TV Season Review: 24

Wow. How did 24 come to this? One year after the best season of the show, which featured nuclear threats, a perfectly sleazy President and a great twist ending, 24 returned with the most embarrassing and pathetic season it has thus produced.

The show had so many cool ways it could have gone. With Jack Bauer being held in China, they could have done a whole season out of the country, with CTU trying to save Jack for whatever reason (or Jack escaping and then working with CTU to escape). They could have had the season start out the same, with the U.S. trading for Jack's safety, but taken the show in a whole new direction.

Instead, the writers pieced together the most successful moments from past seasons and tried to form some kind of plot out of the jumbled mess. This season we have Jack's brother, who has appeared in past seasons but never named as Jack's kin, getting killed way too early. We have Jack's father (James Cromwell), who is even worse. We have a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists, who are in turn working with a Russian faction. We have the Chinese, trying to steal from the Russians and working with Jack's dad. Oh, and once again, CTU gets attacked.

The season was just preposterous. Instead of going bigger and better, the writers should have focused on one plot: Jack and the Chinese. The Russian element never really fit, and just allowed for the show to wrap up a plot about the ex-President and his ex-wife (a cheesy one-episode waste of time). Jack's family plot was scraping button, and James Cromwell could have been put to much better use.

All in all, it appears as though 24 has finally run out of ideas. They need something new and fast, because this season sucked balls.