One question that has dogged the show since its first season is how can they do it again; how can they plausibly put Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) and Counter Terrorism Unit through the grinder again. After all, how many bad days can one man have? While the first two seasons were excellent, the third season suffered from some implausible situations - even by the show's flexible standards - and didn't really get its game on until the last third of the season which rose to the lofty heights of the show at its very best.
Fortunately, Season Four finds 24 back in excellent form. Since many people wait until these seasons are released on DVD and they are best enjoyed without any spoilers - personally, I hated even the giveaways in the commercials for the show - needless to say I'll have to be extremely vague in synopsizing and reviewing the show.
Opening literally with a big bang as a passenger train slams into an explosive-laden truck, a mysterious motorcyclist rides through the carnage, shoots a man and takes his briefcase. Jack, meanwhile, has found love - albeit on the QT - with Audrey Raines (Kim Raver), an aide to Secretary of Defense Heller (William Devane), who also happens to be his boss and her father. When Heller and Audrey are kidnapped in a spectacular attack, Jack returns to active status despite having been fired from CTU; and when Heller's captors prove to be an Islamic terrorist group that intends to try him for war crimes, CTU Director Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson) reluctantly allows Jack to intervene on the victims' behalf - with a little help from some old friends.
After the meandering plot of Season Three, this year's narrative proves far more focused and hard-driving; some episodes begin with more action before the first commercial break than feature films have in their finales. Meanwhile, the absence of Jack's nubile but hapless daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) lowers the season's babe quotient, but it also eliminates her distracting and superfluous subplots as well (mountain lion, anyone?).
But if there is a major quibble to be had with this season, it's that too many crucial pieces of the plot fall too perfectly into place. The bad guys always have another fallback plan, which begs the question what would have been the point of all these other schemes if Jack hadn't been able to stop the first one. It's ultimately as if they knew that Jack was going to screw things up for them.
Another beef with Season Four is the dearth of appreciation and/or professional courtesy shown Jack while he's 'on the case', so to speak: After saving a Presidential candidate from assassination and Los Angeles from both nuclear and biological holocausts, you'd think that he would have been granted carte blanche to employ whatever methods he deemed necessary. He probably shouldn't have to qualify his intentions at this late date in the show's history. Additionally, while the show has always enjoyed certain geographic concessions - such as the warp drive-equipped SUVs that allow Jack to get across LA in the span of a commercial break and quick-search technology that would leave Google green with envy - the lax personnel screening methods of CTU remain a problem.
That said, while there are a few flies in the honey, this is still an excellent season. Unfortunately, I can't rave about all the cool characters, scenes and story twists because I don't want to spoil them for uninitiated viewers; and the colder you go into watching any season of 24, the better.
While 24 has always boasted plenty of excellent performances, this year's cast is uniformly strong, starting at the top with Sutherland's turn as Jack Bauer. Over the years, Jack has gone to hell and back in dedication to his country, and Sutherland makes us feel the emotional burden of this thankless service. Meanwhile on a slightly lighter note, returning tech sourpuss Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is joined by a new colleague named Edgar (Louis Lombardi), whose ill-tempered nerd-offs add tense (what else?) humor.
This season was controversial for its subject matter, and received complaints from Muslim organizations before a single episode even aired. But while the producers ran token PSAs during the show to dissuade viewers from associating all Muslims with terrorists, it's to their immense credit that they didn't punk out in the name of political correctness and displace the season's threat to a disgruntled band of Eskimos or those notoriously hostile Amish.
Keeping the characters and situations culturally and historically revelant, as was not done in other recent hot-button projects like The Interpreter, elevates the show's dramatic impact, and creates a palpable foe for Bauer to battle against. Clearly due to American audiences' appetites for these sorts of prescient stories, this season enjoyed the highest ratings in the show's history. At the same time, the producers leaven their champion view of the tireless efforts of America's foot soldiers with the hardly-unique view that bureaucrats and self-serving politicians frequently intrude upon their underlings' attempts to preserve the peace.
