Finally saw the 24 season finale.

It sucked.

I judge this an uneven season. Started off with some of the biggest shocks in series television — they killed my second favorite character! They killed my third favorite character! They maimed my fifth- oh, wait, no, they killed him too!

There was a lull after the first four episodes, then it picked up again with the attack on CTU. Those episodes were some of the classic, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that happened!” moments that separate “24″ from most other action shows on TV. On other shows, the good guys find the bomb in time and defuse it; on this show, the bomb goes off and we watch dozens of CTU employees including Edgar die horrific deaths. (There goes my sixth favorite character! Look out, Mike Novick!)

But honestly, the show lost momentum after the clash at the natural gas plant; the revelation about President Logan felt a little tacked-on (he was more interesting as a simply incompetent, in-over-his-head president instead of a sort of split-personality, bumbling-in-public, ruthless-in-private ubervillian). And the “shock” ending of Jack being kidnapped wasn’t all that shocking. The moment Jack was informed that Kim was on the phone, the whole situation screamed “TRAP!”

Time for a nutty theory about 24: If the show were created anew today, the producers would drop the “real time” format as it gets ignored more and more every season (never mind Jack not complaining about being awake for 24 hours; no character complained or even noticed this year that they had been dealing with terrorist crises for 24 straight hours). It would make more sense to have four six-hour arcs, with each one picking up a few days later — clues from one attack lead to a raid on another terror cell, which prompts the mastermind to launch another attack as a diversion, etc.

Another observation: The promos for next year’s shows, including “Standoff” and “Disappeared” suggest that Fox wants to duplicate the success of “24.” I had a great idea (to me), too bad no one asked. Use some of your supporting characters (Tony and Michelle would have been a great pair) and create “CTU: New York” or “CTU: Washington” or Chicago, showing us the adventures of another branch of CTU elsewhere in the country. (The lesson of 24 is that all terrorist attacks occur somewhere in Los Angeles, and the President spends most of his time there, as well.) On the CTU spinoff, drop the “real time” format (while keeping the clock motif and reminding viewers of the time) . Of course, the President, Chief of Staff, etc. would be the same, so those actors would have to do double duty, the way Fred Thompson periodically shows up on various “Law and Order” spinoffs.

Anyway - here’s hoping that Season Six is more consistent. And that CTU gets rid of its Affirmative Action Program for Terrorist Moles. (”In order to promote a diverse workforce, we at CTU are committed to hiring and promoting employees who are on the payroll of terrorist groups, and/or evil conspiracies.”)