24: Season 7

Honestly, I feel that Season Seven may have been the best season yet. Of course I have my complaints about it, and I'll run through my complaints quickly:1: The story of Season 7 basically pretended Season 6 never happened. Probably due to the critical reception of Season 6. But there was a lot more continuity from Season 5, and most of the major storylines of Season 6 were ignored.2: Janis Gold, Janeane Garafalo's character: Janeane Garafalo can be an okay actress, but I don't think her performance was up to the standards of 24. Also, her character barely even did anything meaningful, other than a few fun exchanges with Chloe.3, the biggest one: The ending of the season. It was exactly the ending I expected, and it left all the loose ends hanging. After such a strong season, anyone who wanted any kind of closure at the end will be sorely disappointed. I know 24 is kinda known for that, but not to the level that Season 7 had.But all that said, Season 7 was still fantastic. As for what was good about the season, I don't even know where to start. The new setting, Washington D.C. was a great backdrop and brought something new and fresh to the series. The new actors brought in were fantastic. Everyone was talking about Cherry Jones as President Allison Taylor, but personally I was more excited about the first gentleman Henry Taylor, played by Colm Feore. I've always been a fan of Feore and his storyline was very good. Renee Walker was also a great new character. I was also very excited by the returns of two of my favorite characters in the series, Tony Almeida and Kim Bauer, both of whom we didn't see in Season 6.The villains were amazing. My favorites were Jonas Hodges (played by Jon Voight), Ike Dubaku and the aforementioned Tony (who switched between being a good guy and bad guy several times this season. With mood swings like that you'd think he was suffering from PMS or something). But the other villains were great as well.I could go on and on about the greatness of this season. But I'll just sum it up by saying, you have to see it if you haven't. It was incredible.As for the omission of the 7th disk, which usually has the extras, that wasn't too big of an issue. There are still extras. There's audio commentary for 12 episodes, as well as three featurettes (spread around with one each on disk 1, disk 5, and disk 6). There are deleted scenes as well, but not quite as many as previous seasons. Overall, they definitely could've included more extras, and just put them on disks 2, 3 and 4 where there weren't any. The 7th disk wasn't necessary.Speaking of which, I remember when the first reviewers posted their reviews for this DVD, they all complained about the packaging. Because it wasn't the same as the older boxed sets and they omitted the seventh disk. But now that the DVD has been out for a while, people are actually buying it and noticing how great the packaging really is. It's really the best packaging job ever for a multi-disk DVD. This should be the way all TV series' are released on DVD. In fact, they should re-release all 6 previous seasons of 24 in this style of packaging. Just spread the special features among the 6 disks rather than having a 7th disk, like they did for this.Overall, great season, great packaging. Extras could've been better, but that's a minor gripe. Definitely get this one from Amazon as the price (as I'm writing this), $22.99 is by far the best price you can find for a new copy. Just buy this with an additional cheap item (like a 24: Declassified paperback) to bump the price over $25 and get free shipping as well! Highly recommended.

After the horrendous Season 6 on it seemed time for Jack Bauer to retire but hold on, Season 7 is just about as good as any I've so far. I'm not one to watch this show on a weekly basis, I'd much rather wait until the end of the year and watch all 24 episodes on DVD in less than a week: no commercials, no waiting days for cliffhangers to be solved. Sure, after such marathons you end up listening to the 24 theme and Jack uttering the words "previously on 24" in your dreams, but that's not so bad really.THE GOOD THINGS ABOUT SEASON 7#1 Jack's as great as ever, if maybe a bit more complex character with all the discussions about the evils of torture, hey, if in guessing, real life politicians batted 1.000 like Jack maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to allow it though that doesn't seem very likely. Anyway, Keifer is going to need a throat transplant from all the yelling sooner rather than later but it seem worth it.#2 The excelent President Taylor, unquestionably the best 24 president since Palmer (not Wayne obviously). She's just like Hillary without the pantsuits. This fictional character is the best way to learn it was a good thing that Hillary didn't become president, after all, wouldn't it have been horrible to refer to Bill as "the first gentleman" like they mention here all season long ?# 3 Good Tony / Bad Tony. Like most 24 fans, my stomach twisted when Tony's true nature was revealed but to my surprise the last few episodes I learn to accept it and the way the writers tied things up at the very end wasn't so terrible. To name Tony's resurrection as contrived is definetely an understatment but hey, maybe this means there is hope for Edgar fans all over the world.# 4 Much fewer eye-rolling moments than in past seasons though it was hard to accept the best way the 24 writers could think of a White House infiltration is underwater. If you've ever taken the tour of the place, like I have, you may not remmember any bodies of water in the vecinity.# 5 Oldie characters popping all the time: Aaron the no nonesense bodyguard and his ever present ear-piece-phone-cable. Chloe the most beloved insuferable TV character in history. Morris, the second one in that very same list.Even Kim Bauer's participation wasn't that obnoxious !My only complaint: one of the things I love most about 24 is how they bring good-unknown actors to their parts which really helps in the veracity department(see Agent's Walker and Moss, the evil technician who looks like an adult version of Agent Cody Banks, etc.) thus I hate "special star appearances" as the only effect they bringis making you think to yourself, Oh, there's John Voight !, Oh, there's Dennis Hooper !. This type of casting does not work, not on 24 for sure.