In a dangerous world, 24 may be an idealized fairy tale about vanquishing terrorism in the span of 24 short hours, but even taken as wish-fulfillment it's still a flat-out thrill ride that will blow you away. The hardest part of watching the show during its broadcast run was waiting 167 hours between each episode; but thanks to DVDs like 24 - Season Four, you can get your fix immediately. Just remember to take occasional food and bathroom breaks.
Score: 9 out of 10
The Video
Having watched the show when it originally aired in HDTV, the 1.78:1 transfer does a good job of reproducing the look of the broadcast. The handheld cinematography retains it rather grainy look without many flaws. Overall detail is good and shadow detail is decent, though black levels could be a bit stronger. Edge-enhancement is minor as is filtering. Colors are good and free of noise and objectionable compression artifacts were absent.
Score: 8 out of 10
Languages and Audio
24 - Season 4 offers two aduio options: English Dolby 5.1 Surround and Spanish Dolby Surround. The discs also offer English and Spanish subtitles for the hearing impaired.
Surround activity is mostly confined to action scenes and environmental ambience, but it proves effective when the back channels kick in. Dialogue is clear and well-mixed with the score and sound effects. Silenced pistol shots are meaty and the score is resonant, but there's little likelihood of your collectors plates falling off their shelves.
Score: 8 out of 10
Packaging and Extras
The seven discs come in an unwieldy eight-panel fold-out Digipack with slipcase. No booklet was available for perusal at press time.
There are a dozen commentaries spread across the season, starting inauspiciously with creator Joel Surnow and Mary Lynn Rajskub's comments on 7AM-8AM. I could tell it sucked after only 75 seconds - they were just making lame jokes and describing what's onscreen - and completely gave up after four minutes, so if it got informative, I can't say. (I've submitted it to Webster's for inclusion as an alternate definition of "banal.") There are also deleted scenes and alternate takes that can be selected by hitting ther Enter button when a "24" icon flashes on screen. There is no automatic branching option, but these scenes are also available on the extras disc.
12PM-1PM has production designer Joseph Hodges and director Jon Cassar commenting and they're far more informative, giving useful info about the locations, sets and shooting process. They reveal that all the military personal shown are the real deal, and they've enjoyed good cooperation from the government for the show.
1PM-2PM just has deleted scenes/alternate takes, but 2PM- 3PM has co-writers Stephen Kronish and Peter Lenkov talking about their episode, but it's rather low-key and didn't hold my interest.
A weird change of pace is 3PM-4PM has episode co-writer Evan Katz and Shannen Doherty - yes, Brenda Walsh! - who is described as a visiting fanatical fan. A lot of the discussion is lightweight with effusive praise for the cast and focus on the acting. Taped the day after the airing of the show's 16th episode, with the season unfinished they Katz was reluctant to discuss what would happen to characters later in the season.
4PM-5PM has deleted scenes/alternate takes and commentary from Nestor Serrano (Navi Araz) and Stephen Kronish (writer-producer). One subject discussed was the complaints by some Muslim organizations about the subject matter; Kronish points out that making the bad guys Swedish would've been laughable, while Serrano confesses that he appeared on another show where the subject of Iranian nukes was changed to Indonesian ones to avoid controversy.
The three episodes covering 5PM-8PM just have deleted scenes/alternate takes, but 8PM-9PM adds commentary from director Tim Iacofano and Shohreh Aghdashloo to the extra scenes. Aghdashloo dominates with plenty of comments about playing the role of a terrorist, despite being an Iranian woman with a long history of fighting for human rights in the region. It's a good track.
In addition to extra scenes, 9PM-10PM's commentary is from actor Roger Cross (Curtis Manning) and director Bryan Spicer. Taped while the season was still underway, it too falls into the too-cutesy "we're not going to talk about what's about to happen" trap and didn't have much of interest during my sampling.
