'24' pushed to 2009

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

With only one more episode to go in “24’s” uneven sixth season, it’s tempting to start the post-mortem early. Besides tying up loose ends and leaving us with the traditional season-ending cliffhanger, there’s not much one episode can do to reshape how the previous 20 played out. But since there are sure to be some surprises in next week’s two-hour finale -– and perhaps some hint at the new direction producers are planning to take the series next year -- we’ll look at the one element the series is still delivering just as effectively as ever: action.

After last week’s mini-version of “Die Hard,” this week brought a three-way struggle against the invading Chinese agents that finally allowed Nadia (Marisol Nichols) and Morris (Carlo Rota) to demonstrate that in CTU, even the office drones get hand-to-hand combat training. That was followed by a chase up to the roof of some sort of factory, in which Jack Bauer finally got his nephew (Evan Ellingson) back before being handed over to Jack’s dad, the eternally evil and scheming Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell).

In “24” terms, this was the equivalent of a summer blockbuster thrill ride. For all the talk of TV surpassing film in quality of characters and storytelling, one arena where the big screen purportedly still holds an edge is in big action spectacle. With its budget limitations and pacing considerations for commercials, nothing on network TV has approached the visual or technical complexity of, say, an extended Michael Bay car chase.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “24” may take liberties with the realism of how its government agents operate and just how much travel across Los Angeles freeways is possible during the length of a commercial break, but somehow the action feels just right. When violence happens, it happens quickly, is over more quickly and is usually punctuated by a whole lot of talking. It’s as if real-life criminals and cops learned their trade by watching it all on TV.

But a series doesn’t survive on action alone. While Jack was doing his thing over at CTU, acting President Daniels (Powers Boothe) was pacing around the Oval Office while his advisor Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol) was out in the field, doing his best Jack Bauer impression by setting up Daniels’ chief of staff (Kari Matchett) for a sting on a Russian agent.

Boothe and MacNicol are great actors, and they’ve both had some fine moments this season, but sometimes the plot demands stretch their credibility to the breaking point. Take for instance the scene late in Monday’s episode in which Daniels, Lennox and another advisor take a break from a meeting of the Joint Chiefs to bat around a theory that Russia’s military generals are forcing their country into a war with the U.S. and then somehow take their late-night theory and turn it into the basis for policy.

It’s absurd to think that the President and a couple of advisors would get together and, without bothering to double check their conjectures, move forward with a plan of action. When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, there was careful … Well, maybe that’s another thing that “24” gets right, after all.

(Photo courtesy Fox)

The lesson we can take away from Monday night’s episode of “24” (“2 a.m.-3 a.m.”) might be this: Ask long enough and eventually ye shall receive.

Finally, after weeks of begging and whining on the part of “24” fans everywhere (including me), the Powers That Be at the Fox series saw fit to give us the return of James Cromwell as Jack Bauer’s dad. He appeared only in the closing minutes of the episode, not long enough to make much of an impact this week, but his reemergence promises that the season’s closing episodes at least will feature some top notch villainy, if not wrenching Freudian drama -– one of the few elements of this season that hasn’t been recycled from “24’s” past.

It may be too late for Cromwell to single-handedly salvage this season -– that’s a task too monumental for any one actor –- but by circling back to this long abandoned storyline, “24’s” producers have at least put a big Band-Aid on the show and asked that we all come back in a few months to see if it got better.

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.

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

Tony comes back to '24,' despite being dead

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

With only one more episode to go in “24’s” uneven sixth season, it’s tempting to start the post-mortem early. Besides tying up loose ends and leaving us with the traditional season-ending cliffhanger, there’s not much one episode can do to reshape how the previous 20 played out. But since there are sure to be some surprises in next week’s two-hour finale -– and perhaps some hint at the new direction producers are planning to take the series next year -- we’ll look at the one element the series is still delivering just as effectively as ever: action.

After last week’s mini-version of “Die Hard,” this week brought a three-way struggle against the invading Chinese agents that finally allowed Nadia (Marisol Nichols) and Morris (Carlo Rota) to demonstrate that in CTU, even the office drones get hand-to-hand combat training. That was followed by a chase up to the roof of some sort of factory, in which Jack Bauer finally got his nephew (Evan Ellingson) back before being handed over to Jack’s dad, the eternally evil and scheming Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell).

