WHAT’S wrong with this picture? A lot – if you’re talking about “24.”

The Kiefer Sutherland series, which started its fifth season, is TV’s most suspenseful show.

And as anyone knows who watched all four hours of last week’s two-night premiere “event,” watching “24” remains an exhausting, nail-biting experience.

It’s a credit to the people who produce this series that it is still as scary as an amusement park thrill ride even though it is also utterly implausible.

One of the show’s strong points is that it is so engrossing that you simply do not have time to dwell on the unbelievable parts while the show is on.

Afterward, however, lingering doubts remain about the plot.

Take this season.

With all the razor-sharp intelligence exhibited by not only the superagent Jack Bauer (Sutherland) but by every agent in the Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), you would have thought that one of them might have wondered how the terrorists holding hostages inside the airport were getting tipped off with information known only to a few members of the president’s administration.

The tipper-offer, of course, was eventually revealed to viewers as presidential aide Walt Cummings (John Allen Nelson), but this possibility did not occur to anyone at CTU.

It even eluded the hotshot newcomer Lynn McGill (Sean Astin) who, based almost solely on instinct, deduced that Bauer had concealed a coded warning in a phone conversation that helped CTU take down the airport terrorists. So why couldn’t McGill deduce there was a mole in the Oval Office?

Meanwhile, the mole roams free and was last seen chloroforming the first lady (Jean Smart).

Of all the inconsistencies you can nitpick out of “24,” the overriding issue is Bauer himself.

This guy is truly Superman, but without X-ray vision and the ability to fly – unless there’s a helicopter parked conveniently nearby for him to steal, as happened last week.

Jack’s death-defying exploits (he has cheated death at least two dozen times) are dangerous enough without him having to bring innocent people into the picture.

This is the part that gets me: Every time Jack falls in love, he endangers those he falls for and half the population of wherever they happen to live.

Their only crime: Associating with him.

And our only crime: Loving “24,” flaws and all.

24

Monday, 9 p.m., Fox