Review: 24 #722 (5am - 6am)

722: '5am - 6am'

Wr: Evan Katz
Dr: Brad Turner

Synopsis: Innocent lives remain in the line of fire as this terrifying day draws to a close. Jack is faced with an unthinkable situation while his perpetually imperilled daughter, Kim, gets involved. Meanwhile, the imminent threat stokes the heated rivalry between Chloe and Janis. (God, it even reads like it's gonna be bad, doesn't it?)

Review: Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. 24, you were doing so well. Season seven has been a roller-coaster ride of monumental proportions, fuelled by a ricochetting pace, oodles of dramatic tension and a cast and crew to die for. There have been momentary lapses, sure, but on the whole, this has been an engaging and entertaining year, kept afloat by a number of interesting dramatic decisions (Tony's turn, for example) and a narrative that twists and turns every few episodes, rather than stretching out thinly over twenty four of 'em. It's been a vast improvement on the lamentable waste of space that was season six, and with the various intriguingly mysterious plot strands that have been introduced in the past couple of episodes, it looked set to continue right into next week's action-packed, suspense-laden two hour finale. And then Evan Katz came along and ruined it all.

What a difference a week makes, eh? With every passing minute of the hopelessly horrible '5am - 6am', the narrative foundations that have been carefully built since the culmination of the Starkwood storyline are eroded further and further, as if the writers have all gathered around their story, mob-like, and are taking inexplicable glee in kicking and stoning it to death. By hour's end, there's barely anything left to salvage; the plot lies sprawled across the floor, bloodied, bruised and broken, and the viewers' heads are permanently glued to their hands, shocked and amazed that this most talented and prolific of production crews could waste so much potential with such reckless aplomb. We were on course for an explosive finale, in which Jack must prevent another attack with the Preon variant while also having the mother of all showdowns with the dastardly Tony Almedia. While it's possible we're still going to get the latter, Katz actually wastes the whole bio-terrorist threat here with a highly lamentable sequence of scenes that are full of holes and regrettably predictable. Okay, first: a subway attack. Well that's original guys. It's not like you didn't do this already, a few seasons ago. Second: while Washington Central is undoubtedly busy, no station is anywhere near its most jam-packed at 5.30 in the morning! If the idea is to create the maximum number of casualties with the minimum amount of fuss, surely Almeida and his cohorts would be better served contaminating say, a 7 or 8 o'clock train? You know, during rush hour. When everyone's travelling. Oh and guess what, guys? That would be the final hour of your season too, so it would've fit rather nicely. Nothing like an opportunity well missed, eh?

Then there's Al-Zarian's attempt to inform the police that something is wrong. While I did wonder how Tony was going to keep an eye on the guy with only a few subway cameras and an ear-piece, and therefore the presence of the dirty 'transit cop' makes sense, even if it is a bit of an eye-roller, the whole thing is entirely contingent on the station staff not thinking that there is anything suspicious about this very sincere man, who claims he is under the control of terrorists, still being allowed access to the subway after having talked to an officer of the law. He tells the woman at the ticket booth that he has to be quiet because "they're listening" and removes his ear-piece; then, after a little dressing down from the authority figure, he clearly puts the thing back into his ear in full view of the staff members and begins talking into it! Now I don't know about you, but that would certainly raise red flags with me and I'd be getting on the phone to the local PD ASAP. This would have been a far, far better and more organic way of allowing the FBI to gain the upper hand and thwart the situation than the method that is actually used. Magically, Chloe and Janis (more on them later) manage to locate Tony's cell within about fifteen minutes of the evil henchman's phone call, despite this highly-skilled, well-versed and technologically-sound ex-government agent having placed some sort of uber-clever scrambling encryption type thing on it. No, despite his years of training and almost unrivalled skill, Almeida is still unable to mask his trail from the all-knowing, all-powerful CTU/FBI whizzkids.

