High Five

Previously on Kachoong: Last week, I offered the following preview of Season Five in an e-mail:

The trailer and the previews on Fox confirm that at least the following characters will be back:
Jack Bauer
Audrey Raines
Chloe O'Brien
Bill Buchanan
President Logan
Mike Novik
The 24 web site indicates that Tony, Curtis and Edgar Styles will be back as well, though I haven't seen them in the previews.

I recently finished watching the season four DVD's, complete with commentaries. It strikes me that, unlike the previous two seasons, they didn't kill off any long-running characters. Season two finished off George Mason. Season three wiped out Nina, Sherry and Chappelle. But in season four, only new characters were killed: Ronnie (the CTU field agent killed at the train station), Maya Driscoll, Paul Raines, most of the Araz family, Debbie, Marwan, the guy Behrooz killed with the shovel, Behrooz's uncle, Edgar Styles' mother, Major Anderson the stealth pilot, the pilot he killed to steal the stealth, Keeler's son. Pres. Keeler was left barely alive after Air Force One crashed, and Jack died for a few minutes, but that was it. The three characters carried over to the start of season four--Jack, Chloe and Keeler--all survived it alive. The other characters brought back later in the season--Tony, Michelle, Mike Novik, David Palmer, and Naked Mandy--are also still kicking. Of course, there are still many characters from the first three seasons who didn't appear in season four but may still return: Kim, Chase, Keith and Nicole Palmer, Wayne Palmer, Lynn Kresge, Miguel, Little Megan, Brad Hammond and Alberta Green (from Division), Kate, Marie and Bob Warner, Adam (CTU), Palmer's doctor/girlfriend from season three. Also, some of the characters who didn't die in season four but didn't show up in the trailer may return--Behrooz, Driscoll, James Heller, Richard Heller, Sarah Gavin. Plus the resident torture guys, of course.

Now that the first pulsing 120 minutes of season five are behind us (chasing us, shooting at as, lobbing nukes at us), we can evaluate those observations.

First, unlike last season, they wasted no time in killing off long-running characters. David Palmer and Michelle were dead within the first fifteen minutes, and Tony seriously wounded. (Palmer was back for an Allstate commercial, however.) President Keeler apparently died or never recovered in 18 months, since Logan is still president. Maya Driscoll didn't really die--she just aged drastically and became first lady. (I imagine George and Laura have similar conversations when off their meds, except that both are delusional.) Walt, the White House mole guy who tried to get Jack killed in the first place, is back. Wayne Palmer is back. At CTU, Buchanan, Curtis, and Edgar are all back, with Audrey there to help as always. Looks like another busy day at the CTU clinic--By noon Jack will probably have to decide which one of the following four gets to live: his new girlfriend Diane, her son Derek, Tony, or Chloe. He'll chose the son, but then Edgar will give Chloe mouth-to-mouth and save her too, while Spencer watches on helplessly.

Jack really should avoid family life altogether--this little ditty about Jack and Diane is off to a very rocky start, as were the ditties about Jack and Terri and Jack and Nina and Jack and Kate and Jack and Hector's wife and Jack and Audrey. Clearly, everyone is better off if they don't know Jack (ask the Republicans in Congress about that).

At some point, I guess we're looking at a love octagon: Edgar, Spencer, Jack and Derek all in love with Chloe; Audrey, Chloe and Diane all in love with Jack; Richard Heller in love with Derek and Spencer.

I hope that if Chloe ever gets back to her apartment, she remembers that her car is probably set to blow up. Of course, Chloe was on the show for over 24 hours before they let her blow somebody away. This season, she's a made woman in the first hour.

Pretty amazing that Derek didn't trust Jack at 7:20, but after Jack has pulled a gun on him, kidnapped him, killed several people (including one in cold blood), run off with another woman, and mugged an FBI agent, Derek is ready to risk his life for Jack. Jack brings out the inner Kim in lots of people, apparently.

Presumably, Walt was the one who knew Jack was alive, aside from Tony, Michelle, Chloe and Palmer. Must have been eavesdropping on his phone calls while he was at the White House in season four. I guess the bad guys were relying on Jack's body being dug up and examined and found to have been that of a Chinese man to bolster their story that a dead man killed Palmer. Otherwise, why would they try to kill everyone who knew he was alive?

Funniest moment was when Chloe and Derek were watching Jack mug the FBI guy in the parking garage (they do like parking garages in this show, don't they?). Chloe says "Don't worry--he's really good at this."

Also, the show continues to be geographically challenged. Diane, driving from Mojave to LA, would never have been within 30 miles of the 10-210 interchange when Jack told her to go to the Ontario Airport. It would have taken her well into tonight's episodes to get to the airport.

One blooper I noticed, with the help of my DVR: When Jack runs into the airport and goes to the info desk, a heavyset white guy carrying a suit carrier walks by. When Derek goes in the same entrance a few minutes later, the same guy is walking by with the same stupid grin, headed the same way.

Nevertheless--a good start! Two more hours tonight.

Kachoong! Kachoong! Kachoong!

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