We watched nearly every episode aired, and enjoyed the series as a whole. There were many, many times we said, “Yeah, right,” and laughed our way through a lot of scenes (Jack crossing Los Angeles in 10 minutes, never charging his cell phone, people surviving explosions that would’ve pulverized them into atoms, etc.).
But do you take something like “Die Hard” or Schwarzenegger’s movies seriously? It’s dumb fun.
I only watched a few seasons sometime during the middle of it’s run, but I got so sick of this show because it seemed like every season followed the same format:
There’s a bad guy in charge.
We got him.
There’s a badder guy whose really in charge.
We got him.
There’s a even badder guy whose really really in charge.
We got him.
Throw in a few “Jack’s gone rogue” and “There’s a mole in CTU” and repeat as needed.
The dumbness of the senator and his family is beginning to eclipse the dumbness of Jack’s family.
This was perhaps the single dumbest plot twist in all 8 seasons. She’s an important character at the beginning and end of the season, but had little do do with moving the story forward in between. I think they wanted to find a way to keep her in the show so we didn’t forget about her until she became relevant again, but yeah, this was a complete misfire. There were other, not quite as awful, instances of time-padding in subsequent seasons. I still kept watching all the way to the end, though, and enjoyed the show more often than not.
So far, I’ve managed to watch the first three seasons and the final season. Someday, when I’m in the right mood and have incredible amounts of time on my hands, I’ll watch some more episodes.
No matter how many times Jack gets stabbed or shot (or stabs and shoots and tortures other people), the one image I can’t get out of my mind is the prison guard who had his brains blown out in Russian Roulette during one of Bauer’s “sting” operations. Was he ever held responsible for anything like that?
(I mean, of course, before the final episode of the final season, when he was forced to flee the country, thereby setting us up for a full-length feature film someday.)
If you ever watched Prison Break, with it’s over-the-top drama and absolutely ridiculous plot twists, that’s what you can expect from 24. Both seasons got progressively more and more absurd as they continued, and therefore got more and more awesome.
I generally agree with most posters here… 24 is mostly a big dumb action movie with good production values but massive suspension of disbelief required for many of the plot developments. That said, it had occasional moments of really high quality awesomeness and some truly unexpected developments.
I enjoyed the heck out of pretty much all of it, even when it got fairly repetitive, but (unlike with some shows I like) I can easily see why it might not be your thing.
I love Die Hard. It’s one of my favorite movies. I have no problem suspending my disbelief for a couple of hours. But hour after hour of people making seriously stupid decisions, well, I just couldn’t go on.
24 is the kind of thing you’re going to like if you like that kind of thing.
Knead
Likes that kind of thing
P.S.: Thanks, Wheelz, for getting the thread links up.
Yep. The very same.
I don’t think watching it would have been 1/10 as fun if it weren’t for coming into CS afterwards and pointing out all the crazy shit in the show. Still, my favorite line was:
[spoiler]“Shoot him again!”
When Jack is giving Kim instructions over the phone as to how to handle the guy who is after her, and whom she just presumably killed with a previous shot. Advice that only Jack could give to a daughter.[/spoiler]
He shits ammo and grenades.
And cell phone chargers.
(Actually the show addresses this in Season 8. Jack is on the run (as usual) and stops in a convenience store to buy a bunch of cell phones. He actually says to the clerk “I don’t need the chargers.”)
I have watched all of 24 and will probably watch the movie if it ever gets out of development hell. I have a love/hate relationship with this show.
Some things to bear in mind that you will see a lot over the course of the series:
If there is a moral choice to be made that will result in misery for Jack Bauer, the misery is always chosen.
CTU is the easiest place in the world to get into if you are a terrorist.
Jack spends as much time fighting the good guys as he does the bad guys. Season 5 especially.
Every time you hear “that was our only lead!” don’t despair as the next lead is no more than 42 minutes away.
24 is set in a strange fictional universe. The villainous nation states in Season 2 are just referred to as “the three Middle Eastern countries” while Redemption gives us the all-purpose African nation of Sangala. In Season 8, the stand-in for Iran is a nation called Kamistan.
LA traffic is strangely non-existant! You can get from anywhere in LA to anywhere else in 10 minutes.
Only if you say “DAMMIT! THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TIME!” along the way.
You forgot to mention the mole fake-out. Yeah, there’s a mole in CTU pretty much every season. but in, what, season 2 or 3, the writers started the ploy of making it look obvious that person X was the mole, setting up the big betrayal, and then revealing that it was all part of a plan previously worked out with Jack, and person X is totally a good guy. The first time that happened it was a pretty cool twist, but then it became just another part of the expected repetition ("Ah, that’s gotta be the fake mole. And now there’s the real mole . . . ")
Jack Bauer is truly one of the all-time great characters in any medium. But the writers had zero creativity, and as the show went on, each season just got more and more similar to the previous ones. It was frustrating because they’d start out doing something different, but then quickly return to business as usual. Hey, cool, the world thinks Jack is dead and he’s totally on his own. Whoops, now he’s back in CTU. Hey, cool, CTU was disbanded. Whoops, now it’s all back in every way but name.
There’s an awful lot of referring to “your country” when talking to ambassadors and leaders from suspicious countries.
Interestingly, they seemed to be doing this with David Palmer’s party, usually referring to it as “the party” until suddenly coming out and admitting it’s the Democrats.
Wow, this is exciting. The daughter has just been kidnapped for the third time in one day.
Technically, I suppose two kidnappings and one illegal imprisonment, as she voluntarily went to the home of the first kidnapper to… hang out and then wasn’t allowed to leave.
She’s like a Red Shirt seamstress – everybody around her to protect her dies.
Kim will continue to be annoying in the next few seasons but she does have a crowning moment of awesome in season 7, right after an audience member might be heard to say “aw, not this shit again!”
For those who don’t remember:
After she is almost kidnapped at the airport, she chases down her kidnappers and gets her hands on their laptop just as Renee arrives. Paraphrased:
Kim: you’ll need someone down here who can crack this <technobabble>…
Renee: WTF?!?!
Kim: Oh, hi. I used to work at CTU.
I have very serious doubts I will get to season 7.
I have doubts whether I will get through season 2.
Oh jeez, a phone bomb. I knew that from the second the Serbs gave Jack a phone and told him to get the senator to take a call. Can’t believe the SS would let the phone get through.
Interesting that the entire staff of the CTU, with the possible exception of Jack, are moles.