Before I watched this season, a vast - VAST - majority of lists listed Season 6 as the worst season of 24. Some had Season 7, some had Season 8, but Season 6 was far and away as near of a consensus as possible the worst season the show had to offer. Too many of these lists preceded this post with "Even the worst season of 24 is good." Because no this season is awful. This is borderline unwatchable. It took me months to watch this season. Every time I was faced with the prospect of watching another episode, it was a struggle to watch.
24 is a weird show and I've probably said this in my other posts on it and will probably say it in future posts as well. It's good for weird reasons basically, reasons that aren't usually at all sustainable over multiple seasons. Is it well-acted? Well not really. Are the characters well-fleshed out? Again, not really. Is it well-plotted? Well, the more you think about it, usually the less sense it makes. Is it well-written? Eh no the dialogue isn't really a strong selling point here either. Well what the fuck makes this a good show? Excitement, twists, Jack Bauer, and good acting from key supporting characters. (I kind of cheated and said it wasn't well-acted, but sometimes it is like George Mason or Charles Logan. Generally speaking though, I don't think it's a reason to watch the show)
Now, excitement and twists are two things that tend to get less rewarding the longer you have a show, especially if you don't have interesting characters. 24 HAD interesting characters. They killed a lot of them off though. Wayne Palmer isn't one. Nadia Yassir isn't one. Milo Pressman isn't one. Neither is Sandra Palmer (do you have remember her?). Bless 24's soul, but how in the hell do you have James Cromwell and Regina King and make both of their characters absolute nothings. James Cromwell, as Jack's father, should have been great. Hell, Cromwell as Jack's evil father should have been a piece of cake. It's James freaking Cromwell. How did they mess that up so badly? Judging from the fact that King is a starring character and showed up in 9 episodes, they clearly had no idea what to do with her.
Then they kill off Curtis Manning in the stupidest way possible. Manning was an underrated character. I don't know how Roger Cross did it, because I can't imagine anything was on the page for him to work with, but I was invested in Curtis Manning. Then, all of a sudden, he becomes so unprofessional that he forces Jack to kill him. Congratulations on being extremely unsubtle about the difficulties with working with someone you hate, 24. (That's unfair; 24 has never been subtle)
I'm going to be honest here. There are many high points in this season that I can point to where I can say I enjoyed it. This was just an absolute trainwreck of a season. Powers Boothe is decent as Vice President Noah Daniels, but like his weirdly obsessive desire to go to war makes no sense. And I am tired of so many characters on this show going against the president for the good of the country. And that happens this entire season. I don't mean go up against in the sense of verbally, I mean like try to take him out.
Anyway, I'll keep watching, because from what I've read, Season 7 is a lot better. Yes, some say it is worse than Season 6, but a lot of other people claim it's a change of pace and that it's better than any of the last three seasons (which granted, so far is like being one of the best Big Bang Theory episodes). In any case, these lists have been generally trustworthy, outside of their inability to prepare me for just how truly bad this season is, and season seven and season eight both seem to have good and redeemable qualities and are far from hard to watch.
Grade - D
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