24 Review:
"2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m." (Episode 7.07)

Did you realize last week marked the quarter-way point in the seventh season of 24? Even weirder, next week will wrap up a third of the episodes. Time flies, er, ticks away, doesn't it? But while the show never gets boring, it seems like it's getting a little disconnected from that hard-hitting, often politically incorrect wild-card adrenaline of the first four seasons. Perhaps it started when the creators of the show felt pressured to have Kiefer Sutherland do a promotional, public-service-type spot during the fourth season in which he had to explain to viewers that not all Arabs are terrorists. Thanks. And of course, there's always been the interrogation/torture debate surrounding the show from the beginning. This season, the show answered its critics within the show itself, but it's almost like Jack Bauer and 24 on the whole are slightly more pale versions of their once bold, brash selves. Maybe it's the outside pressure. Or maybe it's the task of hashing out one overall very-involved storyline for 24 episodes.

Jack needs an antagonist. Someone who can really weasel his or her way inside his head and drive to his limits. Ever since he found out his longtime friend Tony Almeida was, in fact, not a 100-percent bad guy, he's been on a mental vacation. It's like old times back at CTU, working together, blasting their way through henchmen on borrowed time, burying people alive...oh, wait, maybe the last thing wasn't so fun. But even then, it didn't seem like it bothered him all that much.

Monday night's episode begins wrapping up with Jack, Bill and the prime minister of Sengala headed out to meet the president. Villain Colonel Dubaku is on the run after his operation is crashed by Jack and the Undercovers (not really their name, but there's no catchy acronym or label for this outfit), and so the group decides it's in a position to get help from the White House after saving the PM and his wife. However, Tony isn't going. He believes he will be arrested pronto for some of the things he did post-CTU. He tells Jack he'll turn himself in when the time is right, and even shakes on it. But there's something about his demeanor afterward that tells us something else. He could become that antagonist with whom Jack thought he was faced with in the first couple of hours this season. Yeah, he almost broke that guy's neck. This little development, if it happens, could knock Jack out of auto-pilot and back into the pull-up-or-take-a-nosedive Jack we all know and love.

But the personal stories don't stop there. Henry Taylor, the first gentleman (that just sounds bizarre), is abducted by a rat in the FBI after escaping death by another. As you might expect, after Dubaku's shindig kinda blew up, he needs a new plan to get Madam President to call off her invasion. What better way than to use her husband as leverage?

While 24 is no Lost when it comes to character development, it needs that potential of great loss to keep the action meaningful. The show's creators accomplish this quite effectively by introducing us to quirky characters who mean well, baddies who try to turn it around and good guys who want to do the right thing, but usually just make everything more difficult for Jack. We may be annoyed, angered or even completey repulsed by one of these people, but the show demands we value that life. In keeping up with this 24 tradition, next week may begin the caring process.