Hogan Reviews

My review of the first half of Season 4 can be found by clicking HERE.

24’s Fourth Season / Day comes to a close with one of the crazier terrorist plots they’ve ever gone with, and given they had a nuke go off in Season 2 that’s really saying something! Sadly this season still feels like “the one before the really good one”, especially when some of the Season 5 key players arrive, but it does have its moments. Let’s take a look!

After our lead villain Habib Marwan (Arnold Vosloo) escaped at the end of the previous episode Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) and his girlfriend’s ex Paul (James Frain) head to where Marwan was working out of to see if they can find any links and end up trapped in the building when some higher ups decide to cover up company secrets by detonating an EMP device, as you do. Paul gets tortured for a spell but the duo soon escape with a single bit of evidence, only to have to enter into a gunfight in a gun shop (ran by two Middle Eastern men in a clear attempt to hand wave the people criticising the show for only depicting people from that area as villains) which ends with Paul taking a bullet for Jack. It’s a fun mini-story. Meanwhile Tony (Carlos Bernard) is put in charge of CTU but its not long before old flame Michelle Dessler (Reiko Aylesworth) arrives as the new “person from division”, leading to the duo spending the season getting over their past and getting back together…

Chloe pulls the same face her actress no doubt pulled when she read this scene in the script!

A quick subplot with Jack using previously captured terrorist Dina (Shohreh Aghdashloo) to infiltrate Marwan’s organisation ends with her dead and Jack captured, plus we get the debut of Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) who takes over control of CTU and the mission, so hooray for start of one of the few higher up bosses that are actually just good guys doing their job. It’s at this point we find out that pure insanity that is Marwan’s next job as a hired gun called Mitch Anderson (Ned Vaughn) sneaks into an air force base, steals a stealth jet and manages to shoot down Air Force One! Amazing…ly stupid, in the best way. This leads to the later-infamous President Logan (Gregory Itzin) to be sworn in alongside his friends Mike Novick (Jude Ciccolella), who nobody seems to remember what he did the last time he was on screen, and Walt Cummings (John Allen Nelson) who is unashamedly an untrustworthy knob. If you think that’s it, job done you’d be wrong as the next part of the evil scheme is that the terrorists manage to actually capture the “football”, or the case that the President can use to launch the US nukes, though a random couple get in first and manage to survive a shootout with the terrorists thanks to Jack in a fun episode. So Middle Eastern terrorists with nukes, it’s Season 2 all over again!

… It begins!

As we head into the endgame we get Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) having to go out on the field and ending up killing a person in self-defence, Logan being so inept and unready for office that David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) is called in to personally assist him, and the only lead to Marwan, a Lee Jong (Peter Chen) has sought asylum in the Chinese Embassy. Jack leads a group of operatives to go off-the-book and assault the Embassy and extract the target, which they do but not only does one of the agents get their face uncovered but crucially both Jong and a Chinese diplomat are shot and in the latter’s case killed in the escape. I’m sure that won’t come back and bite them in the arse… *ahem* In order to save Jong Bauer forces the CTU surgeons to ignore the still-critical Paul in order to get the information he needs, an act that leads to Paul’s death. Unsurprisingly Audrey (Kim Raver) isn’t happy about her new boyfriend killing her ex-husband, even if trying to prevent nuclear Armageddon is a very valid reason, if there is such a thing…

I’ll leave the rest for the spoilers. For the record Curtis Manning (Roger Cross) is still featured heavily and is a fun “other agent” when Jack is somewhere else, and Edgar Stiles (Louis Lombardi) is also still good as the likeable computer guy when Chloe is otherwise busy. Just thought I’d mention them since they didn’t come up in this half of the Day’s review but were ever-present!

Overall Thoughts:

This scene is technically from the finale, but gives nothing away! (OR DOES IT?!)

While the shooting down of Air Force One in a stolen stealth jet is quite the thing to behold the second half of Season 4 suffers from much the same issues as the first half: the key villains are really dull Middle Eastern terrorist clichés and instead of coming up with new ways to push the story they just keep having Marwan getting captured and escaping over-and-over and upping the stakes with the “next phase” of the plan. Still, the season wasn’t without its highlights, and it does set the stage for the straight-up best season of the show, so it’s still a fun watch and one of the better seasons overall, it’s just no Season 5!

You’ll be happy to know Paul fans that his death wasn’t in vain as they manage to capture Marwan thanks to Jong’s information… but he escapes soon afterwards. Oh well! Their next few leads end up reintroducing us to Mandy (Mia Kirshner) the frequently featured mercenary who has appeared in several key scenes including the very first scene of Day 1 and the attempted assassination of President Palmer at the end of Day 2. They actually manage to capture her, though a tense hostage situation with her having captured Tony took up some time, and she does the old “I’ll tell you what you want in exchange for immunity” thing, which President Logan agrees to despite her past actions coming to light. Weirdly enough this is it for Mandy, she goes free and is never seen again, even later novels that have her appear post-Season 8 end with her alive and well. Given the show’s tendency to kill characters off it’s quite surprising to see her still travelling around 24’s version of Earth.

Ah yes, the last phone call between arguably the two most iconic characters in the show…

You won’t be shocked to find out Jack and co. assault Marwan’s base, Marwan kills himself by letting himself fall off of a skyscraper Hans Gruber-style and they manage to stop the nukes. While all this is happening however Chinese agent Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma) manages to capture the agent who had his face exposed the forces him to reveal who planned the operation, so as soon as the Marwan threat is done Cheng moves on Bauer. In order to save-face President Logan, by way of Cummings, orders Jack’s assassination before they can get him, but Palmer overhears this and in order to appease both sides Tony, Michelle, Chloe and the former President fake Jack’s death and allow him to slip away into a new identity as the season, and day, comes to a close.