Woman of the Year

After a season or so of events that have pretty much cancelled each other
out, at 9 PM, we're in for the season finale of 24. I haven't had much use
for the show except for the last 5 or 6 episodes, where it's returned to
the virus on the loose plot that it appeared to be starting at the
beginning of the season, before Mexico, before the baby, before elaborate
triple crosses, a somewhat half-hearted attempt to get us intersted in the
fate of a health care bill, three separate attempts to blackmail the
president, which he somehow foiled despite being the dumbest commander in
chief on either side of the fictional divide. All these plots just fizzled
out, or were revealed to be tricks or something, and at the end of the
season, the only thing that's definitively happened is that the show's two
Love to Hate female characters, Penny Johnson Jerald as the President's
ex-wife and Sarah Clarke as the scheming ex-agent Nina Myers were finally
brought to their maker. Their betrayals were such a joy in the first
season-particularly Jerald, whose whiny, self-justifying Lady MacBeth
character was such a revelation after years of watching her play the
supportive wife or secretary, that suddenly you realized she'd been (kinda)
wasted playing straight man to Garry Shandling and Rip Torn. And Nina's
coat turning in the first season, while completely nonsensical set up up
clearly that the show was not going to spare anyone in the end- her blandly
competent look shifted so subtly into ruthlessness that you could kinda
piece it together into something plausible. But two years later (or five,
in the show's timeline), it was clear that the writers had no idea what to
do but trot them out for ever more cacklingly evil appearances, to the
point that Sherry was nagging men to their death and Nina was taking a room
of trained agents with a cut throat and a handcuffed arm.

What this season did introduce, in its sole redeeming feature, was Mary
Lynn Raskub as Chloe, the CTU expert in something or another technical.
Whiny, socially inappropriate, and generally resentful, she was the only
person among the glamorously disshevelled spies at the Counter Terrorism
Unit who seemed like she worked in a real office. When something bad
happened to a loved one of an agent, as happens every 55 minutes or so on
the show (never have I been more glad that my childhood suspicions that my
parents were spies turned out to be false), she'd always be the one to
offer too blunt condolences like "I'm sorry your husband got shot in the
neck" or "Are you talking to your sister that's dying of the virus?" and
then whine about being misappreciated. I fear in an hour she'll be revealed
to be a secret Serbian terrorist bringing down CTU from within or die a
noble death, drawing tears from the people who've been snapping at her all
day, but she's definitely my sole remaining interest in another season.