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TV Review 24: Live Another Day  Finale  “10:00 PM-11:00 AM”  By: Brandon Wolfe ‘24’ is a nasty piece of work. It’s a violent, ruthless, completely unforgiving enterprise. Apart from the fleeting moments of catharsis when a villain meets his or her demise or a crisis is averted, there are no happy endings on this show. The heroes never truly win, even when they’ve technically won. In the early goings, ‘24’s’ bleakness set it apart, made it unique. That the show could end a season on a soul-crushing downer gave it a mean-spirited edge that seemed refreshing in the comparatively brighter television landscape into which it was birthed. But ‘24’ has been bumming us out for nine seasons now, never letting even a tiny ray of light sneak through its aura of oppressive gloom. So resolute is ‘24’ in its bid to constantly shock its audience that it doesn’t seem to realize that it has made being defiantly cutthroat into a formula. After 13 years, the most shocking thing ‘24’ could...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “9:00 PM – 10:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe ’ 24: Live Another Day ’ has a lot of story left to tell and not a lot of time left to tell it. “9:00 PM – 10:00 PM” is the penultimate episode of this 12-episode event series and it breaks its neck setting up all the pieces for next week’s finale, yet it still feels like it’s setting up the next 12 weeks, as if the writers somehow forgot that they weren’t required to fill their usual quota of 24 episodes. The episode is a non-stop dash for Jack to put many pieces together in a very short amount of time. It’s a busy hour that rarely takes a breath, usually ‘24’s’ strong suit, yet it all feels a bit like speeding toward a red light. I don’t know how the writers intend to resolve not only this season satisfactorily, but perhaps the entire Jack Bauer saga altogether (those ratings ain’t great, after all), with just one measly hour left. Historically, these guys aren’t the best closers even when they have all the...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “8:00 PM – 9:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe The ‘24’ writing staff is pretty much set in their ways. They know their formula inside and out and adhere to it as if their very lives depend upon it. In the series’ original run, this rigorous sameness grew wearying. In ‘Live Another Day’, it has mostly been fine, even welcome, like revisiting an old friend who hasn’t let the years away change him one bit. But the sole aspect that marks this event series as a deviation from the original series is in its length, 12 episodes versus the usual 24. With the Al-Harazi threat neutralized and defenestrated last week, this is the precise point where ‘24’ would be gearing up for the next big thing that will act as the primary focus for the next ten or so hours, and that is indeed what happens in “8:00 PM – 9:00 PM” when the override device is used to successfully order an American military sub to launch a strike against a Chinese aircraft carrier. This is huge, an eve...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “6:00 PM – 7:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe One of ‘24’s’ most harrowing moments occurred in the third season, when terrorist mastermind Stephen Saunders ordered the death of CTU higher-up Ryan Chappelle. Instructed to present Chappelle’s body by the end of the hour under the threat of further biological attacks on the public, Jack spent every second he had left hunting down any lead he could before being forced to escort Chappelle to the rendezvous point and execute him. It was raw, disturbing and powerful, and all these years later, it still stands as one of the show’s most memorable moments. So it’s not surprising that ‘24’ would try to recreate that moment. ‘24’ recreates every moment. It keeps its favored handful of tropes on a repeat cycle at all times. Really, the only surprise is that it took so long for them to pull this move out again. It’s President Heller who finds himself in Chappelle’s shoes this time, having been ordered to surrender him...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “5:00 PM – 6:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe Jack Bauer’s propensity toward torturing suspects for information became one of his defining character traits during the original run of ‘24’, and contributed to the ugly national discussion that took place all throughout the George W. Bush era about torture’s place in counterterrorism. The show always seemed to insist that Jack did not want to be doing the horrible things he did in the name of national security, but that he felt it was what needed to be done given the time constraints and millions-will-die stakes he was perpetually up against. Yet still, the guy defaulted to torture so often and so immediately that one couldn’t help but suspect that maybe, just maybe, he got off on hurting bad people, even if it was something he would never admit, either to himself or anyone else. So when Jack finally climbs back on the torture horse in “5:00 PM – 6:00 PM” to squeeze the bloody little stump where Simone Al-Ha...