"24": Welcome Back!

At 9:52 Monday night, I still had no idea what I was going to say about the premiere of “24.”

The first three hours and 52 minutes had been kind of ho-hum for me. The show was trying too hard to introduce all of its new characters and Jack wasn’t getting enough screen time.

But mostly, I was bummed because “TV Guide” had given away the big shocker—the one the promos had promised would “change everything.” But just like Karen and President Palmer not trusting Jack’s instincts, I didn’t trust the writers to surprise me. You’d think that after six seasons, we would all know better.

[Unlike “TV Guide,” I will give you a spoiler warning. If you don’t want to know what happened, stop reading now.]

Now, in “TV Guide”s defense, they didn’t tell us who was going to die, they just said that Jack would have an emotional breakdown after he was forced to kill a familiar face in a situation out in the field. But since Curtis is the only familiar face that would be out in the field and since Roger Cross was the only returning actor not in this year’s cast photo, it really didn’t take much to figure it out (Instead of making Cross do “Larry King Live” to throw us off, I think the show would have been better served to just silence “TV Guide.”). But even without the spoiler, it was pretty obvious that something was going to go down between Jack and Curtis.

However, when it did, not only was it not suspenseful, it seemed totally pointless. Was this really the big stunner the promos had promised us? Was Jack’s breakdown really what was going to change everything?

Thankfully, the answer to both questions was a resounding no. The death of Curtis came off as pointless because it was just a distraction. While we were trying to figure out why it had happened and were totally engrossed in watching our beloved bad--- Jack fall apart, we didn’t see the big stunner coming. With CTU closing in on their location (thanks to Jack’s help), the terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb on American soil, just outside the Los Angeles city limits. I sat in stunned silence for at least two minutes as all the characters, including Jack, reacted to the site of the mushroom cloud.

And as the screen went black with the familiar ticking clock, I finally figured out what I wanted to say…

Welcome back, “24.” It’s been a long seven months without you…