I know I’m a bit late posting this. Perhaps I subconsciously hoped that by giving my brain a few days to process it, the finale wouldn’t seem so horrible.
Before I start complaining about the many, many things that were wrong with the season finale, let’s touch on the good stuff. I really liked the interplay between Vice President Daniels and Tom Lennox. Daniels’ speech about how easy it is to think you have all the answers until you’re the one sitting making the decisions could have very easily come off as trite and preachy. But ever since President Palmer’s first coma, Daniels repeatedly made bad choices that resulted in equally bad results. As the season went on Daniels gradually became more and more reasonable as he learned from his mistakes (or perhaps he was just tired); as such, his change in attitude, culminating in his speech to Tom, felt like a natural progression for Daniels as a character.
Tom giving Daniels the tape recorder containing the incriminating conversation between Lisa and Daniels was a great way to bring closure to both their arcs. Over the course of the season, Tom and Daniels evolved far more than anyone else. Early in the season, the idea of Daniels still being in power with Tom as his adviser by the time season seven rolls around was a frightening one. But they’ve learned a great deal (Tom through his brush with the Palmer assassination plot and Daniels through constantly screwing up) and neither is likely to do anything batshit crazy between now and season seven.
Redemption seems to be the word of the day at the White House as Karen finally chose doing the right thing over protecting her career. I’m not sure if either Bill or Karen will be around next season given their impending retirements, but if not, it’s nice to see a beloved character make it out of the show alive; I was fearing for his safety when he joined Jack on the rescuing Josh mission.
Unfortunately things weren’t nearly so good over at CTU. Remember how last week that guy from Division showed up to give Nadia a hard time over the breach in security? Cause the writers seem to have forgotten. On another show I would expect the issue to be followed up on at the start of the next season but given how 24 always jumps at least a year into the future with each new season, that doesn’t seem too likely. I suppose he could end up being the new hard-ass CTU director but that angle has been done to death. Maybe if doesn’t come back next season they’ll have someone slip in a couple lines of exposition about how Krim fired her, but otherwise, his presence last week will have been completely meaningless.
Less meaningless, but still annoying was Chloe’s pregnancy. Chloe’s been far too gentle this season and saddling her with a baby probably isn’t going to bring back bitter, sarcastic Chloe. While I certainly don’t want Chloe written off the show when Chloe responded to Morris comments about not being able to live without her with “Good” I half-expected her to add “Because I’m dying.” Chloe was pretty mad at Morris at the time and a terminal illness would almost certainly bring bitter Chloe back to the surface; it would have been an amusing yet bittersweet moment.
And how about that planned exchange for the component? Even if Phillip hadn’t been able to rig up an explosive device, he picked the location and he could have easily had someone hidden on or offshore in advance to sniper Doyle. Or he could have just had the men on the boat shoot Doyle; it’s not like Doyle could have threatened to shoot Josh if they tried anything. Really, Doyle is lucky that he got away with a mere (partial?) blinding.
It’ll be interesting to see what they do with Doyle next season. If he’s still going to be on the show as a field agent, obviously he’s going to have keep his sight in one eye (it’s generally not a good idea for someone who can’t see to be in a job where they have to operate firearms). But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they had him completely blind and working at CTU headquarters in some other capacity. I hope they don’t do that though; while there are some good story possibilities there, I don’t really trust the writers to handle them.
The whole bit with Josh, Jack and Phillip was pretty weak. In theory it was good to see Josh finally standing up for himself, but the kid who plays Josh is such a crappy actor that his confrontation with his grandfather just didn’t work.
It was extremely odd that nobody in Daniels’ administration or among the Russians showed the slightest indication they were aware of Jack’s rogue operation to rescue Josh. Even in the unlikely event nobody bothered to inform Daniels about what was going on, both he and Suvarov were watching a live satellite feed of the oil rig in the minutes leading up to its destruction. Suvarov, in particular, should have been wondering about the identity of the helicopter that landed on the platform and took off moments before its destruction. For all Suvarov knew, the component was taken off of the oil rig via helicopter. It was really sloppy writing to not even attempt to address that.
Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come with the conclusion of the finale. The bit about Jack feeling that Audrey was the only person in his life who mattered could have worked at an earlier time. But given how we had Marylin reassuring Jack that she would always be there for him, and the fact Jack just saved his nephew/son from a very traumatic experience, it was hard to believe that he didn’t care about anyone but Audrey.
And having seasons ending with Jack leaving CTU (of his own free will or otherwise) has become entirely too cliche. I felt nothing but complete apathy over Jack’s leaving CTU yet again. Even if, as part of the much talked about retooling of the show, Jack doesn’t immediately rejoin CTU at the start of the next season, it’s really hard to care about something that feels like it’s happened so many times before.
Looking back at the season as a whole, I thought things started out pretty well. And even though it was a bit uneven at times, I thought the season was still pretty good right up until they killed off Fayed. Since Fayed’s death the rest of the season felt like the writers were just making it up as they went along, with no real thought or planning put into how the rest of the season was going to unfold.
Even though the season itself wasn’t so great, I think most of the new characters worked out pretty well. Okay, none of the newly introduced members of the Bauer clan were all that great, but I liked the new CTU people.
Surprisingly the White House setting produced the strongest new characters. Sandra Palmer was annoying; but the rest of the new characters were quite engaging. Tom Lennox and Vice President Daniels, in particular, really carried the White House storylines quite well. In fact, largely due to those two, the administration stuff was actually the most interesting part of the show by the end of the season.
Hopefully the reinvention will improve the series because the current quality trend is definitely a downward one.
