Praised be Jack - 24 is back, and every wannabe bad-ass drama take note - THIS is how you do good TV, baby.
Oh man, tonight's EPIC premiere was just too awesome, and next year when the inevitable wave of 24 imitators finally come along ... well, they are going to have to work very hard to even come CLOSE to measuring up.
Pacing, tension, pure, over-the-top action, adrenaline, character, speed, and unpredictability. These are the tenets on which the mighty 24 is built, and this premiere took it all to newfound extremeties of goodness.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
Holy Crap!
Okay, so in retrospect it seems a logical choice for our beloved President Palmer to bite it, seeing as how he's going off to star in, well, um, The Unit, of all things (Worst. TV Show Name. Ever!), but DAMN, who knew he'd get the axe that suddenly? RIP President Palmer - you were the best President, real or fictional, of the last five years. Your steely resolve, your unwavering moral character, and the fact that if need be, you could whup some terrorist ass all by your lonesome, made you one bad-ass prez of the US of A, and everytime we see you shilling for Allstate, we'll remember that once, you were The Man. You survived Naked Mandy's poison handshake of doom, your psycho wife Sherry, and all manner of threats, but in the end it took but one sniper-fired bullet to bring ya down. Goodbye President Palmer, may your death be avenged by Jack Bauer. Oh wait, it already was.
They brought back Presidential brother and one bad brotha Wayne!
OH MY GOD, WHY? Michelle is dead! Tony is, once again, in critical and unable to kick the proper amount of ass like he should be, and worst of all he was caught in the debilitating explosion before he could even utter his trademark monotone "yeah ..." - as Jack Bauer would say ... "Dammit!" But oh Michelle, why did the 24 gods take you from us? Just when you and Tony were ready to settle down? Michelle, who saved America from a deadly virus, who could throw a kung fu kick with the best of em, and who always had those two little curly strands of hair dangling over your forehead ... WHY must yo so cruelly and violently be taken from us? RIP Michelle Dessler, CTU won't be the same.
So yeah, what a friggin' way to kick off season 5! We've got the Nixon-esque President Logan back and possibly involved in shady dealings, CTU regulars Bill Buchanan, Edgar (lusting as ever for ...) Chloe, who by this point you kind of just have to love. And in the whitehouse we have good old Mike Novac fretting as ever, and a new shady secret service dude who at this episode's end was revealed as being .... PURE EVIL! Guess we don't have to wait long to find out who the mole is THIS time.
And still to come we have:
ROBOCOP himself, Peter Weller, coming as the inevitably kickass former mentor of Jack. Who knows, maybe he'll donate a robotic cyber suit to Tony so he can be ROBO TONY and AVENGE HIS DEAD WIFE Officer Murphy Style!
SAM GAMGEE himself, Sean Astin, to rule CTU with an iron fist hobbit-style and maybe present Jack with a magic inviso-cloak?
And the return of KIM BAUER! Will Chase return as the one armed man with the master plan? Will the COUGAR OF DOOM be far behind? What will she be wearing?
Oh yeah, Jack Bauer is of course ruling as usual. "Take me to a hospital" "Yeah" "BANG." Nice ... Oh man, the intensity of Kiefer is off the charts.
There is good TV, and it's called 24. Let the 24 hours of the Jack Bauer Power Hour commence.
My grade: A
OTHER STUFF:
LOST - Forgot to review it earlier in the week. Actually a pretty good episode, though it once again resorted to using cheesy, pointless set-to-music montages in place of actual story advancement. Still, the Mr. Eko backstory was good to decent - in theory it was actually a really cool idea for a backstory, though the pacing and story beats seemed kinda off in the actual telling. The Charlie-Claire stuff was okay but a little overdone, though the Monster reveal as an ominous cloud of mind-reading black nanobot smoke of some kind was kinda cool, if not baffling. A fun backstory for Mr. Eko, plus the intriguing nature of the Walt-Michael father-son mysterious online conversations, made me forget for a bit about my overall frustration with the show - and in the end thhis turned out to be possibly one of the two or three best eps so far this season. My grade: B
@ WORK:
Man, what seemed like it was gonna be an easy MLK day is now turning out to be a bit ridiculous. I was supposed to be working at Ellen from 1:30 to 5:30 - but now it's set to go until 9 pm! What the ...? We were given practically NO warning about this, and this is seriousl going to throw off my 24-centric Monday night plans! Once again, as Jack Bauer might say ... "Dammit!"
Yep, still need a job. Help me find one, won't you? Unfortunately this weekend turned out to be pretty busy with various things and not much progress was made on the job-search front. Must ... get some actual interviews ... soon!
God, I can't believe how late it is right now. Where does the day GO? Luckily I have a late start time tommorow, so I'll be okay, even though I'll likely be totally out of it Tuesday due to the fact that now have to watch a taped 2-hour 24 when the actual ep finishes at 10! Dammit! I know, I know, I have it really tough.
Well, at least I have a job.
For now.
(For now being, like, four more weeks!)
Well, if anything will put me in a good mood, it's eight straight hours of working at Ellen!
.... "Dammit!"