10PM-11PM puts Spicer behind the mike again, this time with Arnold Vosloo. There's a lot of talk about the unique production methods of the show, like shooting two episodes at a time and "crossing the line" in the camera coverage. There are also extra scenes. Vosloo says that he didn't do too much research into terrorism for his role, preferring to let the demeanor of his performance and the scripts define his role.
Skipping an hour to 12AM-1PM, series composer Sean Callery joins Cassar and gives a really good talk about how he typically has to come up with 36-38 minutes of music for each 42-minute episode. He also reveals that creator Joel Surnow forbids the use of woodwinds in the score.
1AM-2AM has extra scenes and commentary from co-producer Paul Gadd and sound effects editor Kenneth Kobett who talks about the "futzing" process to make dialogue that's been recorded flat sound as if it's coming through a telephone and how they have to create the audio signatures of so many environments. They also point out that the music in the club is superstar DJ Armand Van Buuren's remix of the show's theme.
Taking a couple hours off, we come to 4AM-5AM which has, you guessed it, deleted scenes and commentary by writers Matt Michnovetz and Duppy Demetrius. The shifts in the plot as various drafts were written is touched upon, but there are too many instances of self-referential jokiness where it veers into MST3K territory.
While the last two hours have deleted scenes, only the finale, 6AM-7AM, has a commentary. Writer Bob Cochran and editor Scott Powell give a breezy talk in which the jokes don't come at the expense of telling us about the show. The show came in long, so they point out what got cut, how they get away with playing with time and generally complimenting the actors.
The seventh disc is dedicated to extras leading with Season 5 Prequel, an 11-minute short which acts as a bridge between this season and the upcoming one. While the product placement for Toyota is really blatant - starting with the "Presented by Toyota" card at the start - it's a nice little appetizer showing what Jack is up to a year after the Season Four events. There is also a Fox Movie Channel Making the Scene featurette about the stunts.
Breaking New Ground: Building the New CTU (17:46) has Joseph Hodges talking about the new set for CTU, revealing the construction techniques used and has a time-lapse sequence of the set being built. The last third shows the first days shooting on the set and Jon Cassar mentioning how the larger size has affected his shooting process.
Blood on the Tracks (17:24) covers the opening train crash and Locked and Loaded (20:10) handles the Marine rescue sequence. All these features go into too exhaustive detail and could easily have been cut down do about ten minutes each and still been quite effective.
The 39 Extended and Deleted Scenes from the other discs are collected with optional commentary by Jon Cassar. While each clip has a brief description of the scene and additional cast, there is no Play All option, which is unforgivable with this many scenes. Many of the scenes were cut for time and pacing, but are worth a look. The first is an extended director's cut of the Season Four prequel that was included on the 24: Season Three DVD with extra footage of Jack getting busy with Audrey. (Jack also swears! Put this show on FX!)
24: Conspiracy is a series of 24 (duh) minute-long "Mobisodes" (mobile phone episodes) that were first seen by European cell phone users telling the story of events in the Washington D.C. office of CTU loosely related to the events of Season Four. While it's a little cheesy, it's a tight bit of extremely short-form storytelling.
"The Longest Day" Music Video (3:36) is for the remix of the theme used in the show; Inside Look is a little promo piece for the Michael Douglas-Keifer Sutherland film, The Sentinel; and Sutherland makes his only contribution to any of these extras with his appearance in the 24: The Game Trailer. If you pop the disc into a DVD-ROM drive, you can play the game that was online at Fox's web site.
Score: 7 out of 10
The Bottom Line
24 has always been an adventurous show and it was good to see it back on more consistent footing this year, providing a gut-wrenching thrill ride of tense action and drama. While the quality of the extras is a bit spotty, there's plenty for fans to listen to if they wish and the technical presentation is up to snuff, accurately recreating the original HD broadcast experience.