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24, FOX, airs Monday Nights at 8/7c

The first of a two-night premiere for the Fox hit 24 aired last night, showing the first two episode’s of the Emmy-winning drama’s seventh season.

Synopsis: 24 was one of the major casualties of the Writer’s Strike last year. The strike postponed the entirety of Season 7 until 2008. 24: Redemption was a made-for-TV movie that saw Jack Bauer (Golden Globe-nominated Keifer Sutherland) saving children in Africa and eventually being extradited to America to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

Season 7 opens with this trial as Senator Blaine Meyer (That 70′s Show’s Kurtwood Smith) is questioning Bauer about the illegal use of torture to gain information. The trial is soon interrupted when FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Werschling) detains Bauer on official business. She needs Bauer to give her information about a new threat: Jack’s old buddy Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) whose cracked some sort of firewall and can control basically everything. For those who remember Tony “Soul Patch” Almeida’s death in Season 5, it is revealed that because Season 5 ended with Jack being kidnapped by the Chinese, he never found out that Almeida was still alive.

What do you get when you take the plot device from Die Hard 4 and incorporate a scene from Die Hard 2? You get episodes one and two of Season 7.

Review: Keifer Sutherland is back in full Bauer form for the first two episodes. Before the end of the first episode he’s told to do “what he has to” to get information; to which he replies “I’m going to enjoy this.” Bernard makes a formidable opponent for Jack and obviously one with whom he’ll have an actual dramatic connection (unlike haphazardly throwing in his brother and father as villains in the dreadful Season 6).

Cherry Jones plays President Allison Taylor, the first female president on 24 (and if 24 mirrors history then you can expect not one, but two black presidents before we get a female in office). She will be drawn into the events and eventually become Bauer’s ally (we can assume), while she deals with her First Dude husband Henry (Colm Feore) who’s trying to figure out what really happened behind his son’s suicide. Henry is the perpetrator of Unnecessary Plot Point #1 for this season, and we’ll keep a tally as we go on (although the outcome will more than likely be connected to the main “terrorist plot” because the ones that fail in episodes 1-22 are never usually the ACTUAL “plot”). We should also be in for some Jon Voight sightings as he played the mysterious man behind the shadows in the 24 movie.

Also joining in the proceedings in Janeane Garofalo as the FBI data analyst (more than likely a fill-in until Jack’s number one confidant Chloe O’Brien [Mary Lynn Rajskub] returns).

The two episodes were actually really solid. As long as you have your level for disbelief adjusted appropriately, 24 is a great ride. When they try to get away with stuff for “twist” purposes, we can usually see how thin the writing is, but so far everything’s working. I want to give some special props to 24 composer Sean Callery, who’s done 144 hours of work and still finds a way to make the music seem new and exciting. Callery keeps the tone tense and also knows when to add some fun spice to the mix. And sometimes 24 forgets that action should also be fun.

Read More: 24 Recaps

What did you think of the season premiere event of 24?