‘Bred Crumbs

Five hours into Day Five, here are five reasons 24 has finally hooked me:

The gimmicks. Actually, I liked the gimmicks — the real time, the split screens — from the beginning. But 24’s subject matter was too close to home. I didn’t find terrorism, particularly the mass-extinction variety, entertaining; rather, entertainment is something I needed to avoid dwelling on terrorism. Fortunately, this season, 24 is taking a somewhat different approach, specifically …

Putting people before the apocalypse. Just for the hell of it, I waded in again at the beginning this season, and was immediately drawn in by the personal jeopardy. The bold opening jolt of this season, in which beloved president-slash-insurance-spokesman David Palmer and two other old characters were quickly gunned down, didn’t have the same impact on me as on veteran fans; I didn’t know any of the characters except Palmer. But I was involved anyway, because the drama was more one-on-one than I’d seen on the show before. Yes, a big vat of nerve gas has been unearthed since, but the focus is still more on the peril to a few interesting fictional characters instead of the peril to me and everyone I know. And playing one of the jeopardized characters is …

Jean Smart. I’m not an actor-oriented viewer. Few performers are interesting enough to me that their presence is incentive to watch a show or movie. Jean Smart, who has previously been a gravitational center of Designing Women, Garden State and even The Oblongs, is one of those few. And in 24, as the squirrelly new president’s wife, she’s playing crazy, being heartbreaking and inspiringly resolutely sometimes, but also chewing the scenery at just the right delicious moments. It’s good to see Sean Astin on board too, but Jean puts the tick in the tock.

Forward marching. For all the clock minding and screen slicing, 24 is a machine of hard-core plot driving — and it’s a welcome rush after all the audience-cheating, flashback-padded, unrewarding months of Lost. (A puff of smoke?! Are you shitting me?) Sure, it’s a tad implausible, and sometimes, 24 may even rush a little too much; this week, we found out that there’s yet another mole, and before we could even start to line up the suspects, the show let slip the answer. But it’s OK, because that revelation led inexorably to the hour’s climax. (The key events in Jack Bauer’s life always seem to happen just before the top of the hour. Hmmm.) In 24, event triggers event, effect piles upon cause, and questions get answers before too many questions can stack up and topple. Put that in your hatch and smoke it.

The Pick the Box game. After each commercial break, the clock comes back, and the screen shows three or four boxes of scenes. The game is to pick which one they’ll cut to when they go full-frame. It’s a tricky game, especially since sometimes the chosen scene is not one that was in a box. But hang in there. Tonight, I was two-for-three. By the time Jack Bauer’s idiot daughter shows up in two weeks and ruins everything, I should be a pro.