User Reviews

Eighteen months have elapsed since we last saw Jack Bauer, the gang at C.T.U. and various terrorists. We learn through watching the first half hour or so a number of things that have transpired since then, and is happening now as we join the show. (note - I never saw any "prequel" bridging seasons three and four.) The following paragraph, taken from "Wiki 2" sums it up better than I could. My personal comments follow it.

"Jack is now working for Secretary of Defense James Heller after being fired by Erin Driscoll, Special Agent In Charge of CTU. She, like a lot of people in this year's show, was not part of the CTU team last season (season 3), at least not that I remember. Jack, as we see in this first episode, gets back into the ballgame, so to speak, when he is called to CTU for some budget talks with Driscoll. The new ballgame involves a terrorist plot which begins with a train being blown up and then, an hour later, the bigger mission of Heller and his daughter Audrey being abducted. Audrey is her dad's , chief policy assistant and, to really complicate matters, Jack's new lover. She is separated-but not divorced from her husband."

So, it looks like Jack will be back with CTU once again. Driscoll had fired him because of his drug addiction, which he had used to become accepted by the last terrorists. Anyway, she doesn't look like much of an ally to Jack but it's only the first show. I learned from watching Season 3 - my first year watching this - that nothing is for certain as the writers love to put in a ton of twists to each episode. I guess I can expect that again, with all kinds of surprises. It is odd, however, to see a whole new staff, except for Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub). The latter is pictured in this first episode as even more irritating, rude, tactless and frowning, than in the previous season!

We also have a new President of the United States: President John Keeler, played by Geoffrey Pierson. He replaces the popular Dennis Haysbert, who is now fighting military battles on "The Unit."

Anyway, what we do know it that these terrorists are from Turkey and that key players are a family: husband, wife and 20-ish son temporarily residing in the Los Angeles area. They, and their cohorts, apparently from Ankara, Turkey, are the villains.

We also have a side story with a computer hacker named "Andrew Paige," who accidentally gets wind of some Internet attack. He knows Chloe and tries to warn here. The bad guys find out about him and wipe out his friends. Paige narrowly escapes. He is played by Lukas Haas, who will forever be remembered by me as the little Amish boy in the great '80s film "Witness."

Veteran film actor William Devane plays Heller and Shohreh Aghdashloo, who I remember the movie, "House Of Sand and Fog," plays the wife in the terrorist family mentioned earlier.

It looks like another complicated, hectic, frustrating (Jack seems to know more than the new entire CTU put together), emotional, violent, etc., etc., season!

Once again, I am fortunate to see these episodes on DVD and my reviews will be written as I watch each one of them. This "Season Three" of "24" was originally aired three years ago as of this review in late 2007.

After three seasons of what is close to perfection, 24 shows the first signs of weakness in the opening episode of Day 4. It's not bad or anything, just not as strong as people have come to expect when Fox's real-time thriller is mentioned.

Sticking with the show's traditions, several months have passed since the end of Season 3 - 18, to be precise. During those eighteen months, a lot has changed: CTU is now run by Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson), and the only familiar face left is Chloe O' Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub). Predictably, a few minutes after the introduction, these people learn of a new crisis: a train has been attacked, and it all might be connected to a well known Middle Eastern terrorist who happens to be in Los Angeles. At the request of President John Keeler (Geoff Pierson), the Secretary of Defense, James Heller (William Devane), sends one of his aides to cooperate with the CTU. That employee, who also happens to be dating Heller's daughter Audrey Raines (Kim Raver), is none other than Jack Bauer, who got a new job after Driscoll fired him for being a drug addict (as part of his cover during a field operation, worth specifying). Meanwhile, the Araz family is preparing something that will change America forever.

From the get-go, Day 4 gives the impression of being something of a copy of Day 2, at least in the villains department, which inadvertently panders to stereotyping, although Shohreh Agdashloo's performance as the presumed terrorist's wife is convincing enough to forgive such a misstep. Less easy to condone, however, is the absence of most of the show's established cast: Dennis Haysbert, Carlos Bernard, Reiko Aylesworth, Elisha Cuthbert - they're all missing, with only Sutherland and Rajskub providing a link with previous seasons. Granted, Sutherland is as much a guarantee of quality as he's ever been, but Watson and Raver struggle to be totally worthy replacements of his usual co-stars (Devane has no such problem, thankfully), the former in particular being saddled with an annoying character no one is likely to care for. Still, the familiar never-ending suspense and soon-to-come succession of clever twists are the second good reason (Sutherland being the first) to give the fourth season a fair chance. This opening hour may not reach the heights of its predecessors, but that omnipresent ticking clock has lost none of its seat-nailing power.

This episode begins with a train wreck that was deliberately caused. We then realize that there are agents working in the states that say they are doing something that will change the course of history. Jack is working for the Secretary of Defense, played by William DeVane. When he goes to negotiate a contract at CTU, he is suddenly thrust into a terrorist web. There are people he cares about, and again he is faced with a major negative event. And a whole bunch of new people to deal with.