I guess it was worth consuming, but it’s hard to say. There was a gap of a few weeks or so between when I watched the first four discs and when I watched the last two, and while I enjoyed the first four a lot more than I did the first season of the show, the last two felt considerably more painful.

On the whole, I at least enjoyed the first two acts of this season more than the first. It felt like they were using the major decompression of their real-time device to tell a major story rather than the comparatively small one that made up the first season, and not only did that make it more interesting, it felt like it moved a little faster. I was also, after watching the first season, a tad more acclimated to 24’s mildly infuriating manipulative techniques (if anything bad at all can happen, it will) and the cliffhangers that somehow manage to occur at the end of every sixty minutes of the day.

Despite all this, it pretty nearly falls flat on its face towards the end. Their obsession with snubbing every lead and making the situation as dire as it can possibly be before everything is solved in the final episode makes things less interesting rather than more interesting. It’s a stretch of maybe five or six episodes with no payoff whatsoever, or what little payoff there is, botched, and it sucks out all of the tension that’s been built up. They make good enough of it by the finale, but it doesn’t really make up for the aggravation that’s come before.

So, as it stands, I’m not really sure whether it’s better or worse than the first season, but it’s still a reasonably good example of the show’s particular brand of pulp action entertainment.

Season 2 is not as good as season 1, but mainly just because it’s not new anymore. The format is known, as are some of their favorite ploys and gimmicks. I enjoyed and and still felt it was engaging and enjoyable. Recommended.