Buckeye Road

"Let's Start Over"

The first half of 24's season premiere last night was a gut-wrenching, edge-of-your-seat return to form. Last week, the creators of The Shield reinvented that series for a new season. This week, the entertaining minds behind 24 have done the same.

Now, I didn't think it would be possible to top last season, the best so far, what with the Turkish family that was also a sleeper cell AND the kidnapping of the secretary of defense set up all in the first episode. But this season started off with a bigger bang -- a couple of them -- right from the top. (As soon as I saw President Palmer, I knew what was going to happen. I didn't tell my parents so they could feel the full shock.)

Chloe is apparently a viewer favorite (not only in my family), and she really came into her own last season. I'm tickled to see that Mary Lynn Rajskub has been bumped up to regular status, along with Carlos Bernard's Tony. As hard as it was to see what happened to President Palmer and Michelle, it's good to know that Chloe and Tony will both be around for a while.

There are three particularly delicious touches I'd like to mention at this point. The first is the brilliant casting of Jean Smart as kooky first lady Martha Logan. She's mentally unstable, she's filled with conspiracy theories -- but, oh yeah, President Palmer did actually tell her something that could be the key to everything, only her hapless husband won't take the time to listen to her. And she has the best line so far in her memorable first moment, as she looks in the mirror, assessing her makeup girl's work. "I look like a wedding cake," Martha says before suddenly plunging her face into a sink full of water. "Let's start over."

Touch #2 is Logan himself: In David Palmer, 24 gave us a president who was thoughtful yet decisive, full of steely resolve. Contrast that with Logan, who tries to be decisive without thinking with the sole objective of getting problems off his desk. His biggest concern early on is that the Russian president, come to sign an arms treaty, is taller than him, so he's had a special chair designed to bring him up to his level. In addition to ratcheting up the dramatic problems and tension, Logan begs a key and unnerving question in the war on terror (one Democrats might do well to heed in this election year): What happens when our leadership, which we need to be decisive, is utterly incompetent?

Finally, there is the issue of the bad guys. This time around, we got to see who appears to be the lead bad guy, in his dark suite full of TV monitors, cooling calling in orders over Bluetooth. Of course, as my dad points out, these guys could not succeed without someone in our government helping them, and our early guess was shown to be correct at the end of Hour 2: it's Walt, President Logan's go-to-guy for first lady problems, who's in on the conspiracy.

Taking in all that, you just know that the situation with the hostages at the Ontario airport will be only the first of many crises in another very long, very bad day. And I will be watching every second.

posted by BT @ 12:37 PM