Has 24 just totally gone off the rails? My buddy Curtis McCrary says it's jumped a whole school of two dozen sharks, lined up end-to-end.

Sure, the show always played fast and loose with the whole real-time gimmick, but now the writers have abandoned any pretense. This season's big "unthinkable" moment--a nuke going off in L.A. way back in the fourth episode--has been totally ignored since the first 10 minutes of Episode 5. In fact, ever since then, people seem to just be going about their day as if nothing happened. If you're going to have a nuke go off, there ought to be consequences. Otherwise, it's just like a Looney Toon cartoon where Daffy gets blown up in one scene and is just fine in the next.

Then again, they've abandoned plenty of storylines this season: Jack's evil dad, Ex-Prez Logan getting stabbed in the neck by his crazy ex-wife, the internment camps for Middle-Eastern immigrants. Not that any of those stories were going anywhere, so maybe they were better off jettisoning them.

It's not really worth the time to run down all the stupid moments of this season (my faves: When a terrorist escaping on foot left behind a nuclear bomb with a five-minute countdown; and when CTU analyst Morris gets right back to work after said terrorist has driven an electric drill into his back), but it sure seems like the writers need to spend a little more time thinking their storyline through next year.

In the meantime, I'll be watching Heroes.