24: Season 6 Finale!

24! 24! 24!

- Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Will all of you 24 haters please regain some semblance of sanity? Once again, I am seeing all these idiots coming out of the woodwork, declaring 24 dead and comparing it unfavorably to the likes of Heroes, Lost, and any other show deemed as the next big thing in TV. Will people please stop being so melodramatic about this (I'm looking at you, MATT ROUSH). Duh, 24 struggled this season. But there is no way that a true blue 24 fan could have watched last night's finale and not had some genuine, only-on-24 "holy $%&" moments. So let me get to it ...

The TWENTY by-God FOUR Season 6 finale:

- Call me a 24 apologist or whatever, but I really enjoyed last night's finale. Sure, it had its share of flaws. But I think there's a huge double standard when it comes to certain genre shows. For some reason, 24 this year has gotten picked apart like no other, whereas Heroes, Smallville, and a few others seem to get free passes from some week after week. There was enough stuff last night that kicked ass that, for me, I was willing and able to just sit back, overlook some of the lame stuff, and enjoy the ride.

And yes, this episode was good enough that it prompted me to a.) keep watching FOX until well after 10 pm with the slim hope that something would be revealed about 24: Season 7, b.) immediately call my brother for the traditional post 24 call, which last night, as in the 24 days of yore, was initiated with a hearty cry of: "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!"

To paraphrase:

Me: That was awesome ...
Matt: Eh, it was okay.
Me: It was awesome.
Matt: The Chloe stuff was lame.
Me: Who cares ...
Matt: We never even found out anything about Jack's father!
Me: Yeah ... but still ... how could you not love Bill Buchanan saving the day?
Matt: Yeah ...
Me: It ruled ...
Matt: Dammit all.
Me: Dammit all.

(sadly, this is what many conversations between my brother and I actually sound like)

So as I so often gave you in those halycon days before 24 stopped consistently ruling it, here are some random thoughts:

- Bill Buchanan is back! Why is it that Bill is always kind of boring at CTU, but once he trades the suit and tie for civies, he suddenly begins to kick seven kinds of ass with an extra dose of gravitas?

- Okay, it was a pretty lame Part 1 cliffhanger to have Chloe collapse with no real build up or anything. But the moment was totally saved by the awesomeness of Morris' desperate cry for help. "Somebody help me! I said ... SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!!" Dayum.

- You've gotta love Vice President Grodd. One minute it's "I want Karen Hayes punished to the full extent of the law!" The next minute it's: "Well, I've mellowed out a lot in the last 22 minutes. I suppose I can find it in my heart to forgive her ...".

- The most ridiculous thing in this whole ep was probably Morris calling the CTU doctor to check in on Chloe literally 30-seconds after he saw her in her room. What, do CTU doctors have to update agents about their patients' health in "real-time?" And does anyone in real life ever actually ask for anything to be done in "real-time?"

- What was with Milo's brother's sudden appearance and then random disappearing act? Mysterious ...

- Man, was Nadia ever a lame character. What a waste of space.

- Rena Sofer continues to be the Queen of Monday Night TV, appearing simultaneously on both 24 and Heroes! Hiro, is that you?

- Good ol' Subarov -- what a Prime Minister, always threatening to start World War III.

- So yeah, I do agree with my brother that, in the end, Papa Bauer turned out to be a disappointing villain. All through last season, the threads of some vast conspiracy were swen throughout the 24 mythology in the form of the man who would be Graem and his Bluetooth mafia. Then, the mastermind behind Graem's actions turns out to be he and Jack daddy dearest. So ... what exactly was his deal, anyways? We never found out, and Jack was so emotionless and devoid of curiosity by the time he found his father that he never had the chance to ask (also, the oil rig they were standing on was about to be blown up in like 18 seconds). I hope that the origins of this secret cabal are explored a bit inthe future, because 24 has a REALLY bad habit of introducing all these interesting conspiracy elements to its plotline and never following up on them at all (I'm STILL waiting to find out exactly who Naked Mandy was working for when she gave David Palmer that poison-tipped handshake).

- Looks like little Josh inherited some of the Bauer family badassery! He hit his own grandpa in the back of the head with a lead pipe - nice! His grandpa was a sociopathic weirdo though so, you know, it's all good.

- I will also say ... Karen Hayes' motivation for risking her entire career and reputation in order to help Jack save his nephew was pretty weak. After all she'd been through, one casualty in the name of stopping a World War would have been deemed an acceptable loss. That leads me to another problem with the season as a whole - th enormity of what happened during the day, like, say, a NUKE going off just outside of LA, was never really conveyed well at all. An event like that would change everything, and yet it felt like business as usual in the 24-verse.

- One of the best lines of the show - Jack and Bill taking the CTU helicopter to storm the oil rig and save Josh - Jack Bauer: "We're commandeering your helicopter. GET OUT!" Gravitas through a straw.

- And the best part of the whole thing - Jack and Bill suiting up for battle, during which time JACK was reunited with his SACK! Yes, in one glorious moment, the JACKSACK returned!

- Doyle is blinded! Nice little scene with him taking the fall, too bad his character was 98% LAME.

- And man, those action scenes on the oil rig were tight! Great stuff, and awesome direction here, that was big-budget movie quality, baby. Bill Buchanan piloting a helicopter as it swings around to pick up Jack, Josh and a bloodied Chang in tow, with F-18's poised to launch missles and blow it all to hell ANY SECOND, was pretty freaking cool.

- And the ending ... NICE. It sounds like people were somewhat divided over this, but I liked it a lot as a coda to this season, and as an ending that allows next season to go in a number of different directions. First of all, William Devane rules it, period. Secondly, this ending gave us 24 fans one of the best insights into Jack Bauer's state of mind we've yet seen on the show. FINALLY, things slowed down for a second and things were put back into context. This wasn't just Jack as a robotic anti-terrorist machine. This was the man we were introduced to in the opening minutes of this season - a man who had been broken and betrayed, who was left for dead by his friends and his country, who was just told by the one man he looked up to to stay away from him and his daughter forever. This was a pissed off, frustrated, self-doubting, loose-cannon who has just been pushed to the absolute brink. WELCOME BACK JACK F'N BAUER.

- Overall, this two-part finale inevitably had to deal with some of the same lame CTU and White House politics that have put a real damper on this season. Looking at the whole season, there were many lost opportunities. We lost good characters in Curtis and Graem Bauer - characters who really had zero opportunity to live up to the potential they showed to be staples of the 24 universe. In turn, we got a number of new characters who never panned out and failed to make us care about them in the least. Our main character, Jack, was introduced as having just endured years of torture and suffering, and yet, within MINUTES, he was back to business as usual, until the final moments of the season finale when the show FINALLY got back around to addressing what's been going on with the character. And the plot was a mix of retread devices, new threads that went nowhere, and endless revisitations of the same old stuff. How many times can Jack be taken into custody, CTU attacked, the President be compromised from within, or CTU infiltrated by a mole?

But as for THIS one episode - I enjoyed it. Great action, intense pacing, and an awesome ending that was beautifully shot and was on its own a great Jack Bauer character moment - something we've gotten way too few of as of late. Sure, there was no ZOMBIE ALMEDA as I had hoped for, and no twist ending a la last year. But this was solid stuff. Not save-and-redeem-the-whole season solid, but enough to elicit a respectable if not ear-splitting "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!"

My Grade: A -

- Bring on SEASON 7.

- Just for the record, here is how I rank the seasons of 24:

1. Day 1
2. Day 2
3. Day 5
4. Day 4
5. Day 3
6. Day 6