Oh and just to make matters worse, he can't even do a good job of obliterating his hand-held device! Oh no wait, he can. Chloe says it can't be salvaged, it's been bashed to smithereens! But wait! Janis can save the day with some completely nonsensical technobabble that has no grounding whatsoever in reality! Huzzah! The device is back up and running within five minutes AND, just to make things even more convenient, the FBI have access to absolutely everything that was on there, right down to the appearance of all the applications that were running on their screens! Yahoo! This means they can tap directly into Jibran's ear piece and Jack can talk hurriedly, but compassionately, with him and get him to run like a madman through Washington station, with the bag completely open so that the whole world can see the cylindrical object that looks like a bomb! Great idea! And of course, this means that the good guys can intercept the canister just in the nick of time, despite there being one minute and twenty seconds on the timer when Jibran is still on the train, and it taking him longer than that to get outside, where Jack, Renee and the world's most convenient HAZMAT room are waiting! This is so depressingly easy, it's laughable. When Jack throws the canister into the safe room and jams the door shut just before it explodes, I was reminded of the utterly risible 'fridge freezer' scene from the season three finale... and that's something I never wanted to see echoed again. Far, far too convenient and utterly unbelievable. Colour me unimpressed.

Okay, so the writers dropped the ball on the bio-terrorism storyline, but surely they've got an ace up their sleeves, right? Something even better and more epic to keep us engaged for the mother of all finales? Think again, buster. We've got Kim. Yes, that's right: Kim 'well rodger me with a cougar, I'm just so damn useless' Bauer, Elisha Cuthbert... the annoying one. Sigh. Haven't the writers learned anything from seasons past? The character is so denigrated by this point, so loathed after years of being endlessly chased around for no good reason, kidnapped, shot at, locked in mysterious bunkers with creepy individuals and so on and on and on, that we just don't care anymore. Her life, as far as a large proportion of the viewing audience is concerned, really doesn't matter. And now we're going to be treated to two episodes where she's the central focus of the terrorists' dastardly deeds? It's a huge, huge let-down, almost akin to the focus of last season's final episodes being on Josh fracking Bauer or whatever the hell his bloody surname was. And just to hammer home the point that every scene she's in spells doom for the show, her entire storyline in this episode is both astonishingly ridiculous and unbelievably annoying. First, we have a pointless telephone conversation with her boyfriend, which achieves nothing other than filling in a bit of time (presumably, the script underran), but also contains one of the most absurd lines of dialogue this writer has ever heard: when Kim tells her fella that her flight is delayed by a couple of hours, he replies, "well, maybe you should see this as a sign to stay with your dad." Oh please. Who says this sort of thing? Honestly, I thought this was going to be a lead-in to some asinine adultery plot, in which he's trying to keep Kim away because he's banging one of his fellow nurses on the side, but no, apparently it was just a crap line.

Then, lo and behold, Kim notices that a dodgy man appears to be spying on her! Well, we couldn't have her not be involved in the central plot, could we? No, that would be too easy. Of course, this turns out just to be a guy that Jack has assigned to keep an eye on his daughter, so we all breathe a huge sigh of relief. At this point, it seems like the writers are just toying with us, having a bit of fun with our expectations and laughing at their own clichés. Unfortunately, that gives them far, far too much credit. Ten minutes later, they completely undo all of this with the introduction of the single worst plot element of the season: the evil coffee-drinking, newspaper-reading couple who Kim just so happens to decide to sit beside when she's creeped out by Jack's aide. These two have been planted by the mysterious evil lawyer, apparently as yet another contingency plan just in case Tony is apprehended (how many back-ups do these people have, honestly?!) and now, they're going to 'keep an eye on her' so that Bauer will do whatever the crazy bespectacled and wigged woman wants. She guarantees his co-operation, hilariously, by sending his phone a live webcam feed of Kim, which is also on display in the most extraordinarily subtle fashion on the full screen of evil coffee-drinker's laptop, where any casual passer-by, or person in direct line of vision, could see it. And now, with his daughter's life threatened, Jack has to free Tony from FBI custody, thereby implicating himself and setting the scene for everyone in the show to start chasing after him for the umpteenth time in the day. Frankly, I can't think of anything I'd like to see less. Evidently, the writers are trying to recreate the formula that made season one such a success, right down to having the bad guy in constant communication with Jack via an ear-piece (Ira Gaines, anyone?) However, back then, the narrative was both fresh and completely organic: the drive of the season, from the get go, was the counterpointing of two threats, one against Senator Palmer and the other against Jack's family. We bought into these stories because they were with us from the start. Here, the escalation of the situation to a personal level just feels forced, coming completely out of nowhere and therefore jarring with what has gone before. While this inevitably has some emotional and dramatic promise, and will probably lead to a number of excellent scenes for Sutherland, the viewer is far less invested, seeing it for the artificial U-turn that it is.

