24 Season Finale
It dawned on me that I meant to write a postscript to the 24 season finale, but for whatever reason—likely the copious amounts of rotgut whiskey I’ve been drinking to wash away the bad taste of Day 6—I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. By now, all of the mental notes I made that would have been included in the typically thoughtful and relevant post you’ve all come to expect from me have been flushed down the drain to make room for things like my job and the rest of my life.
Even if the show itself was barely a three out of ten, Ginny came over and we had a pretty good time. We spent most of the two hours yelling at the TV while the writers drug their feet to get to the oh-so predictable anti-climactic climax.
It seems to me that the writers had been dragging their feet all year, as if they knew there was no way to compete with last season; like it was inevitable that this season was going to suck and there was no use in wasting any really good ideas they might have had. Everything seemed to start pretty well, but midway through everything just went to crap.
So… here’s my wish list for next year:
1) Jack goes completely off the reservation. Imagine a Jack Bauer untethered by the legal restrictions and ineptitude of CTU and the federal government. Think the A-Team without all the camp.
2) Audrey dies of some weird complication during the off-season. I don’t like Jack in a relationship… all it ends up being is a device for the writers to use to put Jack in some precarious situation. When all else fails, the baddies kidnap the girl… we’ve seen that storyline enough already.
3) Chloe dumps Morris, leaves CTU, and joins Jack in his new clandestine rogue vigilante organization. Come on, already… Morris is such an arrogant prick… get rid of him already. Chloe, even with her Asperger’s, has plenty of redeeming qualities. Morris is a smug bastard… Fayed should have taken him out when he had the chance.
4) The writers give us a core of four or so characters we can really trust. One of the most annoying things about the show is that you can NEVER trust any of the characters (except for Jack of course). Tony was probably the best in this regard, but even he had his moments. I’ve said it before in regards to why movies and tv suck nowadays: the audience wants people we can root for. If you spend too much time fucking with our heads, we’ll give up on you. This is why so many movies inspired by SNL characters are prone to failure. The characters are thin to begin with and we’re never given a reason to care.
Hopefully the promises by the producers of a departure from the norm will mean good things for the series next year.
We’ll see, I guess.
