'24': Time for a breather

For all those disaffected “24” fans shell-shocked like poor Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) in her torture-induced haze, wondering just how one of their favorite shows went so wrong, take heart! The Times’ own Scott Collins talked to “24” producer Howard Gordon in his Channel Island column this week, and he came away with some intriguing promises (read the whole thing here). Namely, the “24” we see next season may bear little resemblance to what we’ve seen this year, or any year previous. Big changes seem to be in Jack Bauer’s future, and for a show that’s starting to show its age, this can only be a good thing.

However, the re-tooled and re-touched “24” won’t be coming until sometime next year, and to paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, you have to review the show you have, not the show you wish you had. So we’re left to pick through the scattershot remains of this season, one that started off so strong its nuclear mushroom cloud over the Santa Clarita Valley, but seems destined to end in some kind of murky haze of confused plotting.

Still, for all the series’ recent faults, Monday night’s episode (“1 a.m.-2 a.m.”) provided a welcome change of pace by going against the conventional wisdom of what’s become expected out of a “24” hour. Instead of the usual plot twists, gun shots and Jack urgently and intensely screaming in someone’s face, the episode slowed things down a bit, giving us all a breather and letting the characters emotionally deal with recent events.

That doesn’t mean they finally came to terms with the deaths of the thousands who got nuked in Southern California earlier in the day. No, the problems of the “24” people were all much closer to home: Jack tried to reconnect with Audrey by performing an interrogation (in a gentle and loving manner, of course); Morris (Carlo Rota) and Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) called it quits; acting President Daniels (Powers Boothe) lamented his choice of sexual partners after learning his chief of staff was leaking information to a Russian spy; and Audrey’s dad, the former Secretary of Defense (William Devane) showed up to scold Jack like a teenager and to forbid him from ever seeing his daughter again. Somebody should play him the clip of Jack biting the neck out of a terrorist early in the season. Maybe he’ll reconsider.

Of all the episode’s quiet moments, two stood out in particular, and served to remind us of how great this show can be when it takes a few of its precious ticking minutes to be human.

The first moment was just a look, a reaction on the face of Chief of Staff Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol), as Daniels spilled his guts about his loneliness and his inter-office romance. Lennox’s face burned with a pained disbelief so distinct, you could almost hear him slapping his forehead.

MacNicol started off the season as a caricature, an ill-defined bureaucrat who seemed designed to be dispatched as a plot-twisting death or to be a constant foil to Jack’s plans. But somehow along the way he’s come into his own as a likable crank, a staunch defender of the Constitution, and possibly the only person inside the White House without a secret agenda wrapped within a covert one.

The second moment was between Jack and Audrey, in which Jack finally spoke to her about their time in a Chinese prison, and opened up to her in a way he hasn’t done with anyone else yet this season. With CTU’s guards cutting open a door to get to them, it was a brief moment, one that had to be snatched from the head-long rush of action the show seemed eager to return to. But for those few stolen moments, it was refreshing to see Jack became a human being once again and what a relief it was to see him fighting to live instead of rushing to die.

(Photo courtesy Fox)