24 Season 6: hr 6: last 5 mins priceless, 1st 55 blah

Continuing with my reviews of 24 Season 6 - as close as I can make it to within 24 minutes of the end of the episode ... [contains spoilers]...

The last five minutes of tonight's 24, hour 6 were prime, even priceless. Jack's father is introduced, may be bad, but is revealed as being as duped by Jack's brother as everyone else in the family - except Jack, whose knowledge of the depth of his brother's evil is tantalizingly not clear at the moment. Jack seems to know something of what Graem could be capable of - but he couldn't know that Graem ordered David Palmer's assassination. Jack couldn't have known that and kept his composure tonight, in this tense, fast, family scene, bristling with possibilities...

But the rest of the hour - the first 55 minutes? - well, we've seen it all before, and maybe even more believably. I don't think Karen would have allowed herself to be bullied out of her job by Tom's blackmail - not without calling Bill first and working out all available strategies. And the Walid in prison bit was simply lame. It was not terribly believable in the first place that he would have been so fortunate to be locked up with terrorists responsible for the suitcase nukes. The revelation that the prisoners in question read about the "visitors" on the web was a nice touch, but not good enough to justify the time we spent with them.

24 has always been prone to such slow hours here and there. Start out strong, and then take a little time to regroup. That's what they made watching the whole season on DVD for - a weak hour or two doesn't matter when you can go right on to the next one, rather than having to wait a week.

But I'll survive. And though I'm sure Jack and his father will survive the presumed drive they're taking to their death (hey, didn't we see Jack in the coming attractions?), I'll be eagerly awaiting and watching with rapt attention next week anyway.

2.5 minute podcast of this review: Levinson news clips