In “24” terms, this was the equivalent of a summer blockbuster thrill ride. For all the talk of TV surpassing film in quality of characters and storytelling, one arena where the big screen purportedly still holds an edge is in big action spectacle. With its budget limitations and pacing considerations for commercials, nothing on network TV has approached the visual or technical complexity of, say, an extended Michael Bay car chase.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “24” may take liberties with the realism of how its government agents operate and just how much travel across Los Angeles freeways is possible during the length of a commercial break, but somehow the action feels just right. When violence happens, it happens quickly, is over more quickly and is usually punctuated by a whole lot of talking. It’s as if real-life criminals and cops learned their trade by watching it all on TV.

But a series doesn’t survive on action alone. While Jack was doing his thing over at CTU, acting President Daniels (Powers Boothe) was pacing around the Oval Office while his advisor Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol) was out in the field, doing his best Jack Bauer impression by setting up Daniels’ chief of staff (Kari Matchett) for a sting on a Russian agent.

Boothe and MacNicol are great actors, and they’ve both had some fine moments this season, but sometimes the plot demands stretch their credibility to the breaking point. Take for instance the scene late in Monday’s episode in which Daniels, Lennox and another advisor take a break from a meeting of the Joint Chiefs to bat around a theory that Russia’s military generals are forcing their country into a war with the U.S. and then somehow take their late-night theory and turn it into the basis for policy.

It’s absurd to think that the President and a couple of advisors would get together and, without bothering to double check their conjectures, move forward with a plan of action. When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, there was careful … Well, maybe that’s another thing that “24” gets right, after all.

(Photo courtesy Fox)

The lesson we can take away from Monday night’s episode of “24” (“2 a.m.-3 a.m.”) might be this: Ask long enough and eventually ye shall receive.

Finally, after weeks of begging and whining on the part of “24” fans everywhere (including me), the Powers That Be at the Fox series saw fit to give us the return of James Cromwell as Jack Bauer’s dad. He appeared only in the closing minutes of the episode, not long enough to make much of an impact this week, but his reemergence promises that the season’s closing episodes at least will feature some top notch villainy, if not wrenching Freudian drama -– one of the few elements of this season that hasn’t been recycled from “24’s” past.

It may be too late for Cromwell to single-handedly salvage this season -– that’s a task too monumental for any one actor –- but by circling back to this long abandoned storyline, “24’s” producers have at least put a big Band-Aid on the show and asked that we all come back in a few months to see if it got better.

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.

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Jack calls it a day

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

With only one more episode to go in “24’s” uneven sixth season, it’s tempting to start the post-mortem early. Besides tying up loose ends and leaving us with the traditional season-ending cliffhanger, there’s not much one episode can do to reshape how the previous 20 played out. But since there are sure to be some surprises in next week’s two-hour finale -– and perhaps some hint at the new direction producers are planning to take the series next year -- we’ll look at the one element the series is still delivering just as effectively as ever: action.

After last week’s mini-version of “Die Hard,” this week brought a three-way struggle against the invading Chinese agents that finally allowed Nadia (Marisol Nichols) and Morris (Carlo Rota) to demonstrate that in CTU, even the office drones get hand-to-hand combat training. That was followed by a chase up to the roof of some sort of factory, in which Jack Bauer finally got his nephew (Evan Ellingson) back before being handed over to Jack’s dad, the eternally evil and scheming Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell).

In “24” terms, this was the equivalent of a summer blockbuster thrill ride. For all the talk of TV surpassing film in quality of characters and storytelling, one arena where the big screen purportedly still holds an edge is in big action spectacle. With its budget limitations and pacing considerations for commercials, nothing on network TV has approached the visual or technical complexity of, say, an extended Michael Bay car chase.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “24” may take liberties with the realism of how its government agents operate and just how much travel across Los Angeles freeways is possible during the length of a commercial break, but somehow the action feels just right. When violence happens, it happens quickly, is over more quickly and is usually punctuated by a whole lot of talking. It’s as if real-life criminals and cops learned their trade by watching it all on TV.

But a series doesn’t survive on action alone. While Jack was doing his thing over at CTU, acting President Daniels (Powers Boothe) was pacing around the Oval Office while his advisor Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol) was out in the field, doing his best Jack Bauer impression by setting up Daniels’ chief of staff (Kari Matchett) for a sting on a Russian agent.

