[Movie] 24 Season 8

This season has been pretty underwhelming so far, but hey, it's still not season six bad (yet).

One of my problems is that President Taylor is being severely underused in her current capacity. She had such a great range of plots last season, but now they've pretty much pigeonholed her into this boring UN storyline. I hope they find some way to spice things up for her because as of now her plot is sadly not worth watching and is (or rather, was) only serving to move the overall plot forward.

And yeah, I don't even have to explain why the Dana Walsh plot is terrible.

I could go on and on about other reasons why the show's not working for me at the moment (emo Renee, all the new characters at CTU being pretty boring aside from Cole, etc.), but then I'd probably be here all day. For now I'll just hope that they manage to turn things around to make this season worth watching in the long run, because based on the episodes that have aired so far I'd say it isn't.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Since we're winding down to the last few episodes we might as well try to generate some discussion out of them. Surprisingly the show has gotten better as of late, though it's still nowhere as great as it has been in seasons past. So to hit on a few things:

-I'm sorry, but I can't imagine anyone giving Chloe that much power. Don't get me wrong, I think she's doing fine in the role, but every time she mentions that she's in charge I just start laughing. I could also say the same thing about Dahlia Hassan (minus the laughing part), because that is just one of those plots that it asking you to suspend your disbelief way too much (especially from a show that already does so in almost every episode).

-Killing Renee just seemed pointless. Yeah, I know the show is famous for its high body counts, and yeah, I know that if they hadn't killed her then the last five or six hours of the show would have just been Jack borking her over and over again, but it still seemed a bit unnecessary. Especially after seeing last night's episode, it seems like there was enough there to get Jack involved again without killing her, but I guess they just wanted to make it personal for MAXIMUM DRAMATIC EFFECT.

-And finally, though I thought this was going to be terrible, bringing back Logan has been pretty good so far. I love how Gregory Itzin is playing the character this time around, because it really is hard to get a good read on him (I honestly can't tell what his intentions are). And bringing him back has finally made President Taylor worthwhile for this season (because just about every other plot she was involved in has been pretty lame so far).

So all in all, while the show probably won't end on a high point, at least it'll more than likely not end on a low point either. I'm not really expecting too much from the series finale, mainly because they didn't know for certain the show was ending while they were making it (at least not far enough in advance to make any worthwhile changes), and because I expect any major loose ends will be tied up with the movie.

How ya doing, buddy?

Time for me to man up and admit it:

Spoiler:

I cried during the final scene of the show.

It was probably from a combination of both the scene itself and the realization that the show is actually over.

As for the rest of the finale, and the season in general, I have to say I didn't like the way they portrayed President Taylor at all this season. She went from a pretty boring first half to a totally out of character second half, pretty much ruining all the love I had for her after Season 7. Before this season I would have had no problem saying she's the best President since David Palmer, but after she started working with Logan (and especially after some of the stuff she did tonight) I just can't look at her in that high of a regard. Yeah, they tried to redeem her at the end, but for me personally it was already too late to fix the damage they did.

I'm also kinda sad to see Dahlia Hassan just roll over like that. Not that she was much of a strong-willed woman in the first place, but to not do anything and just let President Taylor's guilty conscience save the day was pretty lame. I'm not lying when I say I was hoping for her to just take that pen and jam it in Suvarov's neck when she went up to sign the treaty, but I guess that's too much to hope for from such an overall forgettable character.

Not much to say about Logan, except that I'm surprised he actually had the courage to pull the trigger. Then again, it probably had more to do with the fact that he didn't have the courage to actually pay for his crimes, so of course he did the most cowardly of the two.

Finally, while I knew there wouldn't be a happy ending for Jack (when has there ever been one?), I guess it's good that it ended in a way that provides closure while still leaving the door open for future adventures (i.e. the movie). And love her or hate her, there's no denying that Chloe's relationship with Jack was the longest running one on the show (in terms of seasons she's tied with Kim, but Chloe has been in way more episodes) and thus was fitting to end the show with. Yeah, there's still plenty of unresolved plotlines and unaccounted for characters from throughout the series run, but I don't think anyone would argue that first and foremost this show was Jack Bauer's story, so as long as we got closure for that I'm satisfied.

And while not a serious criticism, I wish they could have found some way to shoehorn Aaron Pierce into this season (hey, they did it in Season 6). Before this season he was the only person other than Jack to have been in every season, so I was hoping he'd end the series with that accomplishment. Oh well.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.