When I said in my review for season five (here) that the end of the season is where the decline starts, I wasn’t kidding. Look, I won’t say season six is bad; it’s not. It’s just more ludicrous than ever; the threats feel more manufactured than ever, and most of all, this is why I mentioned TV tropes. There are a few that can tell you whether your show might have run its course when you manufacture tension by introducing family members that we haven’t even heard of, let alone seen, over the past five seasons! As with my previous review, I have to go into spoilers from the very beginning to discuss this season in any meaningful way, so…

Beware, SPOILERS are coming!

Remember the main bad guy behind president Logan from the last season? The writers felt it wasn’t enough for him to come back or that the company obviously had a much greater role in everything no. They made him into Jack’s brother. Can I ask, would it be less impactful to have him back without that? Couldn’t we simply have this company (if that is the route we are going down) that’s influencing everything and has influential people on the board without them having a family connection to Jack Bauer? And if the fact his brother was behind that wasn’t enough for you, do I have another family member for you?! James Cromwell, who is always a great addition to anything, portrays Jack’s dad. And, of course, he is also involved because fuck everything. But what makes these “additions” even more worthless is neither of them survives this season. I could see these choices make some sense if at least one survives and becomes “the big bad” for the rest of the show or at least one more season. But nah, both die this season, making them part of Jack’s family absolutely pointless, and that family tie has no compelling impact on this season or the show overall. And this is what makes this “Oh no, a few of the bad guys are part of Jack’s family!” move so cheap and ultimately meaningless. There is some shock value (but most of the shock stems from him never referencing either in the show), but that is it. No “repercussions” and no emotional damage for Jack because he’s already broken from the Chinese prison…

That is something that I wish we would have explored more, Jack’s mental state. This season is his first one where he doesn’t want to be involved and even says he can’t do this anymore. But we only see that for not even two episodes, and then, back to the action! And I understand it’s his show he “needs to” be the guy who kicks all the terrorists’ butts and all, but… They had a chance to do something interesting here, especially after Jack kills Curtis (a great performance by Roger Cross); I wish we switched to somebody else taking the reigns for a bit, and we would see Jack struggling with everything. But no, we can’t have our American hero suffer too much and kick fewer butts, so of course, his patriotism prevails, somehow, and he is back at it, what feels like in no time.

What I thought was handled well and added some realism to this season was Morris’ storyline (portrayed by Carlo Rota), whose character I liked in the previous season and grew to love in this one. I think the point of his character was to show us somebody more like “us”, the “normal” viewer. Sure, Morris is a CTU agent, but he isn’t indestructible or unbreakable like Jack, and his arc of him helping the terrorists (well, being tortured to help them) and having that cloud over his head for the rest of this season was haunting. The same went for the racial profiling of all Muslims, including the CTU agents; the show touched on something that is still more than relevant today. And this might be as good a time as any to go over one of the main criticism I keep reading about when discussing 24.

One of the main complaints I have seen in a few tidbits on the Internet is that this show is heavily conservative with its views and politics (that is true) and is anti-Muslim. And I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In the second season (my review here), which was the season right after 9/11 happened, the show showed some anti-Muslim rhetoric. But here is where people didn’t watch that season thoroughly, as in that season, the vigilantes who hunted down and killed an innocent Muslim were the wrong ones; the show even condemned them. A fun fact, the main racist vigilante is played by young Nick Offerman. And the same applies here in this season; throughout it, all the profiling policies and tendencies come from people who are either revealed behind everything or proven wrong at the end. There is a difference between showcasing racial profiling and condoning it, and I never thought the show even hinted at any of these things as being “the correct things to do”. At the time of writing this, I have, yet again, future knowledge of what’s ahead of me (as I just started season eight) and that supports my view even firmer as the terrorists in that season want to pin down everything on Muslims. Again, 24 isn’t a perfect show by any means, I think the main criticism should be justifying torture as a valid interrogation method, but regarding any racial profiling, I think they have (at least from what I saw) always landed on the right side and never tried to justify it.

Back to this season, another thing I didn’t care about was the White House scenes. Because yet again, we have a traitor there, and we have a very random president (I like D.B. Woodside as much as the next guy, but the show’s justification of “Well, his dead brother was popular.” didn’t ring true). And since he also goes away quickly, his character leaves no impact. And talk about random, did you know Palmers had a sister? And as much as I love seeing Regina King in anything, I wish she would have played a character that mattered, not this disposable “Hey, I am president’s sister.” character that, yet again, has little impact on this season except for getting him out of his coma. And it pains to write about both of these actors that they were disposable, but I didn’t write this season. The writers made them into paper-thin characters whose entire purpose was to move some plot points further and disappear when their role was done, with no explanation. We don’t know what happens to him after this season. Did he die in the coma, or did he recover? “Fuck you for even asking”, the show says. And the same with Regina’s character, who just disappears.

And that was my ultimate problem with season six. The action is still great, and there are some tense moments, but if a bunch of your characters are paper-thin, disposable pieces of nothing, the stakes feel much lower, which is a shame, given this show could have been amazing. Also, if you are watching this show for the first time, make sure to watch 24: Redemption (2008) right after the end of season six because that is a prequel to season seven. That was something I didn’t know, and nobody pointed it out, so I will watch it retrospectively to see what I missed. But this also goes to show how there are some fans of this show but not enough to point these things out to new watchers like me. When I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003) a few years ago for the first time, I knew of the watching order from the fanbase. If you don’t know, when Angel (1999 – 2004) got his show, the episodes would often overlap or reference each other, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. So people created a timeline; on how to watch them both back to back for the best viewing experience. Same with Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008 – 2020, my review here), since the show is an anthology, there is a list (here) for watching the entire show in chronological order if you want to, and again, I have learned about it from the fans. But nothing like this for 24, proving my point that this show has been forgotten about. And it’s mainly due to things that happen over this season, where they jump several metaphorical sharks at once; whilst having characters that don’t matter.

Overall, the sixth season of 24 was a messy frustration mixed with occasional glimpses of great stuff. The action sequences are still mostly fine, and some plotlines were superb, but mostly, this season dampens the legacy this show could have had. It’s still an ok watch, but you might roll your eyes more than once. 24 might inadvertently be the best example of why streaming, despite its flaws, is the superior way to produce new shows and how it makes sense to tell the story you have in mind, not task yourself year by year to come up with more insane things for Jack Bauer to go up against.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke