Every Season Of 24 - Ranked From Worst To Best
3. Season 3
Plot: Three years after the events of Season 2, Jack Bauer is back at CTU. When a corpse infected with a deadly virus is dropped off at the CDC, Bauer and his new partner Chase Edmunds (James Badge Dale) track the virus from a pair of drug-dealing brothers to former CTU agent Nina Myers to a former colleague of Jack's tied to his time in Bosnia.
As one can tell from the plot outline, this season jumped around a bit. And the lack of focus sounds like far too much for one show to juggle, but miraculously, it handles it with aplomb. Each subplot is given a lot of time to develop, and the ones that don't were already in place from previous seasons. Season three was the first time the show felt rich, with fully drawn characters who, after only spending one or two days with them, feel like they actually have lives outside of work.
But the reliance on some of the weaker characters from the first few seasons is a problem. This is the first season to introduce a regular plot device that was very much in vogue: nepotism. Kim Bauer's employment at CTU is really only justified by her father's overprotectiveness, and we see President David Palmer's brother Wayne, who would later become president despite not fitting the part.