Sadly, the remaining plot strands aren't much better. While certain elements of Olivia's story remain strong, most notably her continued unravelling and the fact that it is simply her contact who got Hodges all blowed up, not some ridiculous third party conspirator, its trajectory becomes questionable once Aaron starts calling up Ethan and asking about 'the voice activated recording system that allows staff meetings to be logged and archived'. Riiiight. So there's this magical device that records everything that happens in the Chief of Staff's office at the drop of a single word and Olivia wouldn't be briefed on this when she's promoted to the position? You've got to be kidding me, yeah? I suppose I should give the writers the benefit of the doubt here since the story hasn't actually played out, but I'll bet good money that everything she's said 'in private' has been conveniently captured on the audio recorder. And in any case, why wouldn't Ethan turn the damn thing off? He had plenty time to pack up and tidy away when he resigned. And just when was the last time they had a staff meeting in his office, for crying out loud? 12+ hours ago? More? This is yet another example of monumentally lazy writing, a quick and ill-thought out way of getting from A to B, that could easily have been rectified with a little more thought.

Elsewhere, the bickering between Chloe and Janis is probably the biggest waste of space since Chase's baby turned up and started crapping all over CTU's freshly-opened sockets back in year three. This is completely pointless stuff, tired, clichéd filler that does nothing other than annoy the viewer. We certainly don't care enough about either character to invest in their argument and there is absolutely no reward whatsoever in the utterly transparent resolution of the storyline, in which Janeane Garofolo actually proves her worth to the almighty Ms O'Brien. Just look at some of the dialogue between the pair of 'em: "Do you have something you'd like to say to me?" "What?" "How about good job Janis?" "Oh you don't know me but if you did, you would know that this is not the place you should look for validation." Euck. Pass the sick bucket, this crap is making me nauseous. Oh and while we're on the subject, the unbelievably cheesy nods between Jack and Gohar and the subsequent over-the-top three-way hug involving the brothers and their priest made me want to blow chunks too.

In the space of a single episode, the 24 writing staff have managed to undo just about everything that has made the show such a delight to watch this year. While there are moments of brilliance - the semi-torture of the henchman, the incredibly violent and emotional scene between Jack and Tony - they are so few and far between that they barely have any impact. The rest of '5am - 6am' is a narratalogical car crash, unravelling in painfully slow motion: with every step, the story delves deeper and deeper into the asinine and the ridiculous, stopping off several times at clichéd and predictable along the way. From the lacklustre culmination of the bio-terrorist storyline to the irritating reintroduction of Kim, by way of Janis and Chloe's argument from hell, things just get worse and worse until, by episode's end, it's difficult to care any more. From the looks of the cliffhanger, it appears that the two hour season finale will be a retread of season one, featuring Bauer working to free his 'kidnapped' daughter by obeying the terrorists' every evil whim while the government chases after him because they think he's dirty. Great. Let's hope the writers have a few tricks up their sleeves, eh? Otherwise, to quote a certain Mr. Bauer, we may need to "lock down this piece of crap" before it's too late. 3.7