Review: 24

Zach got interested in this because of a friend at work. And since it's on Netflix Instant Watch, here you go: 24 (Season 1, at least)

You know the premise - the show is relatively real-time, each episode being one hour of a crazy 24 period in Jack Bauer's life.  Jack being a senior agent in the LA Counter-Terrorism Unit, his crazy days are crazier than most other people's.  The first 'day' in the show (i.e. Season 1) revolves around an assassination attempt on a Senator/Presidential candidate's life.

I wanted to like it.  I really did.  I like Kiefer Sutherland.  I like Dennis Haysbert. I like kick-butt action and suspense movies and TV shows.  I should have liked this too.

Didn't happen though.

The cast is inconsistent.  Some are actors I really liked, and some really got on my nerves instead. Kiefer Sutherland is a great cast as Jack Bauer.  He can do the gruff, imposing, strong, yet secret soft underbelly, good hearted character very well (remember back to his Athos in The Three Musketeers, back in 1993?  Same sort of feel.)  And when he has to sound threatening, well, he's got a great voice for it (used beautifully in Phone Booth, too, though the rest of that movie was ridiculous).  And I like Dennis Haysbert too, playing the Senator here.  Good, dignified, honest politician trying to do the right thing and still be elected - a fine line to walk.  Dennis Hopper appears about halfway through the season as the lead bad guy, and we all know he does crazy bad guys pretty darn well.

Some of the characters, though, like I said, drove me nuts.  I don't know if it's the characters were written like that and the actors just did a good job of portraying that; or if the characters were neutrally written, and the actors were what were driving me nuts.  At any rate, I felt absolutely no empathy for some of these people - Nina (the coworker/ex-girlfriend), Terry (the wife) and Kim (the daughter) were the worst.  And that makes it hard, when we're supposed to relate to Jack and why he's doing all these crazy things to protect his family, but the family themselves are ridiculous!  I do believe that Kim's character was written badly.  C'mon, how many times in a 24 hour period is the girl going to get kidnapped???

I didn't mind the unusual pacing - the whole 24 hours thing.  I actually think it's a pretty neat idea.  I will admit, though, it did take a little bit to get used to.  Talking with Anne about it, she explained it as "You're so used to an hour being about a TV week, that it feels like the show's just dragging on."  And in some ways, that hits the nail on the head.  Even if a full movie covers only a 24 hour period, it can feel like it's being stretched to fit the 2 1/2 hour time frame, if it's not paced properly.  Here, when it's a full 24 hours they are trying to full, sometimes it FELT like they were trying to fill it.  Maybe because we were watching  the first season, and the writers hadn't really hit their stride yet. There were definitely times where it felt like they were either letting story lines stagnate for an hour or two, or were pulling into the bag of cliches to fill time (Terry gets amnesia??  At that point it was just "Really, 24?  The amnesia card?  Really??").

Some of the characters' decisions were written to help extend the events into 24 hours, and you can tell.  These people make some of the WORST decisions at times!  It was like 11:14, but not funny.  Really!  It would have been a great dark comedy at points, except they kept playing it seriously.  And this office has to be one of the most unprofessional departments ever.  Even Zach was commenting on that one.  The number of times people prefaced their actions with "Well, I'm not really supposed to do/say this..."

Overall:  2 of 5.  A few small acting high points and an interesting concept ruined by irritating characters and forced writing.  I made it through the first 6 episodes before I got so irritated I had to stop watching - after that it was a very half-hearted watching.  Zach made it all the way through the season, but the subsequent seasons have not made it onto our queue.  That should say a good bit.  The writing must have gotten better over the subsequent seasons for the show to have continued this long.  It almost makes us want to add season 2 to the queue to see.  Almost.