Boothe and MacNicol are great actors, and they’ve both had some fine moments this season, but sometimes the plot demands stretch their credibility to the breaking point. Take for instance the scene late in Monday’s episode in which Daniels, Lennox and another advisor take a break from a meeting of the Joint Chiefs to bat around a theory that Russia’s military generals are forcing their country into a war with the U.S. and then somehow take their late-night theory and turn it into the basis for policy.

It’s absurd to think that the President and a couple of advisors would get together and, without bothering to double check their conjectures, move forward with a plan of action. When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, there was careful … Well, maybe that’s another thing that “24” gets right, after all.

(Photo courtesy Fox)

The lesson we can take away from Monday night’s episode of “24” (“2 a.m.-3 a.m.”) might be this: Ask long enough and eventually ye shall receive.

Finally, after weeks of begging and whining on the part of “24” fans everywhere (including me), the Powers That Be at the Fox series saw fit to give us the return of James Cromwell as Jack Bauer’s dad. He appeared only in the closing minutes of the episode, not long enough to make much of an impact this week, but his reemergence promises that the season’s closing episodes at least will feature some top notch villainy, if not wrenching Freudian drama -– one of the few elements of this season that hasn’t been recycled from “24’s” past.

It may be too late for Cromwell to single-handedly salvage this season -– that’s a task too monumental for any one actor –- but by circling back to this long abandoned storyline, “24’s” producers have at least put a big Band-Aid on the show and asked that we all come back in a few months to see if it got better.

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.

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Cut to the chase

With only one more episode to go in “24’s” uneven sixth season, it’s tempting to start the post-mortem early. Besides tying up loose ends and leaving us with the traditional season-ending cliffhanger, there’s not much one episode can do to reshape how the previous 20 played out. But since there are sure to be some surprises in next week’s two-hour finale -– and perhaps some hint at the new direction producers are planning to take the series next year -- we’ll look at the one element the series is still delivering just as effectively as ever: action.

After last week’s mini-version of “Die Hard,” this week brought a three-way struggle against the invading Chinese agents that finally allowed Nadia (Marisol Nichols) and Morris (Carlo Rota) to demonstrate that in CTU, even the office drones get hand-to-hand combat training. That was followed by a chase up to the roof of some sort of factory, in which Jack Bauer finally got his nephew (Evan Ellingson) back before being handed over to Jack’s dad, the eternally evil and scheming Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell).

In “24” terms, this was the equivalent of a summer blockbuster thrill ride. For all the talk of TV surpassing film in quality of characters and storytelling, one arena where the big screen purportedly still holds an edge is in big action spectacle. With its budget limitations and pacing considerations for commercials, nothing on network TV has approached the visual or technical complexity of, say, an extended Michael Bay car chase.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “24” may take liberties with the realism of how its government agents operate and just how much travel across Los Angeles freeways is possible during the length of a commercial break, but somehow the action feels just right. When violence happens, it happens quickly, is over more quickly and is usually punctuated by a whole lot of talking. It’s as if real-life criminals and cops learned their trade by watching it all on TV.

But a series doesn’t survive on action alone. While Jack was doing his thing over at CTU, acting President Daniels (Powers Boothe) was pacing around the Oval Office while his advisor Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol) was out in the field, doing his best Jack Bauer impression by setting up Daniels’ chief of staff (Kari Matchett) for a sting on a Russian agent.

Boothe and MacNicol are great actors, and they’ve both had some fine moments this season, but sometimes the plot demands stretch their credibility to the breaking point. Take for instance the scene late in Monday’s episode in which Daniels, Lennox and another advisor take a break from a meeting of the Joint Chiefs to bat around a theory that Russia’s military generals are forcing their country into a war with the U.S. and then somehow take their late-night theory and turn it into the basis for policy.

It’s absurd to think that the President and a couple of advisors would get together and, without bothering to double check their conjectures, move forward with a plan of action. When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, there was careful … Well, maybe that’s another thing that “24” gets right, after all.

(Photo courtesy Fox)

The lesson we can take away from Monday night’s episode of “24” (“2 a.m.-3 a.m.”) might be this: Ask long enough and eventually ye shall receive.

