Tuesday, June 30, 2009

24: Season 2

I'm going to again pollute this blog with thoughts on 24. Seeing as how I am about 1/3 of the readership anyways, I don't think anyone will mind too much.

This time it's Season 2, and if you're one of those other two people you're probably thinking, "Wow, you finished that pretty quickly." And you'd be right. I watched one episode Saturday night before I went to bed, SIXTEEN episodes on Sunday, and then finished the last seven on Monday.

[And, once again, if you'd like to watch this without knowing what happens, don't continue reading.]



***

Season 2 was clearly inferior when compared to Season 1, and it was for a few of the same reasons as I discussed last time (when I talked about the negatives of Season 7). My main problem with Season 2, though, was quite simply the plot. The main plot regarding the nuclear weapon was good, but almost every scene with Kim was entirely stupid. I'm not sure if the writers thought they needed to give Kim a substantial role, or if they needed to fill more time and figured they could use Kim to do so, but either way it was ridiculous. I mean, I've suspended my disbelief enough for the show, do I really need to be paraded through that ridiculousness on the side?

During the course of the season, there are at least four or five different instances where Kim accidentally gets herself into a situation where she could be killed. I could go on and on about how absurd everything that happened with her was, but it's just not worth it. However, I do want to mention her and Miguel's idea to start a fire in the police car, and point out how moronically stupid that was.

The other main negative was the high dosage of torture we were subjected to. There were a minimum of four elongated torture scenes: Ali's friend interrogating Kate's private investigator, Jack threatening Ali, Palmer having Stanton tortured, and Kingsley's men extracting information from Jack. All of them were difficult to watch and made the show much less enjoyable.

In the meantime, Jack is of course getting away with more and more impossible stunts. The worst came right in the beginning, when he shot and killed a witness (an indicted murderer and rapist) who was planning to testify against another criminal and receive immunity. Not only that, he was then allowed to cut off his head, take it with him, and leave completely unscathed. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but that crossed the line.

And why is it that Jack always uses a pistol? For instance, when he is leading a team at Norton Airfield in the search for the bomb (right before they find the cobra snake team dead), Jack enters the building holding a little pistol, while everyone behind him has some sort of assault rifle and full body gear on, too. Only in the most extreme situation, such as when he was fighting the cobra snake team after the plane had crashed, does he use an automatic weapon. Now, I know almost nothing about guns, but I can tell Jack continually uses a pretty crappy one for no apparent reason.

So after all this, after Jack's survived torture where his heart stopped beating, after he's almost single-handedly tracked down the nuclear bomb, the chip, and finally Peter Kingsley, after he's defeated the cobra snake team by himself--they expect me to believe his seat belt getting stuck would have stopped him?! This was the single worst moment of all the episodes I've watched, and it's not even close. After all that, they want me to think he couldn't find a way to get his seat belt off?! Heck, he took down multiple men with guns by himself no less than four times during the season, and some of them were expertly trained units, and I'm supposed to think for a second that his seat belt would pose any problem?! I just can't get over how utterly stupid this was. Maybe it was an attempt to show Sherry Palmer's willingness to help, but they could have found another way--any other way would have been better.

And, as my last thought, I'm still not clear what exactly Sherry Palmer's goal was. Was she trying to help President Palmer the whole time, and if not, at what point did she start actually trying to help him?

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