Due to an incredibly busy film production schedule I’ve found myself in, I haven’t had the time to write reviews (or even watch television) on time. Therefore, for now, I’m going to be sporadically updating with brief, more general thoughts on Season 7 of 24, at least until life calms down a bit. With that said, here goes:
The overall quality of this season so far has me quite conflicted. I told myself during the long break between Season 6 and the present that as long as the quality was above that of the mundane, unoriginal Season 6, I’d be happy. Well, the quality has taken steps forward indeed; unfortunately, I feel I may have lied to myself. I’m not happy at all. Better or not, this is not what I expect from 24.
What DO I like? Well, for one thing, I like that 24 has stopped being the Jack Bauer Power Hour and turned back into something with even the slightest bit more substance, something that Season 6 sorely lacked. We’re getting some amount of emotional investment back into the show, something I haven’t really felt even possibly since Season 3. The return of Tony was handled better than I expected. Some of the new characters, including Renee Walker and President Taylor are impressing me. They’re good characters, in the same way early 24 characters were. I have always maintained that one of 24‘s greatest assets has been its writing, even while most viewers tend to ignore it to praise the formal production elements and the action.
On the opposite hand, there are other characters here that are not doing it for me. Larry Moss and his lackey Sean, for one. These guys both feel completely vapid, only here to satisfy plot requirements (specifically needing an important federal agent for context, and a shifty decoy/red herring who has unfortunately outlived his welcome, respectively). The villainous aspect of the show, which had me intrigued in both 24: Redemption and the pilot episodes has de evolved into a more traditional “bad guy” image, with little of the complexity 24 used to apply to its villains back in the days of the Drazens, Stephen Saunders, and even as recently as Christopher Henderson.
Too many of the driving actions for the episodes have been tired retreads of 24 episodes past. The sudden necessity to bury Walker alive was an interesting twist, but little else has inspired confidence in me that the writers are conjuring up an original story. One of Season 6’s greatest flaws was that it seemed they were trying to hard to avoid their own cliches, they only ended up developing new ones, because they had to reuse the same ups and downs, ins and outs within the same season. If Season 7 starts moving in this direction, we’re in serious trouble.
So, where are we? We’re in the middle of seemingly the second worst season the show has seen, an admittedly sizable step up from Season 6, but not what I (24‘s “biggest fan”, so to speak) crave; it’s not enough to satisfy. 24 made its name not only on good action, government spy plots, but on the ability to merge good melodrama with those things. It was a satisfying series with episodic arcs that were not topped on television until Lost came about. Despite improvements in writing and character development this season, we’re still at a C- instead of a D-. I want A grade material here. And it had better be delivered, or my next Midseason Report will be much less concise and much more of an angry rage.
