My wife and I watched the entire season of 24 last year. We kept thinking, ok, so it's slipping, sooner or later it'll get back on track. No really. This week has got to be the week where they stop writing characters doing things for the sake of the plot rather than because that's how human beings actually behave. No, really, this is the week. I swear. Ok, maybe next week.

We watched it all the way to the end. We watched Jack Bauer's wife Teri get killed in the last 2 minutes of the 24-hour period. We said to ourselves, "Boy, if there's anyone more pissed about the ending than us, it must be actress Leslie Hope, who obviously doesn't get her contract renewed next year." But, like an old friend who finished rehab, or a relative you haven't yet shut the door on, we again decided to give it one more chance.

I mean, after all, you can't beat the excitement of real time drama with that little digital clock book-ending each sequence ("beep BOOM! beep BOOM! beep BOOM!) Like a high-tech heart beat, it pounds home just how high the stakes are for everybody, not only the characters, but the entire world.

And so we tuned in again this year. And, like last year, the first episode of the season just blew us away. The pacing, the dynamic edge-of-your-seat plotting ("Mr. President, there's a live nuclear weapon in Los Angeles set to go off today!") the split-screen photography, the superb cast (anybody beside me willing to pay money for an all-black production of MacBeth starring Dennis Haysbert and Penny Johnson Jerald?) the sheer, raw energy beats anything on television this side of nascar racing, and it has much more complex stories.

But alas, that's where it breaks down. And this season, it fell apart in the second show (9:00 - 10:00 am) unlike last year when it was the third or fourth hour before things started to fall apart.

Call me picky, but I'd like to see the characters react like human beings instead of plot devices. This year, when Kim Bauer was running away with her juvenile charge Megan to escape the abusive daddy/husband she was employed by, why didn't the abused Mommy run away with her, instead of just handing her the car keys, and standing there in the hall way as Angry Awful Daddy rushed by her?

Ok, make up something about Abused Victims Syndrome, I'll buy that. But then later, when Kim and the kid were sitting in the SUV in an alley, unable to back up, and Angry Daddy steps in front of the vehicle yelling, I'll Kill You Kim!, while unlocking the door with his remote, what did they do? Of course, they got OUT OF THE CAR and ran. Me? I would have said "Not if I kill you first a*hole," and stepped on the gas, knocking the summabitch into the Bernie Mac Show.

Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) meanwhile, is undercover with some nasty aryan or else just low life sleazeballs who plot to blow something up (turns out it's Jack's old job, the Counter Terrorism Unit - personally, I wouldn't mind if somebody wanted to blow up my old job, but, that's just me). These grease monkeys are holed up in a junkyard garage where they put together complicated things like bombs. Obviously they are mechanical. So what does Jack do when he doesn't want to leave the scene but has no excuse in the guise of his cover to stay? He floods his car and pretends it isn't working. Good thing none of those mechanic/bad guys know anything about cars, they might get suspicious otherwise!