Every Season Of 24 - Ranked From Worst To Best

Plot: Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brien uncover a plot to kill President Heller.

Plot: War hero Eric Carter thwarts a new terrorist threat involving a flash drive that will activate terror cells.

After the show left the air, it tried to reboot itself, first with Live Another Day, a half-season that more conclusively but a period on Jack Bauer's story and then with Legacy, another half-season with an almost entirely new cast.

But the war on terror was well into its 16th year. The war in Iraq never ended, never accomplished what it had claimed, so the idea that a specific campaign on terror would bring about any sort of meaningful results was no longer realistic.

What's more, neither half-season really feels dynamic, or that the intention was to re-invent the formula. In the writers' minds, it seemed, it wasn't broken. All it needed was a new Bauer.

Of the two, Live Another Day is more successful, with a pulsing, frenetic pace, a revitalized locale, and solid work from series regulars Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub. But that doesn't make it necessary. The plotline was nothing we hadn't seen, and if anything it serves only to treat Bauer even more cruelly than the series' finale.

The problems are tenfold in Legacy, whose lead Corey Hawkins is diet-Jack Bauer. His familial problems never approximate the dramatic weight of his predecessor, and the inclusion of regular Carlos Bernard as Tony Almeida, who had previously gone rogue, is just nonsensical.