24‘s first season presented us with some fantastic, edge-of-your-seat drama, with the extra gimmick of occasionally being able to see something happen from different angles. And then, at around 12 noon in it’s day-long series, it just sort of died. Jack had rescued his wife and daughter, so the personal element was gone — his link to the assassins had gone too, and so it was just some guy running after some bad men. Ultimately, the concept didn’t stretch to a whole season, and things just started happening for no particular reason.

The second season, however, has shown great improvement right from the start. Simply put, 24 knows it’s just a stupid suspense film stretched out to 24 hours, and is behaving accordingly. No more irritating amnesia (touch wood), no more tender, heartfelt ruminations on whether daddy’s going to save us, or whether I should tell my husband about my pregnancy, or about who had an affair with whom. Just straight out action with life or death choices being made left, right and center.

By the end of the first four hours, almost every character has done something they will come to regret. The now President David Palmer has incarcerated a journalist illegally. Lynne Kresge has not managed to warn CTU of a potential bomb strike in time to save lives. George Mason, head of CTU, tried to skip the town and ended up being contaminated in a radioactive accident. Tony Almeida has agreed to risk his new computer programmer’s life to recusitate her and gain access to secrets only she knew. Gary Matheson has been beating his wife and daughter, and now his nanny has stolen the kid. Well, ok, he probably deserves that though.

And Jack Bauer … four hours ago he was retired, and shambling after his estranged daughter like a big loser. Now he’s killed four men (that’s one per hour — let’s see if he can keep this up) and stood by while an innocent technician was killed. The fact that one of the killings happened in a government building, with someone who thought he had protection from the law, seems to bother some critics. I can understand concerns that the new 24 is too violent, but I fail to see how any of Jack’s ‘murders’ are more justified than the others.

In any case, to be concerned about anything Jack’s done between 8:00am and 12:00am would suggest that we’re taking the show seriously.

I know I’m not.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Monday, February 24th, 2003. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.