TV Shows What the Tyrants are watching

I know there are many people out there who don’t agree with me, but I thought last night’s finale was rather good.

Look, it’s 24, and it’s been written so deep into a corner over the past several years that it’s amazing they’ve been able to write their way back out.

But the rebound from last season was nothing short of spectacular.

Over the course of the season, there have been more twists in the plot than on a strand of DNA.

But the finale managed to bring them all together, albeit with a whining Tony who is a mere shadow of the shell of the man he once was. We all knew that Michelle’s death hit him hard. And, OK, she was pregnant, so that makes it even harder. But watching Tony was like going back to the TV show Pretender, when Jared was doing a patented Triple Pretend.

Except for one thing: On Pretender, we always were in on Jared’s pretending. We knew he wasn’t a doctor. Or a car thief. Or whatever.

Tony? It shifted almost from week to week. Gave me a headache. Was Tony bad? Was he good? Was he bad? Was he good? Was he badly good? Goodly bad? Just plain ol’ bat-guano crazy??

Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner! Bat-guano crazy.

That’s OK.

Because you know what? Kim Bauer proved to the world that she is actually a blood relative of Jack Bauer.

She stabbed a bad guy in the leg with a pen. A PEN. She figured things out pretty quickly and even managed to chase down the bad guy without being caught.

I’m pretty sure she didn’t even screech in horror once this season.

She even dropped a D-bomb.

Little Kimmy is all growed up.

Speaking of, Renee “Red Hot” Walker was AWEsome. I’m pretty sure I’m in love. And I’m a happily married straight woman.

When she showed up in the ‘copter, shooting first; when she held onto the side of an SUV while shooting at the bad guys and then tucked and rolled without dropping her gun; when she grabbed the bad guy by the throat; when she ordered Janis out; when she smashed the intercom/doorlock system; when she handcuffed Janis; when she went into the interrogation room and shut the door behind her – Red Hot was AWEsome.

What I really like about 24, though, was exemplified in the scene between Jack and Renee, when she asked him what to do. Jack regrets absolutely nothing he’s ever done. Yet he knows how much he’s lost. He absolutely will not recommend to anyone else going down the path he’s blazed. He’s saved many lives; he’s ended many others – good and evil.

Jack Bauer does what he needs to do to save people, yet he fully accepts that he must pay the price for doing it.

Renee Walker has, in less than 24 hours, gone from despising Jack for what he’s done to, well, to becoming Jack.

A lot of other things happened in these two hours, not least of all the fact that Jack was sedated, handcuffed and had spinal fluid forcibly removed from him and STILL managed to escape from and then kill not one, not two, but THREE bad guys. That’s pretty frakkin’ Jack.

But in the end, 24 has always been a show about a family, oddly enough. After Kim was gone, Chloe and Audrey kind of filled in as surrogate family members. Even Season 6 had the craptacular Bauer clan.

We have one more season yet to come, and then, perhaps, a movie. Season 8 will take place in New York City, CTU will be reconstituted and Allison Taylor will still be president (by the way, that subplot did drag on too long, but how much do you love Aaron Pierce around now? Hmm? How much?). Renee Walker will be around (they’d better freakin’ kiss), and I’m betting Aaron Pierce will be around, because he’s the only person other than Jack Bauer to have been in every season.

Anil Kapoor of Slumdog Millionaire will play the brother of/secretary of state to the president of yet another unnamed Middle Eastern nation. His wife and daughter are in the picture, but I’m hoping this isn’t another Behrooz plot.

No matter case, we have one more season to cheer Jack on – to urge him to stab someone in the neck with a pen, shoot someone in the knee, save the world.

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