Two brief TV things…

First, “24” is BACK, baby! Wow, this week was awesome. Jack hijacking a plane was bad-ass to begin with, but add the priceless moments of Chloe tasering the drunk guy in the bar, and then Jack pulling on the control cables from inside the baggage claim to nearly crash the plane — wow. It’s tough to forgive them taking 18 episodes to make the show good, but this week, it absolutely returned to top form. 5-out-of-5 stars.

At the other end of the spectrum was last week’s performance of Imogen Heap on The Tonight Show. Eric Whitacre and Daniel Montoya have been raving about her for ages, so a few weeks ago, I bought her album on iTunes, and you know, it’s really good. Great production, good tunes, and she has a cool voice. But seeing her live on The Tonight Show nearly turned me off of her for good. I actually had to stop watching for fear that she would forever ruin my enjoyment of her album. This is an artist who apparently has a real talent for writing and producing, but manages to have a black hole of talent — complete negative space that sucks the life of everything around it — when it comes to performing live. Her persona on the show was completely off-putting as she writhed around awkwardly in front of that mixing board and laptop. And I understand that on the album, she performs to electronics, but can’t she throw us a single instrumental bone when she sings live? Backup vocals, maybe? Hell, a drummer? Even other people just standing in front of keyboards? I remember seeing Moby on SNL a few years ago, expecting to dislike him as much live as I did on recordings, but he (and his band, particularly his percussionists) kicked ass, leaving me actually admiring Moby a little — and that’s music that is also inherently electronic.

But the solo singer in front of a mixing board and laptop wasn’t what really irked me; it was her self-conscious styling with “aren’t I interesting looking?!” hair and her irritating mannerisms and tics that were impossible to ignore. Here is somebody who doesn’t simply lack charisma on stage, but manages to be completely off-putting personally. Plus, she just didn’t sound good. Without post-production, her voice is thin and nasal and her poor intonation takes me back to some of the early auditions on American Idol. She took a song that I truly like — Goodnight and Go (that’s the iTunes link) — and made it almost unrecognizable.

I know Montoya is going to see her live soon and I’ll be curious what he thinks after the concert. As for me, even though I changed the channel after about 90 seconds, I still get a little peanut-butter-back when I hear that song on my iPod now, and it’s tough not to throw up in my mouth just a little as I think about it while I type this. Imogen Heap on CD: 4-out-of-5 stars. Imogen Heap live: zero stars.