24 Season 8

Jack is back!

I skipped the previous season of 24 because it just didn't hook me and I couldn't find the time to tune in every week. Also, before the season premier they aired some TV movie that they hyped up for weeks... which I thought was the season premier. It was really cool and seemed like an awesome start to the season, but then it ended and they had promos for the start of the actual seventh season... which was starting in another two months or so. That really annoyed me. I was emotionally ready for the start of the season, and that little bait and switch left me unsatisfied and unfulfilled. And then when the season actually started, it was kind of boring.

I still haven't watched it, but that didn't stop me from watching the season premier of the 8th and latest season. Last year I couldn't always find the time to watch the episodes, and if you miss one, you're lost. But this is 2010 and the options for watching TV online at your leisure and convenience have gotten much better. I watched the first episode on Hulu.com and the second on FOX.com. Hulu runs better and is more reliable, but the Fox stream is in High Def.

So how is this season? It's 24. It takes place in New York, but you can only tell because they keep talking about how they're in New York. The UN is the only landmark they've really shown, and everything else looks like it could've been in L.A. Even the CTU headquarters looks more or less identical to the CTU they have in L.A. The cast seems pretty good, with some good performances already from newcomers Freddie Prinze Jr, Mykelti Williams, and Katie Sackhoff. I also like the guy who plays the president of whatever that fake Middle Eastern country is. He's a good actor and he seems like a great, honorable character. So he's going to die.

The story seems trite and cliched, but that's to be expected by this point. I hope things get a lot more interesting and creative than an assassination attempt to stop a peace treaty. Zzzzzzzzzzz. But whatever. This show is all about watching Jack Bauer beat the crap out of people, and they started that out strong by having him kill a guy with an axe to the chest in the first episode. That alone makes me want to watch the entire season.