“Lost” said goodbye last night, and tonight we get a series finale double-feature, with “24” at 8 and “Law & Order” at 10. I’ll have an essay on “L&O” up and ready in a few hours, but I’ve been struggling to find the time to write something on “24.” Given how long it’s been since I felt passionately about the show, that’s probably for the best, as nobody needs to read the same list of complaints again at the end.
Instead, let me point you to two treatises on the show, one written by my current partner, the other produced by my former partner. (Unlike Jack Bauer, my partners have a pretty good mortality rate.) The first is Fienberg’s “24” entry from his terrific Best of the Decade series from last December.
The second comes from my old Star-Ledger colleague Mat Zoller Seitz, who has spent the last couple of years cranking out a series of insightful and/or amusing video essays on movies and TV. (Here’s one of the sillier ones, in which Matt and Sarah Bunting examine “The Ties of Zodiac.”) Matt and Aaron Aradillas cooked up a five-part series of video essays on “24,” starting with their look at the show’s origins in the context of the TV of the Aughts.
So go read and/or watch, and feel free to share your (spoiler-free) expectations for tonight. With a movie in the works, Jack can’t die, but is everybody else fair game?