Hogan Reviews

The fourth season of 24 was pretty much entirely missing from my memory going into this rewatch, as mentioned in the previous review I remember not liking Season 3 that much and loving Season 5 so this sort of got lost in the shuffle. Now having re-watched the first half (roughly) I remembered some things, specifically Jack’s new love interest being introduced and the lead villains being more Middle Eastern terrorists and all that baggage. I know, I know, it was the mid 00s, it was all the rage at the time, but that doesn’t forgive it for some examples of pretty lazy writing. Want to know a bit more? That’s good, as I’ve written a more detailed review down below!

So 18 months have passed since Day 3 and quite a new status quo has been achieved. Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is now working security for the Secretary of Defence James Heller (William Devane) and is at the same time dating his daughter Audrey Raines (Kim Raver), who is separated from her husband but not officially divorced so they’re keeping it under wraps (plus Bauer doesn’t want Heller to find out as it could be seen as unprofessional). While this is being established a train is attacked and a mysterious briefcase stolen and wouldn’t you know it Jack is sent to CTU in order to clear up a few financial issues just as this all kicks off. The only problem is that Jack’s old boss Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson) is still Director of CTU and the two really don’t like each other. What is interesting is that CTU is almost entirely new characters, beyond Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub), including new Chief of Staff Curtis Manning (Roger Cross), IT whizz Edgar Stiles (Louis Lombardi), fellow new IT person Sarah Gavin (Lana Parrilla) and Ronnie Lobell (Shawn Doyle) has Jack’s old job as Head of Field Ops. Throw in a new President in John Keeler (Geoff Pierson) and if nothing else it’s a very fresh feeling start to the season.

Jack contemplates armed robbery… No seriously, it’s a stalling tactic for the guy in the bottom left! (It’s actually a really good moment that I forgot to mention in the review proper…)

That being said the threat is anything but fresh as I alluded to in the opening paragraph. The lead villain introduced a few episodes in is Habib Marwan (Arnold Vosloo) who is your prototypical Middle Eastern religious terrorist type, but for these episode the main focus is on a Middle Eastern family of parents Navi and Dina Araz (Nestor Serrano and Shohreh Aghdashloo) and son Behrooz (Johnathan Ahdout), all three are working as a terrorist cell under Marwan that end up being responsible for a lot of the opening half’s plot. Now there was some good drama here, Navi is 100% dedicated to the cause, as is Dina but at the same time she is 100% dedicated to her son as well which causes a conflict when Behrooz begins to have doubts (especially after his parents kill his American girlfriend after she follows him to their secret terrorist hideout). The plan is a little convoluted, even for this show, as Habib captures Secretary Heller and Audrey and stages a livestream of his execution but in reality he needs the massive spike in traffic to hide his team using the technology found in the briefcase to take over all the nuclear powerplants in America and intentionally cause them all to meltdown.

So as you can imagine the first half of this half (“quarter of the season” might have sounded better…) is dedicated to trying to track down Heller and save him before his public execution and sadly for this Brit Heller’s “we won’t give in to your lot’s evil ways” speeches really made me roll my eyes but again so close after 9/11 that’s what people loved to hear, it’s very “of-the-time”, which is weird to say about a year beginning with 20 but that’s living in 2023 for you. The President eventually orders an airstrike before the country can “suffer a scandal” but of course Jack goes in as a one man army and frees both Heller and Audrey in time, which is very cheesy and also very “macho American taking out all the evil Middle Eastern people” but at least its actually entertaining in its action film cliché way. If I didn’t like that sort of thing there’d be no point in this re-watch at all! Anyway with that out of the way the plot focuses in on Habib and the power plant meltdowns, which features Chloe being sacked for helping Jack behind Driscoll’s back, Heller’s son Richard (Logan Marshall-Green) being tortured via sensory deprivation as he is believed to be a connection to Habib’s men and, of course, there is a mole in CTU and everyone has to try and figure out who it is.

Habib Marwan, otherwise known as “The Mummy from The Mummy”.

The mole thing leads Jack to call in on Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) who is now single and living in a rather depressed way after breaking up with Michelle from the previous series. He slowly gets dragged further and further into everything until much like Jack he ends up working for CTU on a provisional basis until the crisis is over. Always good to have Tony back, he’s still a favourite character of mine, even when he’s a bit of a dick like he is for early parts of these episodes. The mole ends up framing Sarah Gavin for her crimes leading to her getting tortured for no reason, which she isn’t too thrilled about and Habib ends up connected to a tech company that has dealing with the company ran by Audrey’s ex Paul (James Frain) and so Jack does some ad hoc Paul torturing with Audrey in the room, leading to a strain on Audrey and Jack’s relationship, especially when it turns out he really didn’t know anything about it. All fun stuff! I’ll talk about the resolution to this part of the season in the spoilers but honestly its not that bad, at least after the Heller kidnap stuff.

There are two things that annoyed me though: Erin Driscoll’s daughter Maya (Angela Goethals) is taken to CTU HQ because she suffers from schizophrenia and the person who normally looks after her can’t do it and while credit to Angela for playing the role convincingly it just made me feel uncomfortable more than creating drama; and the other thing is an episode where one nuclear plant does actually meltdown and Edger Stiles’ mother is in the danger zone and ends up committing suicide because she knows she won’t be able to make it out in time. Not only was that straight up depressing but Edger gets over it pretty damn quick to the point where in the next episode you’d never know it happened and is left to do his job with barely anyone saying a word, whereas later people who lose someone are given the option to leave and have people ask if they’re okay or not all the time. Felt like one episode ran too short so they threw it in last minute and it ends up barely being mentioned again.

Overall Thoughts:

A screenshot of a screen with someone about to be shot! Way-hey!

24 Season 4 gets off to a rough start, with more Middle Eastern terrorists and a gung-ho Secretary of Defence waving the American flag during his kidnapping but it soon moves on to a more multi-layered story with some interesting twists and some old favourite characters and storylines being given another airing. I can see why this series slipped out of memory though, nothing has stood out as special so far.

The main plot towards the end of this (near) half is Behrooz going full-on against his father but still not trusting the US government, leading to him and his mother going on the run but ending up hunted by Navi, who even ends up killing relatives and using his own son as a human shield. This family dynamic was a really interesting twist on the usual “all these people are evil” thing happening at the time. The mole ends up being Marianne Taylor (Aisha Tyler) who was an extremely annoying and arrogant character who kept treating Curtis like crap, so seeing him arrest her was satisfying TV.

“I don’t care if you have a history of doing what you anyway without repercussion, I’m forbidding you to act!” “… Okay. See you later.” “Bye Jack!”

In the end there is a big assault on Habib’s place of work where they eventually find the override and Curtis (with Edgar in his ear) manages to stop the meltdowns while Jack goes after our lead antagonist, who sadly for him kills an agent and steals his gear in order to make his escape. Don’t worry, if you thought THIS plan was crazy, wait until the second half of this season… Oh and Maya Driscoll commits suicide at the end of Episode 11, which I know I said I didn’t like the storyline but that was going a bit far, 24 writers!