24: "Never Negoiate With a Sociopath" (Finale)

So it all comes down to this: one-hour's worth of action spread over 2-hours! Good to know that when the writers have the opportunity to raise the stakes they continue to lower them. Stupid 24, I hate you. Here are some random thoughts/recaps:

- Over at Bemusings, my TVGuide fan blog, I suggested some changes for 24 next season. Chief if which is LESS RECAPS! My word, only one thing happens per act, the rest is just an elaborate game of phone tag as people relate what happened at the beginning of the act.
- And I'm sorry, but I'm bitter, so bear with me... What was up with that weird synthetic choir voice? It was very distracting. Sorry, music folk. It just felt... odd and out of place. Which, I guess is in keeping with this season...
- Isn't Jack still technically under arrested?
- Doyle is now blind. (Or, partially blind.) That's what he gets for saying Bauer's sware word. No one else on the show really ever said his sware and they never became blind!
- Rena Sofer can act? She actually wasn't really bad at all this week, as Marylin Bauer. Shocking!
- We met Milo's brother, Stuart, who didn't look anything like Milo. (Honestly, he looked tons better. Well, it's true!)
- Chloe is pregnant. We go from machine guns to tasers to... pregnancy? This year's Chloe moment was definitely a let-down.
- Phillip Bauer was shot by his grandson, then blown up. I think he might be dead.
- Cheng, the Chinese antagonist, lives to see another day, this time in CTU custody.
- At 5:14, we were told the missiles had 22 minutes left before they would attack, bringing the timeline to 5:26. However, it wasn't until at least 5:30 before they attacked. I'm probably one of three people who noticed. I don't feel proud for doing so.
- Daniels realizes that Wayne may have been right about, well, everything today. Even Assad. Suvarov pretty much said that he liked Wayne better, too. Not me! Keep Daniels on for every season now, if it means having no Wayne Palmer... (Actually, D.B. Woodside has a role on a new CBS program this fall, so he'll probably be gone.)
- Remember when CTU was being internally investigated by Division? Yeah, me either. Seriously, what was up with them dropping that plotline?
- Lennox gave Daniels the tape recordings of the Veep and Lisa Miller conspiring to commit perjury.
- The best part of this season was a showdown between Jack Bauer and former Secretary of Defense James Heller, where they discussed how Heller was manipulative and how Bauer is cursed. They argued, Jack got angry and Keifer hopes for another Emmy. Jack went into Audrey's room. He touched her hand and she did nothing. (She's getting over PTSD quickly, then!) In fact, Audrey didn't respond to Keifer at all. It was kind of heart-breaking as Jack said that he had to start all over and part of that was letting Audrey go from his life.
- This year's closing moment was Jack, looking at the shoreline, having just decided to leave his former life behind. The scene faded to black. It was dramatic, which would have fit in fine if this season was dramatic and not, say, just the last 10 minutes. It felt cheap. Not to mention I wanted them to bring somebody back from the dead!
- Unless they deleted this scene, I heard that a previous draft of the finale had Marylin telling Jack that Josh was his half-nephew/half-brother. Ew!
- And... that's it. For 2 hours, I think even less happened than normal. What a letdown!