. Mirroring a move ABC made with super-serious Lost, they've started posting humorous recap videos. The 24 version uses a cartoon narrator who makes quirky observations as he tells us what's happened on the recent episode. Mildly amusing. I like the Lost: Untangled videos with the action figures better.



Image credit: Fox.

New Jack City: '24' Meets NYC

Fox has released a promo for the eighth season premiere of 24 (Jan. 17), which takes Jack Bauer -- that's Grandpa Jack to you -- to another east coast locale, New York City.

Best line in the promo: "Who's Jack Bauer?"