Rewind: 24 S4

Going into the fourth season, 24 was coming off a serviceably good season that nonetheless was suffering from repetitive storylines and increasingly stale characters.  The showrunners smartly decided to change up 24 - not too much, but enough to make it feel fresh.  Beginning the season, there was no President Palmer, Jack Bauer was working as a bodyguard for a senator, and CTU was comprised of completely unknowns.

More than any other season thus far, 24 is insanely ridiculous and absurd.  The attempts to delve into the personal lives of the characters have never felt more perfunctory and fruitless.  The terrorists' preparation and planning for one day is laughably improbable, made worse when each attempt fails and the show tries to play it off like that was the plan.  And yet, somehow some way, it works.

The fourth season of 24 is my favorite since the first season*, because while I may not care about most of the characters, it delivers on the one thing expected most of it: exhilarating, action-packed television.  The season starts with a train crashing off the rails - and with convincing special effects - and ends with Jack Bauer faking his own death and walking off into the sunset sunrise.  In between, the show delivered a remarkable amount of action scenes and Jack Bauer steamrolling through his enemies with the ease and skill we've come to love about this series.

*The first season thus far is my favorite, which seems to be an unpopular opinion.  I have an easy explanation: Kim drags down the second season by herself on what is an the otherwise good season, and the third season really seems repetitive.  There's too much of a "been there done that" feel, which this season most certainly avoids even as it employs the same tricks.

The fourth season got better as the season went along, probably in some part due to Erin Driscoll and her daughter.  Driscoll was the show's biggest misstep in an otherwise good season.  She starts the season by making what are clearly portrayed as wrong choices and we find out she fired Jack Bauer.  Making matters worse is the actress playing her, Alberta Watson has a stilted performance and unconvincing emotional scenes.  She's also involved in the unquestioned worst plot point of the season, her increasingly unstable daughter who eventually commits suicide.  When Driscoll was replaced by Michelle, the season got better.

This season introduces a hell of a lot of new characters.  CTU is virtually unrecognizable with Chloe O'Brien as the only familiar face.  None of the new CTU characters immediately stand out and it takes a while to register them as actual characters and not simply as plot devices.  Some of them improve with time, such as Edgar Stiles and Curtis Manning.  Some of them never improve, such as Driscoll and Sarah Gavin.

However, the most compelling new characters were Senator James Heller and Audrey Raines.  This is hardly a surprise as they were both brought back for the reincarnation of this show in 24: Live Another Day.  Both characters immediately stand out due to the performances of William Devane and Kim Raver.  Devane, most well-known for Knots Landing, outshines everybody when he's on screen, which makes it disappointing when he disappears halfway through the season.  Raver pretty much has to play upset and devastated the entire time, which she does so ably.  While it did get a bit tiresome, a lesser actress would have made her character unbearable.  Thankfully, she's sympathetic and relatable.

As the season goes on, they start to bring back old cast members.  I was surprised at how effectively they managed to bring them back onto the show without it seeming too out-of-place.  Tony Almeida's was the one that made the least sense, but come on I'm willing to forgo logic to get him back on the show.  But Michelle replacing Driscoll and President Palmer needing to give advice to an utterly ineffective and clueless president works surprisingly well.

I also liked the show's upheaval of the presidential side of the show.  While I enjoyed three seasons with President Palmer, there wasn't much new material to grind from an idealistic president who is also entirely predictable.  So for the first half of the season, the president is almost ignored and in the background.  Then in the latter half, 24 more closely follows the president, but they take a completely different route.  They make a completely unprepared and incompetent president who takes advice from Palmer (who I was very pleased to see despite my complaints about his predictability).  Gregory Itzin is so good in this role that you feel bad for him.  But than the end happens and all the pieces of his character are put into place - he'll gladly take credit for something someone else did.

One of the things that bothers me most about this season though is how much it relies on torture.  The senator even agrees that it's a good thing to torture his own kid!  One way or the other, it's hard to tell whether the writers agree that torture is necessary, but it certainly seems like it.  Considering that there's proof torture is ineffective not to mention inhumane, I just find a problem with how often the show resorts to torture and it works nearly every time.  I really wish one time, the agents were good enough at their job to get information out of a suspect by good old-fashioned interrogation techniques.  I don't know if it would be that successful if only because dialogue is easily the weakest part of this show, but it would be a refreshing change of pace.

The show takes a stab at analyzing whether torture is right or wrong, but it seems to argue it's justifiable.  The government tortured terrorists for months after 9/11 to mixed results.  This show's form of torture?  Oh, just like break their hand and then they'll immediately give up everything despite being deeply committed to the cause.  It may help if the characters ever tortured the wrong person.  I mean sure the senator's son was the wrong person technically, but they made him such a piece of a shit, it was hard to sympathize and he WAS holding something from the government.  I mostly just wish the writers weren't like "How to we get from Point A to Point B?  Oh let's just use torture on a suspect and he'll lead us there."  Seriously, torture is used way too often in this season.  I don't remember it being as big of an issue for the first three seasons.

24 is a show that I go back-and-forth with on its quality.  On the one hand, when it works it really fucking works.  The tension is palpable, the characters seem genuinely at risk, and you can't take your eyes off the screen.  On the other hand, this show has some of the most ridiculous technobabble nonsense dialogue I've ever heard, overuses torture of all things, and has so many episodes that just seem like stalling for time.

The end result though is an almost always entertaining show.  The show is willing to take risks, which means it can deliver on the threats the story presents.  The fourth season is one of the better seasons the show has had thus far and probably one of the best seasons of the entire series.

Grade - B+