Really? How cool…I didn’t know that!!
I didn’t either till I went to IMDB!
Sorry. I should have said. I thought everybody knew but me.
He really does look just like a younge Anthony Quinn, but cuter.
I agree with capacitor and c_goat. Faked or not, given his particular brand of fanaticism, I think Ali would have just said “Then my family will be with me in Paradise”.
I mean, whether or not the killing of his family was faked. I don’t think Ali is just faking being a religious zealot/terrorist.
Even though I would love to see Jack give Nina what she deserves, I don’t think it will happen. She’ll die in front of Jack, but not by his hand and it will piss him off all the more.
Personally, when I said that I it was a bit of a letdown, with which statement I added that I would not have wanted Ali’s boy dead, all I meant was that it was anticlimactic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the others who said something similar felt the same way. And 24 = fiction != reality, which means that someone saying it was anticlimactic when a boy wasn’t killed in a TV series is not the same as someone saying that in real life.
Sorry for the continued hi-jack; just getting a little defensive.
Man, this is a great show! I just started watched about 5 episodes ago, but it’s quickly become my only ‘must watch’ show. Now I’ve got to figure out how to get my hands on the first season so I can watch it this summer.
And to add a couple things to the general discussion:
thank goodness it’s a sweeps month, which means that we’re guaranteed at least 2 more episodes of high quality, nail-biting, action-packed intensity like the previous few.
I think Jack knew he might have to and was prepared to have the kid killed, but I think he also had the back up plan in place from the beginning as well. Once he got the “don’t do it” from the Prez, he knew he had to go for the more iffy method for getting El Cid’s information, that is, having it just appear that the boy was killed. Otherwise, had the Prez said, “Ok,” I think Jack would have had the boy really killed because that might have been the only sufficient impact to get El Cid’s cooperation.
I think Kim is going to get helped back to the backwood’s, misogynist’s cabin, where she’ll colllapse in a stupor, only to awake a few moments later, finding that he has started undressing her and is about to try to get something straight between them. She will freak out, hit him with something random, hard enough to stun and get her out of the cabin but not enough to keep him from chasing after her through the woods as she races to get to the nearest highway.
The president’s wife is about to get beamed up by Ensign Ro and interrogated via Vulcan mind probe for the truth. No, wait, that won’t come till later. First, she will be caught in yet another near-lie and have to quick talk her way out of it, but we will discover through that more of what her real motives are, namely, destroying her ex-husband’s presidency through his series of ill-informed decisions and poor judgment about whom he counts as friends. Ensign Ro, via a tip from Jack, will say something that helps the prez to see the truth, but she will be critically involved in saving the president’s life from an attempted assasination later in the season.
The good-looking sister (now a brunette) really deserves more screen time. (God, I love a slutty bad girl!) In the next episode, she will begin to have some second thoughts, thinking about what her goody sister said, and these qualms will start to cause potential problems for the remaining bad guys, but then one of them will figure out her nascent weakness and will take over, brutalizing her and taking important steps to make sure that the bomb will get detonated.
Also, guess where the nearby, hidden airfield for the plane with the bomb to hide in will be? It will be very near a now famous (to viewer’s) mountain lion’s region, and dumb Kim will stumble back into major involvement in the main plot by that airstrip turning out to be the first sign of ‘civilization’ that she comes to, escaping from mountain man would-be rapist into the clutches of the terrorists.
(in a later episode, the mountain man, frustrated about losing Kim, will put some GBH in the drinking water of the mountain lion and will get it on with his new feline friend)
Also, I predict that Ed Cid will somehow be directly involved in Nina’s death in an episode near the end of the season.
Finally, a question: how long is this day? does jack never get to sleep from one season 24 to the next? and how much action can they have during those 2am-3am and 3am-4am slots? how does that work?
And what’s the deal with blondie? Why is it that when she talks to everyone else, she speaks perfect English, but when talking to Sayed, she gains an accent? It just doesn’t make any sense.
Much less fun fact #3: Mason was in an early episode of The X-Files. The one where they go to Alaska with the mealworms that make you crazy.
Random observation: Marie’s new wig looks like the same one Uma Thurman wore in Pulp Fiction. I keep expecting her to say, “Don’t be a square, daddy-o.”
Dude, what is with those hats? There’s a ton of girls at my college that wear that same kind of hat.
I like that. But how far along is Mason going to get in his radiation sickness? He might not be in any kind of shape to fly the plane.
Are you not entertained?!
