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Rating:  -
Season Three of 24 was just as addicting and enjoyable as the first two seasons. We really became absorbed in it. It is very hard to stop watching after just a couple episodes.
We are trying to catch up before Season 6 starts in January.
Kudo's to the writers of this show! It was another great season...
Rating: -
Season Three keeps up the breakneck pace of the previous two. My only criticism would be that there was no continuity with Kate Warner. It was left very unclear why that relationship did not continue. The return of Nina Myers was an added bonus. It's fiction - kick back and enjoy.
Rating:  -
I love the 24 concept, and the first two seasons were real thrillers. I was looking forward to this season with relish, as was my whole family. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the lack of creativity in this season. There were also some troubling moral themes. Three things I particularly disliked...(SPOILER WARNING)
1. Jack executes a dislikeable but innocent fellow federal agent. This compromised him morally, a new element for this show. Up to this point, he has had the best interest of his fellow agents at heart.
2. Euthanasia. When innocent citizens are infected with a deadly virus, government agencies do the *compassionate* thing and bring in the cyanide tablets so that victims can make a cowardly exit. When a key federal agent contracts the virus, a fellow *compassionate* agent hands him a gun to end it all. (he refuses) When a villian agrees to be an informant, a condition is that if he shows first symptoms of viral infection, he will be euthanized with a bullet. This theme was the low-point of this series so far.
3. The president's compromise of his ethics involving his ex-wife. It is really unbelievable and implausible that he would seek her involvement after the first two seasons. She is totally predictable, and most of her lines are recycled from previous seasons. "I'm doing this for you, David."
Rating:  -
I like the 24 series, but the DVDs for Seasons 1-4 have a problem that almost every sub-screen for each episode is a spoiler for what will happen in that episode. Even the opening menu sequence for season 3 gave away secrets. So while the show is great, I'd recommend not looking at the scene shots that are part of the DVD menus. I haven't watched Season 5 on DVD, so I'm unsure if it suffers too.
Rating:  -
Now before I get to season three, I admit that I watched and liked the DVD Season 1 of 24. The ridiculous main menu music, with its heavy brass instrumentation, electronic sounds, and bombastic crescendos reminiscent of a Tom Clancy cold war film adaptation, suggests a fun, patriotic action series with no suspense of believability. And fun it was, but sadly short lived. I thank god that I watched these seasons on DVD; otherwise, instead of just choking on 16 hours of cheap drama sandwiches, I would've vomited with the additional super-sized (8 hours) commercial fries.
Despite the interesting concept, the series 24 is marred by an overload of dramatic filler. With the writers Fox hires, it simply can't keep anyone with a brain engaged long enough. 24 should really be called 16 because 8 hours are commercials, and of those 16 hours, only about half are devoted to the main story line. The other 8 hours are devoted to nonsensical dramatic filler and unimportant side stories that do nothing to forward the main story line, create suspense, or enrich the characters. For example, if we see Kim Bauer (Jack Bauer's daughter) escape from captivity for the 6th time, is there anything left from these segments that we can learn from her character? That's about all her character does. Furthermore, we see Sherri, the president's backstabbing ex-wife, again and again, yet does her character change throughout? No, she's relegated to more conniving missions that just take up chunks of time out of the main story line.
The subplots through the first two seasons were so uninteresting and irrelevant that I literally skipped chapters and still knew what was going on in the main story. This chapter skipping, though minimal at first, began late in Season 1. When I'm watching Jack Bauer's investigation unfold the main story line, cheesy, soap opera scenes of Mrs. Bauer wandering aimlessly through her house and letting the audience know she's been having an affair repeatedly weakened the suspense.
Season 3 became ridiculous from the start. I had to fast forward from the very first episode. David Palmer, (the President), involved with the main storyline the two previous seasons, decides to take a break. David Palmer is too busy getting re-elected president, courting a girlfriend who has her own problems, and dealing with a brother who threatens his political career. Does this have to do anything with the virus (the new threat) that threatens all of LA? No.
Kim Bauer also now happens to be working at CTU Headquarters. Obviously in only three years she has received the proper training and developed the skills to work efficiently in a counter terrorism agency. Presumably her previous blunders were viewed favorably in her CTU job application. I guess the writers were forced at gunpoint by the producers to keep her in as sex material. Anyway, Kim still manages to overflow the dramatic filler cup, in this case, by butting heads with a seemingly homosexual computer techie. The computer techie (I forget his name I was so frustrated with the story) continually nags at Kim and accuses her of favoritism. Again, when I'm watching Jack Bauer trying to capture Colombian drug lords, I don't need a cut to the CTU for a 10 minute scene of Kim bickering with a computer techie.
The scene in Season 3 that officially ended my brief 24 viewing career was the one where the computer techie begins to interrogate Kim, bickering over a freaking baby, stowed away under Kim's desk, whom neither Kim nor the computer techie have any relation to. It's neither of their babies! It's not their cousins' nor their friends' baby! WHAT DOES THIS BABY HAVE TO DO WITH THE STORY!!! I could understand if this kind of distraction happened once, but this unnecessary, over-the-top drama occurs throughout 24. I watched the series to see people get killed and go on high risk adventures. I already see people bickering and getting caught in cougar snare traps at school. I don't need to see it emulated on the screen.
I made it halfway through Season 3, most of which was fast forwarded. After the baby incident, I simply couldn't go any further. So why do people watch 24? I dunno; it's fine for one season or two, but now the show is in its 6th season, destined to go on for at least 3 more according to the show's contract. How can the American viewing public continually be fed this garbage? This is soap opera with action scenes. That's all it is, folks.
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