While I realize that 24 is a serious show dealing with serious subjects, there is a huge potential for comedy in it. Surely you’ve thought of a few things that would be real rib-ticklers. What are they?
My idea: First episode of a new season:
7:00:00
7:00:01
7:00:02
7:00:03
Shot inside CTU. Agents working at their desks, playing fuseball, hanging out at the water cooler talking about last night’s episode of Lost. Cut to door of CTU men’s room. We hear the sound of stream of urine hitting a toilet bowl. Jack’s voice is heard: “Oh yeah! Ahhhhh! Woah! Ahhhhh!” This continues for about ten minutes.
7:10:43
7:10:44
7:10:45
7:10:46
Cut to commercial.
7:12:16
7:12:17
7:12:18
7:12:19
Door of men’s room. Urine stream continues.
The entire episode goes like this. Near the end, we see a collage of images. Tony shooting rubber bands. Logan walks around the Oval Office, confused. Chloe sneers. Edgar starts in on his fourth Big Mac. Back to shot of men’s room door. Urine stream stops. Progressively shorter streams ensue, ending with one last little squirt. A moment of silence, then a full stream starts up again.
I dunno, that one seems like taking the joke too far to me.
In the same vein of spoofing the show’s established conventions, it seems to me that having Jack running into this huge, bumper-to-bumper red light traffic jam on the way to an utterly routine, yet vitally urgent rendezvous could be fairly well played for laughs and tension at the same time.
I’d like just a little throwaway line that shows the writers know about the jokes people have made…something like Jack being handed a sandwich back at CTU and saying “Thanks…I feel like I haven’t eaten in five years.”
You’d have lots of comedy potential in just dealing with the little mundane things in real time: traffic, meal breaks, bathroom breaks, idle chatter, hitting the snooze alarm, employees complaining about overtime, employees complaining about how HR’s total incompetence endangers them all, considering there hasn’t been a day in the past seven years that some mole wasn’t working among them, and everybody getting loopy from sleep deprivation like they eventually would.
Yeah, that’d be pretty funny… I imagine him furiously scribbling down something really threatening on a pad of paper, and someone else reading them out in a flat voice that takes all the punch out of his lines. Jack gets a really pissed look on his face.
The sandwich joke was really funny too. Keep these coming!! (Also, if someone has one of these ‘don’t they ever _________ on 24’ ideas but can’t think of a joke to go with them, just post the basic idea and someone else will probably be able to think of the full setup. )
It might be fun to see all the characters who have wandered in for a few episodes and just faded out of the picture after their plot line got overtaken by a more pressing issue, just hanging out in the break room. Must be dozens of them by now.
Another group (all the body count gang) could be shooting pool in the rec room.
Jack squats quietly behind a warehouse pillar, trying desperately to conceal his presence from the terrorists who are mere feet away from him, when suddenly:
ring
Jack <whispering>: “Hello?!”
David Palmer: “Jack, can I interest you in some insurance?”
Jack: “Mr. President, with all due respect, I’m very busy right now. I’ve infiltrated the terrorist hideout, and they’re–”
DP: “Yes, yes, Jack. You always say that. Why won’t you let me sell you some insurance?”
Jack <raising voice>: “Mr. President, I can’t-- uh oh, I’m gonna need to get back to you.”
I was thinking it would be funny to have a season where there is no terrorist threat, so it’s just a normal day at the office for jack .
Except that Jack’s too tightly wound for a normal day, so he goes out to get some donuts and ends up taking everyone hostage and demanding to know where the terrrorists are.
THe entire day is Jack running from CTU, trying to unravel a terrorist threat that only exists in his mind. Basically, he’ll act as he normally does, despite the world around him telling him he’s nuts.
Jack:“Chloe, I need you to a search on the manager of the local Krispy Kreme”
Chloe: “He’s clean, Jack! Come back to the office. The threat level is blue. There’s no terrorists today”
Jack: “I DON’T HAVE TIME! He knows something and I will use any means possible to find out what, OR MILLIONS WILL DIE!”
One more. I keep thinking it would be amusing to see some of the regulars drinking cup after cup of coffee or moutain dew over the course of the day, getting increasingly jittery. Maybe at th end, one character starts imintating Beavis’s Cornholio.
Jack is at home, talking to Kim about what they will eat that evening. (And boy, are they in for an awkward reunion.)
“Kim, what do you want for dinner? I need you to tell me NOW! PIZZA!? We had that last week! We need to pick something else - you’ve got to trust me!
SALAD?! Sounds great. Now listen carefully. I’ll wash and dice the vegetables, but I need you to get green peppers and tarragon. Go to the Whole Foods on San Vicente. I’ll upload the coordinates and a full schematic to your cell. The peppers should be on the left-hand side of the produce section. Go in through the northwest entrance. Watch the clerks. You’ll need to time their routes- if they see you, they’ll offer free samples of organic fudge, and we won’t be able to get a team in after you for at least an hour. Got it? Good. In the produce section, you’ll see an orange wire. Follow it along the south wall for about 20 meters, then turn left. You’ll have about 10 seconds to get to the middle of the aisle and find the tarragon. Remember to get the garlic-free kind, or it’ll totally overwhelm the taste of the tomatoes and MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE!
KIM! I FOUND MORE TARRAGON IN THE CABINET! ABORT THE TARRAGON! ABORT! DO YOU READ ME?”
Arrested Development got some great mileage out of that this year.
Sometimes, when I see Chloe and Edgar do something really impossible on their computers, I’m reminded of Matthew Broderick altering his school’s computer records (without even being connected to the Internet!) in that classic John Hughes film. It almost makes me wonder what the movie Ferris Bauer’s Day Off would look like…
The first season I found humor where I really shouldn’t have…
Remember when Kim and her mom are kidnapped and kept in that barn and the eee-vil teenage captor comes in to break off a piece of Kim? Well, noble mom (why can’t I remember her name?) says “No, take me. I won’t fight you.” She and he go into an adjoining room and the clock starts for the commercial break.
7:36:02
7:36:03
7:36:04
7:36:05
At that point I imagined the scene starting again without a commercial, with the would-be rapist coming back through the door with an embarassed look on his face , followed by mom rolling her eyes :rolleyes: .
In a simular vein, I recall the prison break last(?) season.
(According to replies on the board) As we were watching it, myself and a large contingency of tvwithoutpity forum members half-expected that the scenes of rampaging prisoners would be accompanied by “Yakety-Sax”, the Benny Hill theme song. Even without out it, however, somehow the scene seemd funny.
, followed by mom rolling her eyes :rolleyes: .