During the past few weeks, I have not been certain of how good Season 6 of 24 was going to be, since the premiere hype has been rather overblown and overwhelming. Combine that with the covert release of the first four episodes (courtesy of the Internet), and there was almost a feeling that something was horribly wrong with the show.
Why would Fox be releasing a DVD (today, January 16, 2007) and somehow let its contents be leaked if the show was not up to par? Perhaps they wanted the first four hours to be pirated because they were trying to create a buzz or maybe it was the work of those devious enough to find a way. After viewing the first four hours of Season 6, I no longer care about any of this because 24 and our stalwart hero Jack Bauer are back with a vengeance.
The first and the fourth episodes feature neck wounds that figure prominently in the plotline and do much to show us Jack Bauer’s tenacity yet also reveal his new, more conflicted nature. Jack channels his David character from the rather fine movie Lost Boys in which Sutherland played a vampire. He has been chained to a chair by Abu (Mr. Clean) Fayed who wants him to die painfully because of a similar death his brother suffered in Jack’s hands (during some incident in 1999).
This is reminiscent of the situations in Season 1 and 3, when the Drazens and Saunders wanted to get revenge for Operation Nightfall in Kosovo. Needless to say, the list of people out there who want Jack dead is a long one.
Jack has just stepped off a transport plane from China, where he had been held prisoner for twenty months. Looking like a cross between The Count of Monte Cristo and Grizzly Adams, Jack ambles off the plane and gives the Chinese guy who authorized his capture and imprisonment one of those “Jack looks” that viewers of the show know means one thing: it’s not over between Jack and Cheng (and Cheng better watch his chopsticks for the foreseeable future).
Despite months of torture, Jack quickly gets back into shape (a shave, haircut, and new set of clothes help) after he learns that the new president Palmer (David’s brother Wayne who once learned how to release his inner Rambo courtesy of Jack’s tutelage in Season 5) has agreed to exchange Jack for cash and the location of one Hamri (Cat Stevens) Al-Assad (a terrorist believed to behind eleven weeks of deadly attacks all around the USA).
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Article comments
1 - Mary K. Williams
Here we go again Victor!
Good job - I think we picked up on a few of the same points. (GMTA)
2 - Pat Fish
This was such a good review. Impossibly good writing.
Consider yourself complimented.
3 - Scott
Terrific article Victor, I appreciate you sense of humor and obviously you are a real "24" Fan like myself.
Bravo and lookin forward to more...
Scott
Boston Area
4 - handyguy
The main plot is even sillier than usual - the way President Wayne goes along with one hare-brained scheme after another, as soon as they're suggested, and the whole trading-Jack-to-be-slaughtered-for-peace thing [well, he did look like Jesus when he first got off the plane]. But I do like the panoramic view of terrorists and the terrorized, and the innocent being swept up in the too-wide net stuff. Is big fan Limbaugh pleased with these parts? Maybe he only sees what he wants to see.
Less campy fun so far this season [no equivalents of that wonderfully wacky first lady yet], but the end of the 4th hour certainly packed a wallop, eh? The death of Curtis, quickly followed by the mushroom cloud - pretty wild.
5 - andy
Good review... we certainly have covered a lot of ground already since Jack got off the plane...he went from not speaking for 2 years to this??
Could have had a little more reality about Jack's shoulder being dug into by Clean however. He didn't seem to skip a beat or suffer any disabling effects.
Still a huge fan and happy to have it back.
6 - Victor Lana
Thank you for the great comments. As for Jack's torture, I thought the same thing for a moment about the liquid being splashed on the wound (I thought it was alcohol though). The truth is though that Jack has just endured 20 months at the hands of the Chinese and didn't crack. So, in context, his endurance is not so surprising.
Oh, and Pat Fish, I am deeply honored. Thank you.
7 - kulangot
o yeah..yeah. yeah.