TV Review: 24 Season Five Finale

What’s in a smile? Well, frankly, everything. As Season Five of 24 came to an end during its two-hour season finale, viewers witnessed some of the best acting in the history of the series. And that specific piece of acting, which didn’t last more than five seconds, had coworkers chatting up a storm at the water cooler the very next day. And it could very well earn Jean Smart, who played the heavily medicated First Lady, an Emmy.

The real-time Fox thriller delivered merciless deaths of major and beloved characters in its fifth season. Gone within the first 10 minutes of the season opener alone was former President David Palmer (Dennis Haybert, who has defined gravitas since Season One) and former Counter Terrorist Unit agent Michelle Dessler (Reiko Aylesworth).

Later on, viewers would mourn the loss of the loveable CTU lug Edgar Stiles (Louis Lombardi) and former CTU director Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), whose death still has 24 fans spinning Tony-Is-Alive theories on discussion boards because no one seems to want to let the writers get away with killing him off.

The man responsible for these horrible deaths? The President of the United States, Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), who in a midseason mind-bending plot twist was revealed to be the evil catalyst behind the day’s terrorist activities-and not the inept, fumbling politician everyone thought he was.

Though I have loved many characters on 24, the two that still stand out in my mind even though they are no longer on the series are former First Lady Sherry Palmer (Penny Johnson Jerald) and terrorist-mother Dina Araz (Shoreh Aghdashloo). The way they reveled in their wickedness was delightful to watch.

Palmer had an expert way of manipulating people and events to fit into her picture of the world and to ensure her own personal gain. Jerald played the character as a modern-day Lady Macbeth and knew how to deliver her lines in a way that made you squirm with unease, tense up with fear, and laugh at the lengths she would go to get what she wanted all at the same time. Her defining moment? I don’t think it’s ever been done before in the history of television-she yells a man to death.

A frail man with a heart condition meets his doom after Palmer unleashes this diatribe against him: “Not one woman in her right mind would find you attractive without your wealth, Alan! That’s what people want from you. That’s all Julia wants from you. And I’m supposed to be afraid of you? You think I’m scared of you? You’re just a little boy, Alan! A pathetic, scrawny, sickly little boy!” And with that, he falls out of his wheelchair and into a permanent sleep.

Araz, with her large penetrating eyes, knew how to focus intensely to achieve any goal without a trace of fear, including offing her son’s girlfriend all in the name of her cause. She even went head to head with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and uttered one of the series’ most chilling monologues: “In two hours, all the reactors will have gone critical. After that, it won’t matter what I tell you, and he can kill my son. I am only helping you to save his life. I believe in our cause. And if you can’t save my son, I am happy to see the reactors melt down!”

The deaths of these two villainesses (Palmer in Season Three and Araz in Season Four) had me longing for a new, strong female character played by an actress with bite, who could just chew through scenery and bark her lines with deep conviction. In Jean Smart’s first scene in Season Five, she dunks her heavily made-up face in the sink, on impulse, immediately exhibiting bizarre behavior. Her eyes seem to be vacant, but one suspected there were hidden depths (and hidden desperation) within her. From this jarring introduction, I thought Smart was poised to take the crown that Palmer and Araz once wore.

As the season progressed, however, the writers didn’t seem to know what to do with Smart. They never pushed her to extremes, and she just blended into the canvas with all the other characters, never really standing out as I had hoped. She was too grounded in reality, I believed, in a part that really called for fanfare. I mean, come on, she was psychological mess! The opportunities for scene-stealing were endless. Perhaps wanting to shed her comedic Designing Women persona, Smart seemed to downplay her scenes, lest she not be taken seriously as a dramatic actress.

But Smart’s final moments onscreen made me reconsider everything I had thought. When Jack Bauer fails to extract a confession of wrongdoing from President Logan and the rest our heroes are unable to prove

Logan’s involvement in the day’s conspiracy, all hope seems to be lost. And when the President assaults his wife in an airport hangar and threatens to have her committed to an insane asylum, many viewers bristled with tension, hoping that Logan would somehow get caught and get a much-deserved comeuppance.

It’s soon revealed that Logan’s fight with his wife was recorded. And when he is being carted away by the Secret Service, he looks to Martha Logan with a blend of disbelief, anger, and a sense of betrayal. And in Smart’s final moments onscreen, she looks at Logan and barely-just barely-smiles. And that is the precise moment that could win her an Emmy. Within that moment and that half-smile, we as viewers feel her triumph, her grief, her relief, her loss. It is in that moment that viewers are able to let out a collective breath, a sigh to mark the end of this part of the story at least.

And I feel that I may have misjudged Smart all along and that she knew exactly how to play Martha Logan. She was never meant to be a larger-than-life character. Alas, she was never a villain. In fact, in her last scene, she was a stand-in for us. It’s been a long day. And with one subtle look, she helped us all feel like it was finally over.

Too bad we could only find comfort in that moment for about two minutes. Jack soon gets kidnapped by the Chinese government, who is out for revenge in a plotline that was set up last season. A new day is about to begin. And I await a new actress to tear the set apart…or to prove to me that that’s a faulty expectation.