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‘24: Redemption’: What the heck was that?

It’s a rare thing for me to stare at my television dumbfounded, wondering “What the heck was that?” And you should realize this comes from a person who watches “Project Runway.”

But when FOX premiered its two-hour jump-start to Season Seven of “24” Sunday, I’m afraid that’s exactly what happened.

What the heck was that?

The confusion starts with just trying to figure out who’s in charge. It’s about four years after Dark Lord Noah Daniels assumed the presidency from the comatose Wayne Palmer, former chief of staff to his brother, David Palmer. Wayne Palmer was elected in the wake of the spectacularly failed presidency of Charles Logan, who took over when President Keeler died aboard Air Force One. For his part, Keeler’s election thwarted President David Palmer’s re-election bid, so that’s what happened there.

As Daniels is about to hand the presidency off to Allison Taylor, super counter-terrorist agent extraordiare Jack Bauer is bopping around the fictional country of Sangala, a struggling democracy in Africa, beset by insurgents who are moving through the countryside impelling young men and children into armed service against the government.

Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is helping a friend maintain a mission school while ducking a congressional subpoena to testify as to his interrogation techniques – which incidentally is about seven years overdue.

The insurgents try to enlist the kids from his friend’s school, and Bauer hides the kids. The insurgents grab Bauer and try to force him to give up the hiding place (which, honestly, it wouldn’t have taken them that long to just look for them), and his friend saves his life. His friend, Carl Benton, then sacrifices his own life to save one of the children from a land mine, and the U.S. embassy in Sangala forces Jack to return to D.C. if he wants to save the children.

Meanwhile, President-elect Taylor has a son, Roger, who has a tweaked-out post-rehab friend in the financial district who encountered some odd terrorism-related accounts his boss told him to destroy. He told Rodge about them, and Rodge told him to send them along in an e-mail. Sadly, the tweaked-out post-rehab friend is discovered and his boss has him killed. Even more sadly, perhaps, he’s not an especially sympathetic character, tho, so nobody’s going to miss him.

The show is already betraying a lot of the cliches that have made the series a running joke. Jack is kept alive for information they can get in a hundred other ways. Small wooden huts are all ridiculously explosive. Political operatives are far more sinister than they could ever get away with in real life (Daniels prompting Taylor to address him as “Mr. President” was beyond silly), and please for the love of God spare us another encrypted hard drive.

About the only thing that was missing was when Jack was tied up, a tiger should’ve wandered out of the jungle and threatened him until Benton could save him – before, y’know, giving his life to save Jack and all the children, one of the most cloying “24” cliches of all.

So ... heading into the Season Seven premiere Jan. 11 on FOX, we have an unstable African republic, a brand new and idealistic president, Jack testifying before Congress and some bothersome intrigue involving the president’s son.

I’ll watch it, but it really needs to start getting better. It’s been 18 months since the end of Day Six, so after Sunday’s two-hour meandering mess, Day Seven really needs to knock it out of the park from minute 00:01.

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