Going over past reviews, I ran across the one I wrote for 24 back when it first started, and trying to figure out what my first review for 2007 should be, it was definitely a no-brainer.
WOW. Back then, I thought that this was one of the smartest, snappiest, wildest rides you could have on television, and it always managed to keep your mind racing as fast as your pulse as Jack Bauer got in and out of scrape after scrape after scrape, sometimes barely managing to survive by the skin of his teeth, while dealing with whatever crisis was afoot. I was also very afraid that a series this good would never be allowed to last or find the following it deserved.
THAT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO. Five "really bad days" ago for Agent Bauer, who has in the period between then and now seen the brutal deaths of his wife, his friends, his co-workers and scores of people he was close to, or was getting close to; he's been addicted to, then kicked a drug habit; killed dozens of people himself - some who absolutely deserved it, while a few others did not; seen a president assassinated and seen the corruption, greed and treason behind that horrific event taint the highest levels of power in Washington; witnessed both biological AND nuclear terrorist attacks on American soil and was instrumental in making sure that they didn't become worse than they were; become estranged to his daughter (though since Kim frequently got on my nerves, I didn't see this as exactly a real bad thing), and for the "cherry on top", seen his own place of work - the offices of CTU itself - blown to smithereens.
I think that if they just did a highlight reel of the best and most harrowing moments of this show, they'd have to mail nitroglycerine tablets to all the fans to prevent heart attacks! And now here we are, at the beginning of Season Six, having been left all these months with the nightmarish image of Jack literally having been kidnapped, tortured and shanghaied on "a slow boat to China", a delayed punishment for both real and perceived transgressions he committed against the Chinese government while preventing yet another unthinkable catastrophe.
Nothing he's gone through before has ever left him unscarred or unchanged in body, soul or mind, and that goes just as well for the people around him. What fresh challenges, what terrors await us when he shows up this time, in a series that sometimes seems to cut way too close to home with its depiction of a world where negotiations between nations seem to be expedited more easily by bullets and bombs than vigorous diplomacy? I certainly know as much as you do...and like all the fans reading this, I sure as hell can't wait to find out!
