Watch seasons 2-5 and you have an incredible portrayal of the man and the community that surrounds him. And you have great plot (with the dumb “override” section of season 4 a sorry exception). Maybe there was nowhere to go after season 5 but down. Season 6 so far takes the hoakiness to a new level. The new CTU characters are more unlikable than ever, even O’Brian’s makeover seems to have really distorted her character. And Morris? Why should I care if he drinks or not? The potential of Karen Hayes to become a full-fledged character – as Michelle or the other female CTU head did – has so far been shelved and she now plays a one-dimensional 2nd fiddle to Peter McNichol’s patented grimaces and ticks. Nadia and her boyfriend are absolutely sickening to watch. The scene of them making out in CTU was the most insulting and shallow moment I’ve ever seen on the show!

Mr. Sutherland has expressed concerns abou the freshness of the show. We’ve seen so many of these plot elements before! Nuclear threat, presidential threat, CTU tortures its own, Jack tortures an always-guilty suspect. Oh God, PLEASE don’t let Kim appear again in another “Perils of Pauline” subplot!

There is no change in the tone. It’s all at “11″ all the time. That’s fine for Casino Royale, but not for a series.

The few plusses I can think of: Bill Buchanan, Aaron Pierce, the Logans. Really almost every other character except Jack now either leaves me flat, annoyed, or angry.

The New Yorker published an in-depth article on Joel Surnow and 24 awhile ago. The political ideology and neo-con programming are really surfacing, as if the run-up to the November election was really on their minds during writing. Palmer’s sister is pathethic–the most charactured bleeding-heart I’ve ever seen played straight.

Mr. Sutherland’s concerns about the show, as expressed on Charlie Rose, are really not evident. I hope that those involved in the show are examining their consciences. Members of the military have reported to the production company that the show is glorifying torture and has itself contributed to problematic attitudes and practices in the armed forces. We can try to distance ourselves by assertig it’s fantasy, but through the media, it is now shaping reality to its image. When will that start to gnaw at you, the audience member? When we know that we let ourselves get scared and tricked by that BS into starting a war that now is wasting a hundred civilians a day, can we celebreate a show that now pounds that rhetoric in as relentlessly as Rumsfield and Cheney?

The show has reached the tipping point asthetically and culturally. Unless it can reinvent itself and put characters ahead of jingoism, it’s time to end that beautiful dream and grow up.

Most of the critiques of 24 Season Six have focused on weaknesses of plot development and flaws in the portrayal of hero Jack Bauer’s psyche. Many fans of the series declare that Season Five was far better in both plotting and characterological insight. Bauer, they fear, is losing his way…

Discussion of the whole 24 series, outside the circle of fans, has usually focused on the brutality of the show, the relentless depiction of torture, no acts barred. Well, in Season Six, Jack Bauer is portrayed as more conflicted about his own use of torture than he was in previous seasons. One might expect such conflicts to make his flat character more pyschologically interesting, but I fear that kind of inner development is beyond Kiefer Sutherland’s acting talent and well beyond the talents of his script writers. This is a comic book superhero show, guys! It’s all external. Perhaps that’s why the fans are grumbling.

What I find devilishly interesting about 24 – especially Season Six – is the mirror-image presentation of terrorism as “their” patriotism and “our” patriotism as the incubator of terrorism. What a portrayal of treaon and mania in the upper reaches of American government and big business! Anyone who’s seen previous seasons begins immediately, in the first hour, to expect someone in the President’s entourage to be a traitor motivated by misguided patriotism, and in fact a plot to assassinate the President and blame it on the Muslims is soon revealed. Sure, the dudes who plant the bombs on 24 are almost always Muslims – relentless and without remorse – but behind them you can be sure to find American super-patriots guided by their own egomaniacal ideologies. Some of these self-anointed saviors of democracy are in the government; it’s almost axiomatic that no one in office can be trusted, since in Season Five the President himself was incriminated. Then some are mysterious capitalists, captains of industry and firm disciples by implication of Ayn Rand, who will stop at nothing to defend their ideologies. If 24 is consistent about anything, it’s the equation of terror and patriotism. When anything is justified, nothing is. No one can be trusted as long as the script writers are not on strike. The only honorable constant is the super-hero, Jack Bauer himself. What a horrible world! What a scary picture of America!

It’s a family ritual for me to watch this show on DVD with my teenage son. We started with Season One, when my son was ten years old; he’d seen a show at a friend’s house and asked for the DVD box for a birthday present. I got paternal pleasure from watching him notice the implausibilties of the program. Hey, these guys can drive from any place in LA to any other place in LA in the time it takes to show a commercial! They never sleep, eat, or urinate. Any of them! There is less realism in an episode of 24 than in Spiderman! Now we’ve watched six seasons together; catching the absurdities of 24 has done more to encourage my son’s attention to detail and healthy skepticism of all patriotic rhetoric than anything he’s studied in school. It’s really a dumb show, my friends, but almost hypnotic. I suppose we’ll watch Season Seven together also, when it comes out on DVD. I CAN wait.

THIS NEVER ARRIVED. I HAVE CONTACTED THE SELLER BUT ALL HE WOULD SAY WAS THAT IT WAS SENT. HE NEVER TRIED TO MAKE IT RIGHT.