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “4:00 PM – 5:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe And we have a mole. On ‘ 24 ’, there’s always a mole, so it was only a matter of time. It’s a well the show went back to time and again in its original run, much to its detriment, so when CIA chief Steve Navarro ( Benjamin Bratt , the show’s other Julia Roberts ex) furtively dashes into that back room in the episode’s final minutes and snaps that secrecy device over his phone, we instinctively knew precisely what was about to happen. Navarro speaks to another party, their voice cloaked, concerning some conspiratorial matters involving Kate Morgan’s duplicitous former husband whom, the show has tirelessly insisted upon reminding us, sold secrets and betrayed his country. Whether or not Navarro’s mole status extends to the season’s central terror plot remains to be seen, but at least we can now stop wondering when the inevitable mole will pop out of his mole hole. Before it falls back on that musty old trope, ‘...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “3:00 PM – 4:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe Hours where Jack Bauer is sidelined are generally never the best episodes of ‘24’. Jack is the engine that makes the whole thing run, but every once in awhile, a plot development will force the writers to take Jack out of the game, as with his current military apprehension. It never lasts more than an hour, but it invariably means that the hour in question won’t be one for the time capsule. “3:00 PM – 4:00 PM” is an episode calibrated toward inching the plot forward and bringing other characters up to speed. It’s housekeeping, plain and simple, but it’s not the worst instance of ‘24’ stopping to line up its ducks. Agent Morgan successfully takes possession of the flight key before Jack is taken into custody. With help from Chloe, with whom she’s probably a bit more instantly chummy than she logically should be, she manages to upload the key’s contents to Open Cell, where Chloe finds proof of the override’...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “2:00 PM - 3:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe ‘ Live Another Day ’ thus far has not been presenting us with an all-new ‘ 24 ’, but rather with an optimal version of the old ‘24’. It’s been great about keeping the excitement up while still throwing enough obstacles in Jack’s path to keep things interesting. It hasn’t completely shaken off some of the more frustrating aspects of ‘24’, but the relentlessness of this first batch of episodes recalls the show at its white-knuckle best. The meat of “2:00 PM - 3:00 PM” concerns what happens after Jack made his way into the U.S. Embassy last week. Attempting to locate accused drone pilot Chris Tanner, Jack knocks out an agent and grabs his jacket and key card. Once he locates Tanner, he gives the man his assurances that he believes he is innocent and then absconds with his flight key, which Jack thinks will prove to the American government that the drones are being hijacked by the override device. Where thin...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “1:00 PM to 2:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe “ 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM ” (perhaps confusingly, a title eight other ‘24’ episodes bear) starts out reminding us what ‘24’ does so well before going on to remind us of the things ‘24’ frequently did to hurt us, or at least make us very sleepy. The show, even at its worst, was always masterful at building tension, even if the things happening onscreen weren’t technically of grave consequence to us, and the entire first act involves Jack’s breathless pursuit of comely, improbably named terrorist Simone Al-Harazi from a subway to a train station. Only the most attentive viewers probably even remember from last week the reasons why Jack is pursuing Al-Harazi, but when ‘24’ starts using its split-screens and Jack is sprinting and scowling his head off, you often find yourself gripping your armrest in spite of yourself. The entire sequence lasts almost 15 minutes, before Jack loses Al-Harazi because Chloe was asleep at the...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day – “11:00 AM-12:00 PM”/“12:00 PM-1:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe It has been four years since the clock finally ran out on Jack Bauer, and at the time it felt like not a moment too soon. Actually, it felt like a moment arriving years too late. ‘24’ was one of the defining shows of the ‘00s, it rewrote many of the rules of television and it had stretches where it occasionally brushed up against something like brilliance, but it ran out of gas long before it left our screens. Collapsing into a slog of poor writing, repetitive use of the same handful of tropes, frequent deployment of troubling politics and just an overall sense that its premise could not withstand being trotted out over myriad seasons, the latter years of ‘24’ became something of a chore to get through. Add to this mix rapidly diminishing ratings and it’s hard to argue that ‘24’s’ demise wasn’t the right call. But all that being said, it’s nice having ol’ Jack Bauer around. The charact...