The first season of "24" pulled off a pretty neat trick: it did something entirely new. The show took the cop-action drama genre, put it in the timely setting of L.A.'s counter-terrorism office, and plugged it into a real-time format that nobody had tried before.
And in spite of the annoying blitz of ads ("WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?") that led up to the series premiere, the gamble paid off, getting good ratings and even better critical notices, and yanking Kiefer Sutherland back from the precipice of Straight-To-Video Canyon.
Kidnappings! Smotherings! Triple-crosses! Parties in furniture stores! Even Dennis Hopper's atrocious Eastern European "accent" and Shatnerrific overacting couldn't ruin the shouting, shooting, shocking fun.
But that momentum proved hard to sustain. The last two seasons, while entertaining, have faltered; the show has strayed from what made it successful in the first place. What happened?
It's tempting to point to the notorious "a cougar menaces Kim Bauer" episode from the second season as the point at which the show started to slide (and "chased by a cougar" may yet replace in the TV-studies lexicon), but the problems go deeper. The writers often don't seem to have a plan — at least, not one that reaches more than an episode or two ahead.
A number of plots that took center stage in the beginning of the current season got jettisoned midway through, without comment. Jack Bauer's heroin addiction, which threatened to jeopardize his status at CTU? He's rehabbed, apparently; the junk hasn't gotten a mention since mid-season.
President David Palmer's fatigue, and the mysterious pills he took in the first few episodes — both presumably tied to the creeping crud that felled him in last season's finale? Both gone, along with his physician girlfriend, her unstable ex-husband, and their profoundly boring blackmail subplot. Rethinking storylines is one thing, but abruptly dumping them and hoping fans won't notice is another.
Sherry and NinaWhat did "24" viewers get instead? The return of baddies Nina Myers, the first-season mole who murdered Bauer's wife Teri, and Sherry Palmer, the president's scheming ex-wife. Both women made compelling villains, and both actresses did great work with the material — but neither of them belonged on the show any longer.
Sherry's continuing third-season presence in particular brings to mind the elaborate contrivances used by high-school dramas to keep the entire cast together for the college years. The idea that Sherry would have avoided jail time for her role in last season's nuclear-bomb plot is nothing short of absurd. When she's shown on a well-appointed veranda, sipping a mimosa and machinating in the direction of her inexplicably dense ex-husband, instead of in Fort Leavenworth's women's wing, it's not a clever or startling plot twist. It's pandering, and it's no longer effective. (The writers seem to have grasped this, finally, since Sherry met her overdue demise in the season's penultimate episode. Well, apparently. You never know with this show.)
And speaking of "no longer effective," it's time to rethink President Palmer's entire role on the series. Palmer has proven increasingly gullible and weak over the course of three seasons — unaware of his wife's plotting; jobbed by his own vice-president; authorizing bribes and black-bag jobs in the service of damage-controlling his brother Wayne's soap-operatic love life; and uttering hilarious lines like, "We have the truth on our side." It's not as though the idea of a dim-witted chief executive is inconceivable, but fetuses have more savvy than Palmer. And now that he's no longer the object of an assassination conspiracy, the character doesn't merit as much screen time as he's getting — not if he's just a means to the end of dragging Sherry back into the fray.
If the show can't find anything good for Dennis Haysbert to do, the writers should get rid of him (and his entire family) and concentrate on more important matters — like the real-time format. Viewers don't demand uncompromising realism from the show, and they can accept it when, say, Jack Bauer drives across rush-hour Los Angeles in a mere 10 minutes, or when nobody onscreen ever seems to need a bathroom. We don't have to see our hero fighting gridlock for the conceit to work.
But the show has taken more and more liberties with the format over time. Tony Almeida gets shot in the neck at the end of one episode; an ambulance has already arrived and loaded Tony onto a stretcher by the beginning of the next episode — i.e. in under a minute, which is not credible. Tony is in surgery within the hour, but then he's not only on his feet three hours later — he's back at work. Running a counter-terrorist unit. During a national emergency. After spending over an hour under anesthesia. Unbelievable, in every sense of the word.
Of course, Tony's colleague Chase Edmonds is also scampering around like he's in a high-stakes dodgeball game, scant hours after undergoing torture and getting shot in the hand, but if the writers gave CTU agents vampire-slayer powers of regeneration, they might have shared that fact with the audience. Glossing over minor events to move the plot forward is reasonable, but this is not a cartoon, and sacrificing realism for sensation hurts the show overall.
Show can be saved"24" is still a good program in many ways. The acting is good, if occasionally redolent of ham; the action sequences always look professional, and the third season finally gathered a good head of steam when the virus got out and plotting with some actual relevance kicked in.
When it doesn't lose its nerve, "24" still takes real risks dramatically — like the recent demise of Ryan Chappelle, the weaselly division head who existed primarily to hinder Jack's dicier plans. Many shows would have found a way to get out of offing a main character; "24" called its own bluff and had Jack shoot him in the head.
The show doesn't do that often enough. It keeps characters around who don't belong anymore; Kim Bauer had a purpose in the first season, but she's clearly too stupid to operate a coffee machine properly, much less score a government security clearance to work in the same place where her own mother got killed.
Every scene that focuses on Jack and Kim's angst-ridden work-family relationship — or Chase's baby daughter, a.k.a. "Maguffin Edmonds," or computer whiz Chloe's autistic interpersonal skills — takes time away from the tense, innovative plotting that let the show succeed in the first place.
"24" can get that originality and suspense back, if it's willing to get rid of past-the-sell-by-date characters, and plan future season arcs more carefully.
The writers had Jack Bauer behead a suspect with a saw; surely they can restore "24" to its pre-puma greatness.
Sarah D. Bunting is the co-creator and co-editor-in-chief of Television Without Pity.com. She lives in Brooklyn.