Do I want to watch Season 2 of 24?

[ivylass]

I find myself with an opening on Tuesday nights at 9pm, since I have given up on Frasier, and I see that the new season of 24 starts this week.

I missed it last year (because I was busy watching Frasier) but I understand it was a very good show and I believe Kiefer Sutherland was nominated for an Emmy?

I don't think I need spoilers for last year, but should I give 24 a shot?

[Sam Stone]

Absolutely. It was the best show on TV last year. Hopefully, this year will live up to the standard.

[ivylass]

I do have one question...when did the poor guy sleep? He was up for 24 hours, and now he's going to be up for another 24 hours?

That can't be healthy.

[LolaCocaCola]

Well, it's one of the best shows EVER, so yes.

[Jello]

He took a short nap between 9 and 10 AM last year, if I recall correctly. Then his hostage tried to escape and he jolted awake and...

This season is set sixteen months after last season ended/began.

[Tars Tarkas]

He also napped during the commercial breaks. especially when he was driving during the commercial breaks....

[BobT]

But he never went to the bathroom either. Or ate.

[Tars Tarkas]

Adult diapers. Someone else can explain what he ate.

[Spit]

Uh, guys.....When you are in an intense situation for an extended period of time, the need to eat, sleep, urinate, etc. are much less.

Ask any of the WTC rescue workers about it.



On another note, while I really liked 24, It's tough (for me at least) to say it was better than The Shield. I give 'em both a "10", so I can't decide....

[SenorBeef]

Out of curiosity, is anyoned pissed that there is a second season of '24'?

I am.

One of the novel concepts of it is that it'd be a sealed entity upon itself - a one off thing. Then they realized they could milk it for what it's worth, and turned it into just any other show. It makes me pissed off that they gave the impression of that particular uniqueness in the first place only to cash in on it later.

[dantheman]

Yeah, shouldn't it be called "48"?

Or "Another 24"?

[interface2x]

Oh, and he did eat last season. When he was brought back to CTU after his family got rescued, he ate there.

[Munch]

interface is right - he had a TV dinner at CTU. Plus, I believe he nibbled a bit at the morning brunch, and had something before he fell asleep at the construction site.

[ivylass]

Right then, I'll give it a whirl.

See you back here Wed morning to chat.

[Cliffy]

I guess I'm too late here, but I thought the show was pretty lame. There were cool things about it, but all the cool things were products of the form, and the rest of the show pretty much stank. None of the characters were either believeable or likeable, and then, when they started cheating with the form about 2/3 through the season, even what neat stuff there was was 86'd. Do yourself a favor, ivylass; spend your Tuesday nights learning to play chess or something.

--Cliffy

[Gadarene]

Care to expand, Cliffy? Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. That is, 24 is one of my favorite shows, and I'd be interested to hear your specific critiques.

[interface2x]

I'll admit that when the episodes are watched one-after-the-other, there are certainly decisions and other things that don't make a lot of sense, but when I watched it weekly, I had enough distance not to notice. Worked for me.

[Slacker]

There were a few things about the first season that weren't particularly believable, but what show doesn't have its downfalls?

Overall, the show was definitely worth the investment for me and Mrs. Slack.

[FallenAngel]

SeniorBeef, I believe the show was originally signed for three seasons. It wasn't a, "Hey, this thing really worked; so let's milk it for all we can." It was planned that way from the start, IIRC.

[SenorBeef]

Originally posted by FallenAngel
SeniorBeef, I believe the show was originally signed for three seasons. It wasn't a, "Hey, this thing really worked; so let's milk it for all we can." It was planned that way from the start, IIRC.

Well, from the ad campaign before the first show, I always got the impression that it was meant to be a single, contained entity - and that was a lot of the appeal. Things with a specific story to tell in a specific time period tend to be a lot more interesting than shows that keep droning on with whatever the writers can come up with until they're not financially viable.

Having watched most of the first season, I feel vaguely "ripped off".

