Kelsey McNeal

24, April 16: Bad-guy Cheng steps up

Well, lookee here: Dump the more tedious villains, put some core 24 characters we care about front and center, toss in a few surprise turns, and give Jack a personal goal to make his action heroics poignant, and we get a superb episode: It's as if 24 hit a reset button and its contents were freshened. The nefarious Chinese kidnapper and torturer Cheng Zhi has become Jack's great archenemy — a Moriarty to Jack's Sherlock Holmes, a Lex Luthor to Jack's Superman. The combination of Cheng as the taunting enemy and Audrey as the noble bait made it impossible for an emotionally and physically wracked Jack to resist fulfilling Cheng's demands — with a Bauer twist, of course. — Ken Tucker