But the fight will be very short-lived. Didn’t you catch the part in the preview where she slipped and fell on what looked like the alien mother ship’s self-destruct button? 
These days are not consecutive (season 1 to season 2). I think this is supposed to be about a year later. What I wonder is whether Jack ever gets time for a bathroom break? or even a sandwich? Fighting terrorists is hungry work…
I was “disappointed” the boy was still alive. I think the reason I wanted him to be dead was just to see that the show really would do something like that. It would defy every possible traditional formula by which shows separate good guys from bad guys. Jack killing the criminal in the first show, that’s unusual but not unheard of, “good guy” characters do sometimes kill in cold blood, but only kill bad people. To have a “good guy” character kill an innocent boy would have just thrown all the conventions to the wind. It’s one of those things I wanted to see just because it finally would have been something new on television.
In real life, I don’t think I would have killed anyone for some allegedly greater good, I don’t even support the death penalty. But as a plot device on TV it would be such a brutally honest twist in a character it would have been worth it turning out that way. There are lots and lots of people, not all of them “criminals” or people we’d usually point to and say “there lies evil”, who nonetheless would indeed have killed a 12 year old boy to save a city of 2 million people. To have Jack do that would have added something fresh and interesting to the show.
Yeah, I think he’s not a bad guy. Everybody was jumping on the idea that he’s going to sexually assault her or something, but it seems like he had pretty logical reasons for taking her back to his place. He helps her out pretty much right away, doesn’t stare lustfully at her, doesn’t look too creepy. Clearly we’re meant to distrust him, young woman alone comes across a guy who lives in a cabin, we’re figuring something’s up knowing Kim’s track record…but I distrust the show making us distrust him
Especially since they’re sitting there peacefully together listening to the radio in the scenes from next week…unless it wasn’t really the interference of the electromagnetic pulse from the bomb causing the radio to malfunction, but it was just a ruse from him to make her think no help could be forthcoming…but considering how close they’re coming to the bomb, I’m leaning towards my original hunch.
I get your point, but I totally disagree. I think it would’ve totally knocked the show’s dynamic out of whack and sent it into completely unbelievable territory (as opposed to mostly unbelievable). The ads were playing up the sensational aspect of “How far will Jack go?!?” but that just plays up how sensational and exploitative that would’ve been. The whole “good cop gone rogue” idea has been played out hundreds of times over.
Think what would’ve happen if Jack had had the boy killed. He would’ve no longer been a sympathetic character, and it would’ve completely invalidated everything he’s done in the series so far. What’s the point of worrying about a nuclear bomb going off if anybody’s willing to kill a few innocents? What’s so bad about anything Nina’s done – it was necessary, right? Throwing in a big cliche just for shock value, especially if it’s counter to everything you’ve established about your character so far, doesn’t make for better television. I don’t think it’s just a “TV convention” that Jack recognizes that killing innocent people (like his pregnant wife) is bad; it’s just a fact.
The show is still plenty violent; in my list of all the stuff that’s happened I forgot to mention Nina’s slashing a guy’s throat with a credit card. Yikes!
Again, I thought it was pretty clear that it was never Jack’s intention to really kill anyone in the family. When he gave the order it was “proceed with the operation” or “proceed as planned.” He never said, “Oh shit! Err, ix-nay on the illing-kay the ildren-chay.” He never told anyone that Palmer had not given him the go-ahead. Plus, it was a relatively elaborate video trick for it to be changed at the last minute.
Consider this:
Sayed Ali’s son might ‘really’ be dead. It would’ve been easy to pre-record untying the family etc for the purpose of convincing ‘good blond sister’ or anyone else that Jack is not so evil. I would not have tried to fake the killing. There were too many ways for things to go wrong and render the procedure unconvincing to Sayed Ali.
Make my last line above “with special effects or whatever, there would have been too many ways for things to go wrong.”
Plus, there was time we did not see Jack between the Pres. phone call and the “Go ahead as planned line”. he could have stepped out, said “Plan B”, to the film crew, and then come back into the room and said “as planned”. The way the Chief of Staff presented it: Jack Bauer wants permission to kill the kids. The pres then rules it out. Fake killing the kids was plan B. Alot could have gone wrong with that plan B. If the pres said “Go ahead.”, that would be one dead kid. Why ask the pres if you’re not going to do it anyway?
DaLovin’ Dj
He didn’t ask the prez. Prez caught wind of what he thought Jack was about to do and called to say don’t do it. Jack couldn’t very well say “Don’t worry dude, it’s a fake, tee hee!” in front of Sayed.