24 Season 8 Episodes 23-24, 2:00-4:00PM – review

24 really disappoints by pulling every punch, and deflating a great set-up with no discernible climax.  There was a conspiracy this season; it was a conspiracy by the writers to make us believe something would happen in the end.  It is a real shame, considering 24 was delivering great endings just a few seasons ago, and can’t even pull it together to finish things off.  Kiefer Sutherland can make his humble speeches thanking the fans before the show, but it’s easy for him–he is left with a forty million dollar payday, and we are left with a limp ending.

To start things off, the Hyundai product placement is really bad in the first part of the finale.  Cole Ortiz is sitting in a car when a conspicuous delivery truck pulls up next to him.  If there is one thing 24 has taught us, it is to be very afraid of unassuming cargo vans, SUVs, and delivery trucks; they are almost guaranteed to be filled with malevolent parties intent on capturing or killing you.  The show plays this up like Cole is about to be plastered, but then we find out the whole thing was an excuse to plug Hyundai’s rear view camera, which allows Cole to get out of his boxed-in parallel parking space.  These kind of hollow corporate shenanigans are enough to make you pull your hair out (and on the series finale no less!).  In any case, Cole had just finished his only meaningful action of the episode, tracking down Michael Madsen and using a thermo-vision device to look through a wall, before shotgunning a door in.  That is all Cole does for the duration.  Freddie Prinze, Jr., did the impossible in bringing this character to life, and he is completely wasted.

Chloe has the more heavy dramatic material to chew on, but it isn’t quite the stand-off that had been promised.  Chloe, with new sidekick Arlo Glass (formerly sniveling sexual harasser, currently trusted compatriot) is able to track Jack down at his sniper perch and talk him down from his planned assassination of the Russian President.  The theme of this whole season has been the importance of staying true to your moral principles, and that disaster will befall you when you betray your ethics for personal gain.  Yet even Jack is unable to stay true to his guiding principles of anger, revenge, and violence.  Chloe invokes Renee to bring Jack away from putting a bullet in Suvarov’s head and starting a (possibly nuclear) war between the U.S. and Russia.  Instead, Chloe shoots him at his own behest to deliver the damning evidence herself.  The damning evidence data card subplot is about as old as 24 itself, so it is right that it is included here, but it ends up being inconsequential.

In fact, President Taylor waits until the last minute to return to her commitment to truth and rule of law, overcome by the lame inscription on a pen, a posthumous present from President Hassan.  This Farsi quote claims that all religions are basically the same thing, which is obscenely ridiculous given the totalitarian theocracy that the IRK is based on.  Still, she does return to her moral bearings, regardless of threatening Hassan’s widow with U.S. invasion (a very realistic U.S. President move on her part) and agreeing to have Bauer assassinated (after he saved her from those Sengalan commandos last season, thankless bitch).  What is annoying about her coming full circle is that she is allowed to be an antagonistic presence for the last half of the season, who then removes meaningful consequence at the very last moment and fulfills Jack’s moral obligations for him, sparing him the grim tasks such a commitment would have required.

President Logan is also relegated to reciting lines about Jack’s character, his determination that no prison can stop and only death can quell.  Attempted suicide is an easy out; Logan is not dead, and Jack did not have to shoot him.  Jack captured from his medical convoy is another 24 classic boiled down to its essence, a wounded and flagging Bauer looking up at mercenary forces in all black, blank gas masks peering down from above, a black bag over his head.  To be sure, Bauer gives token displays of vain resistance, biting off Pillar’s ear, kicking down his would be assassin, but Jack is notably docile for the entirety of the finale.  There is no incredible act of violence, no jaw-dropping shoot-out, and no vehicular mayhem.  The writers assume that a character study cum drama will be sufficient to end things, the U.N. Secretary General quipping that this is “an amazing final act to one of the greatest dramas of our time” (speaking about the peace agreement, but we all know what they are getting at).

Sorry, but you can’t have actions without consequences; you can’t pull your punches or turn back from your course.  Hamlet didn’t pull his punches, and neither did Macbeth.  The greatest dramas of all time were tragedies, emphasis on the tragedy, as in there is cause and effect.  24 did a great job giving us all of the cause in the world (okay, Jack’s rage would have been more convincing had his granddaughter been killed, but Renee was close), but then the writers want to send us on our way with no climax at all and hope we don’t notice.  Not a single major character died–they couldn’t even lift up Freddie Prinze, Jr., for sacrifice, let alone Chloe; what happened to the 24 where his wife gets axed in the final minutes? Even Smallville and Lost at least had the good grace to have their protagonists do their best Jesus Christ pose, but all we get is Jack’s face doing a pixelated fade out, without even a walk into the sunset.  Shameful.