Man of the Hour

24 remains the best show on network television this season. What particularly impresses me is that the writers have avoided the aggravating gimmicks that made the first two seasons alternately suspenseful and irritating: no Perils-of-Pauline style kidnapings in which the victim runs from one dire menace to another, no sidetracked subplots that interfere with the primary storyline, and no "failure to deliver." Every episode has been suspenseful in a different way than the episode before, and Marwan's plots have escalated to the level of global menace. I'm glad to see the former President returning in this episode; now I can't wait to see what happens at the end of the episode. As it stands now, 24 is a show I watch twice—once I zoom through it to get the core plot elements out of the way, and the second time I watch it more carefully for subtleties that I didn't have the patience to wait for initially. There aren't too many shows with that much going for them!...