Oh well - just a minor annoyance.

[Cliffy]

Major SPOILERS for the first season coming up, folks.

Since Gadarene asked, some specific critiques:

Palmer was so weak-willed at the beginning of the show I couldn't find myself rooting for him. Certainly, (were this non-fiction) I wouldn't want to see him dead, but I also wouldn't want to see him in the White House, either, so the efforts to protect him didn't seem that important to me. (I remember describing him to my father as Hamlet-like, and I wouldn't vote for Hamlet, either -- but at least he had a sense of humor.) And once Ferragamo was killed, the fact that Palmer did not immediately that second expose the whole sorry charade exacerbated this.

Jack was terrible at his job. Sure, he saved Palmer at the breakfast, but why was Palmer even in danger? Because Jack smuggled in a gun! Yes, I understand his family was being held hostage (maybe just his daughter at that point), but protecting Palmer was his job. If he wasn't willing to sacrifice his family, he shouldn't have been the man in charge.

The bit where the agent who hated Jack shot that guy despite direct orders to the contrary was just absurd. And the fact that said agent was not immediately arrested for murder despite firing at an unarmed man in contravention of his orders was unbelievable.

The whole amnesia thing was laughable, and very clearly a product of the writers saying -- "Shit! We have six more hours to kill and nothing for Terri to do -- what can we come up with?"

When Elisha Cuthbert went to the "good" kidnapper's place for help, IIRC she was told that she'd better get out of there before whossisname's brother showed up, but she then proceeded to sit around for half an hour (while the scene was elsewhere) until he did.

Everyone at CTU was down on Xander Berkley despite the fact that he was the only person there who acted professionally.

Penny Johnson's character was pretty interesting at the beginning of the show (although she was clearly a Hillary Clinton caricature, which is something I generally have no patience with), but by the last half of the season it seemed that the writers were purposefully seeking out ways to make her the villain, making sure that whatever she did it was the most personally abhorrent option among those available, even if it actually didn't make any political sense.

It took the pretty speechwriter girl (that Penny Johnson was trying to set up with Palmer) like 15 minutes to go up in an elevator once.

I thought the part where the staffer who'd been duped by the assassin stabbed him instead of going through with the plan (which might have resulted in the end of the threat to her boss) was overly melodramatic and hard to credit, although if that were the only problem with the plot I could forgive it as an unlikely but not impossible reaction to her being used.

Etc., etc.

Now, there were things I liked about it. Most of the performances were good (altho' the typically reliable if not stellar Penny Johnson was overly strident and Sutherland himself wasn't given much to do except yell at people and then cajole them into helping him), I liked the identity of the mole -- I didn't figure it out until right before it was revealed. I liked Lou Diamond Phillips' appearance, as well as Dennis Hopper's surprise entrance. (Although ever since The Usual Suspects, establishing a character's ruthlessness by having him kill his friends isn't that impressive anymore.) Finally, I enjoyed the inoxerability brought on by the ticking clock. However, the fact that they had at any one time up to five different stories going on that they could switch to undercut this severly; the way to make a show like this great is to put a clock on it and then keep the camera on one character for the whole day. This would keep the writers more honest about the clock than they were on this series.

--Cliffy

P.S. Gadarene, didn't we meet at a D.C. Doper lunch once? I think you're were going to the law school from which I had recently graduated.

[KneadToKnow]

Well, I guess no one should be surprised that I'd show up in this thread sooner or later. I'd like to recommend to ivylass that she consider taking the plunge and joining the 24 Club. Follow the link in my sig for more info than you could ever want on this craziness.

Oh, and for those of you planning regular discussions of the weekly episodes, the 24 Club will be providing a special service this season: we'll be starting threads for each episode to foster the very discussions we're avoiding. Hey, nobody said we don't have a sense of humor. :)

The payoff for Clubbers this year is that we get to watch the show run from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., so we all get to have a good night's sleep before the craziness begins.