Finally, after weeks of begging and whining on the part of “24” fans everywhere (including me), the Powers That Be at the Fox series saw fit to give us the return of James Cromwell as Jack Bauer’s dad. He appeared only in the closing minutes of the episode, not long enough to make much of an impact this week, but his reemergence promises that the season’s closing episodes at least will feature some top notch villainy, if not wrenching Freudian drama -– one of the few elements of this season that hasn’t been recycled from “24’s” past.

It may be too late for Cromwell to single-handedly salvage this season -– that’s a task too monumental for any one actor –- but by circling back to this long abandoned storyline, “24’s” producers have at least put a big Band-Aid on the show and asked that we all come back in a few months to see if it got better.

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.

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Dad's back

The lesson we can take away from Monday night’s episode of “24” (“2 a.m.-3 a.m.”) might be this: Ask long enough and eventually ye shall receive.

Finally, after weeks of begging and whining on the part of “24” fans everywhere (including me), the Powers That Be at the Fox series saw fit to give us the return of James Cromwell as Jack Bauer’s dad. He appeared only in the closing minutes of the episode, not long enough to make much of an impact this week, but his reemergence promises that the season’s closing episodes at least will feature some top notch villainy, if not wrenching Freudian drama -– one of the few elements of this season that hasn’t been recycled from “24’s” past.

It may be too late for Cromwell to single-handedly salvage this season -– that’s a task too monumental for any one actor –- but by circling back to this long abandoned storyline, “24’s” producers have at least put a big Band-Aid on the show and asked that we all come back in a few months to see if it got better.

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.

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'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.

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Love and counter-terrorism don't mix

For all those critics who fretted over “24’s” seeming lack of a social conscience, Monday night’s episode (12 a.m.-1 a.m.) could only have been good news. Here, finally, the show that glorified torture and made a mockery of due process was confronting a truly important life lesson: the danger of dating in the workplace.

Before the hour was up, the president’s advisor Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson) was forced to fire her husband, Counter Terrorist Unit chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison); Morris (Carlo Rota) decided he could no longer work with his ex-wife, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub); and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) discovered that his girlfriend, Audrey (Kim Raver) had gone completely bonkers while in the custody of the Chinese.

Guess they should have tried Internet dating.

The only person who disregarded the lesson was Vice President Daniels (Powers Boothe) who, after being installed as acting President, seemed interested in making it with his chief of staff (Kari Matchett) in the Oval Office as his first official act. Considering that the last time he got the power, he tried to make a war with the Middle East, it’s possible making love was the only move he had left.

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Is Jack finally losing it?

It took awhile, about 18 hours to be exact, but on Monday night’s episode (“11 p.m.-12 a.m.”) Jack Bauer finally started to manifest the side effects of two years of torture in a Chinese prison.

How else to explain his cockamamie scheme to free his girlfriend Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) from the clutches of evil Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma)? His idea, which he insisted on explaining to no one less than President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) himself, involved blowing up a vital piece of circuitry the Chinese were demanding in exchange for Audrey’s freedom, killing himself and any Chinese agent standing too close.

Why he couldn’t use a decoy circuit board or find some other, less suicidal way to save Audrey’s life was never discussed. As usual, Jack Bauer had decided on the only path to take and there was no time for rational discussion. When even Palmer balked at Bauer’s half-baked scheme, Bauer invoked the only thing that seems to carry more weight on this show than a platoon of counter-terrorism soldiers: his word.

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Can everyone knock off early today?

You mean that’s it?

Jack Bauer not only recovered the rest of the loose nukes in Monday night’s episode of “24,” but he also killed terrorist mastermind Fayed (Adoni Maropis), bringing an end to this season’s nuclear crisis. In the parallel story, President Palmer called off his own nuclear strike on the Middle East, revealing that his weapons were fakes all along.

As the conclusion to most of this season’s major storylines, it felt more than a little anti-climactic. It was expected, of course, but not last night, not so soon, and certainly not without enough buildup to make the whole thing emotionally satisfying. It felt as if the show’s creators had grown bored, and rather than try to salvage the storyline they’d been developing all season, decided to cut it off like a gangrenous arm. Unfortunately, they’re contractually obligated to deliver 24 episodes a season to us, and we still have seven episodes left to go. So what now? Will we finally get to the stuff longtime fans have really been waiting for, like seeing Jack duck into a restroom or grab a bite to eat?

