As the end of the television season approaches, yet another bumper crop of season finales fills the Monday TV schedule. Among the most worthy are “Medium” (9 p.m., WMAQ-Ch. 5), which ends a fine first season, and “Everwood” (8 p.m., WGN-Ch. 9), which wraps up a strong third year.
Despite the many other finales crowding the schedule on Monday (“CSI: Miami,” “Seventh Heaven” and “Las Vegas” among them), a big portion of the TV audience will no doubt have eyes for nothing but the two-hour “24” finale, which starts an hour early, at 7 p.m on WFLD-Ch. 32.
Is “24” realistic, as some recent commentators have asked? Uh, who cares? Do we ask whether “Two and a Half Men,” yet another show with a finale Monday night, is realistic? “24” is just a highly fictional, edge-of-your-seat suspense serial, and as that, it’s had a remarkably consistent fourth season.
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Perhaps there was no single event this year that compared with past heart-stopping moments, such as the murder of the wife of anti-terrorism government agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), the execution of Counter Terrorism Unit supervisor Ryan Chappelle or the revelation that CTU employee Nina Myers was a spy. But CTU computer analyst Chloe O’Brian’s (Mary Lynn Rajskub) surprising turn as a highly effective field agent — she took a break from her PC to shoot up a few bad guys — was a highly enjoyable recent development. It was also proof that these days, even when it hits a temporary lull on occasion, “24” always has a few twisty surprises up its sleeve.
The fact that producers have managed to create effective characters like O’Brian and nerdy analyst Edgar Stiles (Louis Lombardi) amid the non-stop developments in all the crazy terrorist plots is pretty impressive. And the repertory company that they’ve assembled over four seasons — star Sutherland, who’s joined by Dennis Haysbert as ex-President David Palmer and Reiko Aylesworth and Carlos Bernard as star-crosssed CTU lovers Michelle Dessler and Tony Almeida — is a highly effective crew. Let’s hope all of them survive to see another day.
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