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| Elisha Cuthbert, left, starred as Kim, daughter of Teri (Leslie Hope) and Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). Dennis Haysbert ruled as President David Palmer. Sarah Clarke was CTU agent Nina Myers. Fox via AP | ||
Granted, it's hard to maintain perspective when we're clenched in the last-gasp grip of one of the worst 24 seasons ever. But sad as this may seem, it's not unusual for a great TV series to leave us wanting less.
Yet less or more, make no mistake: 24(Fox, Monday, 8 ET/PT) was a great TV series.
Not a great drama, which is a distinction people sometimes fail to make. Its gifts are propulsion and tension; deep explorations of the human condition are the province of other shows. Yet there has always been a place on TV for series that exist to tap into your adrenaline, and few shows have ever consistently caused levels to spike as high as 24.
But there has never been a show quite like the "real-time"-driven 24 —or a character quite like the tortured, torturing Jack Bauer, a world-savior superhero beautifully layered with real-world emotions by Kiefer Sutherland. And odds are we'll never see their likes again. An idea can be endlessly copied, but it can be original only once.
The essential genius of 24 is that it took what had been seen as commercial TV limitations — the rigid hour-long structure, the rhythmic rise-and-fall of the ad-accommodating act breaks, the need to fill a 22-plus episode season — and made them virtues. Instead of fearing TV's internal clock, 24 embraced it, using it to drive each episode and to unite the episodes into one 24-hour day. Even the digital-clock graphics and the ticking on the soundtrack served to ratchet up suspense by enhancing the sensation of time passing and deadlines approaching.
Obviously, however often we may have used the term "real-time," there was never anything real about 24's treatment of time and spatial relationships. From the first season, which tried to stick most closely to the one-hour conceit, to the last, 24's time became amusingly elastic when it came to things like crosstown commutes.
There has never been a year when you didn't wonder whether people wouldn't be more tired or rattled if so many crises, personal and professional, had all fallen into a single day.
Yet think of the audacity of breaking — and stretching — a Bondian adventure into 24 time-driven, hour-long installments. Is it any wonder the show relied on red herrings and multiple conspiracies, shifting every six hours or so? It has always been senseless to complain about the inevitable starts and stops in the story, the way villains get away just before being caught or die just before revealing crucial information.
That's part of the price of admission for what has been, overall, a terrific ride.
Over the years, some plots were too clearly stall-tactic diversions (Kim, meet cougar), or collapsed so completely, they forced the writers to improvise new solutions. This season, the backtracking was too obvious (the transformation of Dana from Arkansas convict to Russian superspy) and the plot contrivances too stunningly illogical. But think of Nina's revelation as the show's first and best mole — another improvised plot point — and remember all the other times 24played with your expectations and delivered a delicious jolt of surprise.
Remember as well that few people would have bet when the show was announced that it would run one season, let alone eight, and that the majority of them would be wildly entertaining. And for that, much of the credit goes to the show's creators, Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, who had the wisdom to pitch a show about terrorism when it was most on our collective minds, and to make it fairly apolitical.
People often parsed 24 for right-wing or left-wing bias, but its only consistent philosophy has been an ends-justify-the-means view of violence (at least as exercised by Jack) and an anti-authority belief in the inevitable incompetence of all organizations. On 24, it's always the individual hero to the rescue.
And what a hero Jack has been, and what a sometimes underappreciated performance Sutherland has given us. Plot points have often defied belief; Jack never has, despite the multiple horrendous injuries he has had to shake off. And that's a tribute to Sutherland's commitment, talent and skill.
That's true even now, as grief has turned Jack into a deranged, nihilistic killer, shooting an unarmed woman and gutting a defenseless man. You can't help feeling that the writers have trashed a TV hero to set up a big-screen antihero, diminishing our affection for him and the series in the process.
Which is why, if you're a fan, the best response is to mentally toss this season aside and think instead about the show as a whole and the people who have passed through it. 24 has never been known as an "actor's" series (with only Sutherland and the remarkable Cherry Jones winning acting Emmys).
But that doesn't mean it hasn't boasted some great performances, starting with the beloved prickly Mary Lynn Rajskub, and including Leslie Hope, Dennis Haysbert, Penny Johnson Jerald, Sarah Clarke, Xander Berkley, Shohreh Aghdashloo, James Morrison, Jayne Atkinson, Colm Feore, Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart.
Their legacy, and the legacy of their show, is intact. No matter how this day ends.
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