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Gets wonky

Just when it appeared that “24” had exhausted its zest for excitement, the gun battles and interrogations becoming a matter of course, Monday night’s episode discovered fresh juice in a very unexpected place: the Constitution.

Having survived an exploding podium hours ago (in show time) and just out of a doctor-induced coma, President Palmer (D.B. Woodside) confronted his Vice President (Powers Boothe) in a struggle for control of the White House and the U.S. armed forces. In one of the season’s most engrossing scenes so far, Palmer and Vice President Daniels presented their cases before cabinet members, arguing for and against the right to invoke the 25^th amendment, which deals with the succession of power in case of a presidential disability.

“24” has never been a show known for its introspection or wonkish policy discussions, but somehow it managed to conjure some of the governmental mojo that kept “The West Wing” going for seven years and gave it a very “24”-like twist. Where the Aaron Sorkin drama would have ended with a stirring speech and a reaffirmation of the system’s soundness, “24” exposed how arbitrary the rule of law can be at its highest levels. When the process descended into haggling over nit-picking details, neither man managed to lead by example or display the nobility of office. Instead, they lawyered-up and got ready for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': We've been here before

Is it possible you can save the world in a single day only so many times before they all start to seem the same?

Jack Bauer might be able to find ways to stay creatively engaged in his job, but for the at-home viewer, this season of "24" is beginning to suffer from déjà vu.

Once again the United States faces a domestic nuclear threat, and on Monday night it was once again revealed that a traitor was working inside the Counter Terrorist Unit's ranks. After going toe-to-toe with an exploding podium, President Palmer's prognosis is looking bleaker with each passing episode, which could make him the show's fourth sitting or former president to be assassinated (assuming former President Logan did indeed die after last week's stabbing episode). Jack somehow has to keep the United States from launching a potentially disastrous attack on a foreign country, something he halted once already in Season 2. Even CTU chief Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) must have been feeling some fatigue as he wearily reminded Jack of his fourth season diplomatic problem with the Chinese when Jack got into a similar situation at the Russian consulate.

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Never fear, Jack Bauer's here

Halfway through Monday's back-to-back episodes of "24," Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) stormed an apartment full of terrorists without a helmet, got into a deadly shootout and defused an armed suitcase nuke.

But close-up shots revealed skin that was both nicely tanned and completely dry. Not bad for a guy who got released from a Chinese prison just hours ago.

One of "24's" greatest assets has been its ability to simultaneously keep viewers off-balance with completely unexpected and outlandish plot twists (like detonating a nuclear bomb in Valencia), while at the same time perpetuating the comforting belief that, no matter what, Jack will make things right. The series' creators have been so adept at creating this he-man fantasy that the single implausible moment in last night's episodes came when Jack's sister-in-law Marilyn (Rena Sofer) failed to confide to Jack that his father was threatening to kill her son if she didn't direct Jack away from the terrorist hide-out and toward a bomb-trapped house. Obviously, despite having a some sort of romantic attachment to him far in their past, she doesn't know the real Jack Bauer

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.

'24': Introducing the Bauer clan

As the cloud of radioactive dust dissipated over the Santa Clarita Valley, and Season 6 of "24" headed into the lunch hour on Monday night's episode, one wondered why a nuclear bomb had gone off in a major U.S. city and everyone wasn't acting a little more freaked out. But logic aside, the potential of this season instantly became clear with the appearance of a single guest star: James Cromwell as Jack's dad.

Although the introduction of previously unseen family members usually smacks of desperation, and it's a disappointment that the role isn't being played by Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, Cromwell as Père Bauer could bring a nice bit of levity to a series that too often wallows in its clenched-jaw sense of determination. How many episodes will go by before he gives Jack a real scolding? With the sibling rivalry between Jack and Graem (Paul McCrane) flying thick in the few moments of screen time the family had together, any self-respecting parent would feel compelled to weigh in on the issue. Though Cromwell's presence was muted in his first episode, the fact that he's a senior citizen and still has the temerity to assemble a security team to stake out the traitorous Darren McCarthy's office hints that the Bauer siblings' intensity doesn't come from their mother's side.