Now I've watched all of the first two seasons, half of the third and the first four of the sixth, I figure I should write a short comment.<br /><br />24 can be a very good show but many of the problems that have been there from the start haven't been resolved. Here are seven of the most irritating.<br /><br />1) When minor characters are introduced, you wonder when they'll be killed or written out. One notable example is the anthrax scare in either Season Two or Three. The kid who is supposedly carrying the virus and his family take up a lot of screen time while it advances the main plot, but then they are written out and never mentioned again. In the end you don't really care about any minor role, and when minor characters are filling up a significant proportion of the screen time you have a problem.<br /><br />2) It becomes tiresome to see the incompetence of the CTU team. If they're not having endless trouble with double agents of one kind or another, they're bickering and being insubordinate like children. Even in Season Six they have this problem. Milo and the bald man with the British accent, being broken up from fighting by Chloe. Completely unprofessional especially for a supposed national agency. It's surprising they can get anything done.<br /><br />3) It seems that too often when Jack Bauer breaks with procedure people go on as normal. Rarely is it mentioned that his unorthodox methods of working could jeopardise everything; the team just goes with it. And it's also very convenient that Jack always knows the president and/or some of the cabinet on informal terms, so they'll give him some leeway.<br /><br />4) Occasionally I get the feeling that the series is some form of propaganda. The villains always seem to be Serbian, or Iraqi, or from other Middle Eastern territories. Even in Season Six where Bauer starts working with someone of this origin, it is not before we are filled in that he was once a terrorist himself. Also in that season, the character Ahmed is saved by an American man only to betray him later, by taking him and his family hostage. To me this seems to promote the idea that your Middle Eastern neighbours can't be trusted and always feel they are victims of inequality, which is completely unacceptable.<br /><br />5) The implausibility of everything I can often stomach. But sometimes they just take it too far and the suspension of disbelief is stretched and snapped. I'll use Season Six as an example as it's fresh in my mind. Episode Two is awful. The part where the lawyer deletes personnel files from a computer within a large organisation. Are we to assume that the place has no backup server, or no hard copies kept safe somewhere else in the building? Also from that episode there is a man who attempts to suicide bomb a subway train. And how does he decide to do this? By sitting on the last seat of the final carriage of that train. For maximum collateral damage it would make sense to sit in the middle carriage! Then it turns out he was only sitting there so Jack Bauer could save the day by kicking him through the door, out of the train.<br /><br />6) The use of set pieces can be annoying. It can appear that when the plot gets too mundane or slow-moving the problem can be solved by throwing in an explosion, collision or death of some kind: that seems to be a de rigueur standard for the show. It helps the audience forget that the plot was snail's pace beforehand.<br /><br />7) What's going on with the villains? They get captured and then they escape. They often seem incredibly stupid, and without contingency plans of any kind. There are times they could be captured before they commit some atrocity, or destroy some seemingly vital piece of evidence, but this doesn't happen. This leads me to think, from time to time, that the villains are stupid and the CTU team progressively more so.<br /><br />Those are the negatives that annoy me the most, and probably annoy quite a few other casual viewers. What the show does have in it's favour is an iconic, modern Jame Bond-style hero. A slick and always suspense laden veneer with a heavy overtone of drama (sometimes melodrama, of course). Occasionally the show clicks and the implausibility seems natural like the implausibility of life etc, and the audience is kept guessing and also given a satisfying conclusion, with not too many silly subplots.<br /><br />I've given the show a low rating because it too often misses the target, like a lot of the bad guys. But when it hits it can hit hard, being thought-provoking and stimulating like all the best art. I just wish it would hit home more often, which it could do if they broke from the concept more and had fewer episodes.