24 - Season 6! Stone Cold Jack Bauer Shaves, Kills, Cries, and Kills Again!

Well, two nights and 4 hours later, the dust has finally settled and 24 hath returned to kick ass like only it can. My thoughts are these:

Overall, a well-done, suitably intense, emotionally involving, action-packed premiere that has me pumped for the season ahead. While the broad strokes of this season are instantly familar to any 24 afficianado, they still managed to jam-pack each episode with plenty of classic Holy-$%&# moments to deliver the epic that 24 fans have come to expect from a season premiere. Heavy SPOILER warning ahead for those who Tivoed, downloaded from iTunes, or are rushing out to Walmart to buy all 4 episodes on DVD for a low, low price ...


So yeah, some highlights:

- Jesus Christ Bauer shaves, changes, eats, back to normal in like 2 minutes after two years in a Chinese prison camp.
- Jack going LOST BOYS on that one terrorist = instant classic Jack kill.
- Jack mule-kicking the suicide bomber through the subway glass window
- KNIFE through kneecap = ouch.
- "It's not Ahmed, it's ACH-MEHT!" ... lol
- "Don't get up!"
- "Drop the coffee!"
- Meghan Gallagher! Ms. Millenium back on TV, no stranger to angsty family drama and kidnappings, though her presence made me realize how awesome Lance Henrikson would be on this show.
- Suburban dad unexpectedly lets out his inner id. Should have just called the police though.
- Jack goes emo on us.
- NUKE. So long, Valencia. You will be missed (...?...).


Now, I will say that I found the premiere to be a BIT underwhelming in some areas, especially compared to last season's AMAZING opener. First, the biggie ... RIP to CTU's bulldozer, the one and only Curtis Manning. In some ways, Curtis' death was a shocking, intense scene, no doubt. But I felt that, in the end, the whole confrontation was forced and rushed. At least give Curtis, a guy whose thus far always been portrayed as a stoic, rather emotionless ass-kicking machine, some time to build up to going krazay on us. For me, his actions were way too sudden to have much impact or convincingness, and his death just seemed done for shock value and as a convenient means of messing with Jack's head until the nuke gave him back his sense of purpose. Don't get me wrong, the Curtis-Jack shootout was a hell of a scene ... but if it had been given a better build-up, it could have been a lot better with much more weight behind it.

As for the nuke going off, well on one hand it's pretty huge and crazy - I mean, a nuke goes off just outside of LA. So if the show REALLY goes through with the ramifications of this, it should be great. But I worry that 24 has been down this road before as recently as season 4 with the multiple nuclear power plants all set to explode - I hope that this plotline takes things in a different direction rather than just retreading that same ground. Another thematic retread of sorts is the down-and-out Bauer. Already in the span of four hours, we've seen Jack go from just having spent two years without speaking in a prison camp to getting stabbed in a nerve cluster in his shoulder to being back to kicking ass like usual with only a moment of broken-down sobbing, and even THAT was only after he was forced to deliver a kill-shot to one of his few remaining friends in the world. I mean, at that point, having a minor breakdown has to be pretty much expected. It reminds me a little (or a lot) of Season 3, with Jack-as-Heroin-addict, where on occasion we'd be reminded of his debilitating addiction, but mostly he just kicked ass like normal. I just feel like the writers, if they're going to introduce a hurdle for the character in the beginning of the season, why not stick with it, thus making Jack's eventual return to his usual level of gravitas-infused badassery all the more dramatic? I mean, we've already seen him kill a man by biting his neck vampire-style. How do you top THAT?

So that's my word of weariness regarding the premiere. The season could still go in any number of promising directions though, and we haven't even checked in yet with Charles and Martha Logan yet, and key players like Mike Novick, Kim Bauer, Audrey Raines, Heller, and AARON PIERCE are conspicuous by their absences. The preview shown last night has me psyched though, with the return of the Blue Tooth Mafia for one thing - one of my favorite aspects of the 24 universe is that these terroristp lots are never as straightforward as they seem, and more often than not it's our own government (or the secret illuminati groups controlling the government) that pull the strings.

Also, I really liked Kal Penn (aka KUMAR) here. Great job with his role, though it's odd that the whole "domestic family in crazy terrorist situation" storyline seems to have run its course so quickly, as I actually liked all the players involved. I mean, Kal Penn could have been the next Behhhhhhhroooooz, had he not been GUNNED DOWN by CTU. Also, this villain guy Fayed is pretty good and suitably EVIL. Time will tell if he joins the ranks of classic 24 baddies like Victor Drazen and Ramon Salazer and Christopher Henderson, but so far he's pretty sweet.

Wayne Palmer as Prez ... not bad, not bad. What he lacks in GRAVITAS (a word pretty much embodied by the character of David Palmer) he makes up for in terms of being a pretty compelling well-meaning but in-over-his-head RFK-esque figure. My one recurring complaint is how the Presidents on 24 always have one or two at most trusted advisors and that's it. Couldn't we at least see Palmer talking with the one or two other members of his cabinet? As far as Chloe, I learned to love her quirky character, as most of us did, in Season 4's classic machine gun-wielding moments, though I'm not sure about her current role in CTU. I love the actor who plays Morris from his stint on La Femme Nikita, so there is some potential there, though so far none of the other new CTU'ers have the uniqueness of an Edgar. And man, it just isn't the same without good ol' Tony and Michelle. (Zombie Almeda!)

Some final thoughts:

- With Curtis out of commision, who better than AARON PIERCE to become CTU's newest field commander?
- My early plot prediction: The nuke is orchestrated by the Blue Toothers (who will essentially be played as Metal Gear-esque Patriots, trying to reestablish America as the world's only superpower) to destabilize the Palmer regime and sieze control of the US government, in something of a nod to Watchmen. Whatever the US gave to China in exchange for Jack will somehow come back into play at some point.
- Will Jack now be infused with RADIATION POWERS thanks to being in such close proximity to the nuke? Damn, you never wanted to piss off Jack Bauer, but ESPECIALLY not if making him angry transforms him into a giant green hulk.
- Seriously, shouldn't all of LA pretty much be evacuated now? Will 24 be (gasp) forced to take place somewhere else?
- Bill Buchanan's peptalk is classic: "Dammit! We have to do better!"
- Somewhere in 24 heaven, Curtis and Tony are mowing down terrorist scum together while uttering monosyllabic affirmations of each others' accomplishments. "Yeah."

- So yeah, overall ... 24 is back! The premiere had some issues, didn't quite stack up to Season 5 ... but I have a feeling that, with this season, the best is yet to come.

My Grade: B+