The first season of 24 is a simplistic, unrealistic, and, at times, utterly clichéd (amnesia? talk about a deux ex machina!) presentation of the War on Terror as an extended "non-stop action thriller." Even if we ignore the consequentialist ethical values which are actively promoted by the series in question (i.e., the belief that torture is acceptable under certain circumstances; the belief that key civil liberties can and should be violated under certain circumstances; and so on and so forth), the greatest flaw of the show is that, in the end, it is little more than a hodgepodge/pastiche of who knows how many "B movie" plots, spread over a monotonous and insufferable string of twenty four episodes. Save yourself some time, drop this from your queue, and just rent/re-watch the original Die Hard. At his best, Jack Bauer is a pale shadow of John McClane.