Should I buy "24" Season 2?

Cafe Society
1

Somebody gave me the box set of Season 1 of “24” for Christmas. My girlfriend and I blew a weekend watching that thing. I never saw it on tv, but loved the idea, since it combines two kinds of movies I really like: the realtime movie, and the movie where the protagonist never gets any sleep. But it sags in the middle and, upon reflection, don’t make a lick of sense from beginning to end. For instance:

[spoiler]1. Too much outsourcing, too many unnecessary complications.

The evil Serbian villains outsource their Plan A revenge plot to evil American villain Gaines. Gaines hires a first-class cold-blooded expert to steal a German photographer’s ID in order to get close to Senator Palmer. This involves blowing up a 747 full of people instead of simply snatching, robbing and killing the photographer.

Then Gaines turns around and outsources the kidnapping of Jack’s daughter to Dan and Rick, two idiots in a van. Dan and Rick, in turn, come up with a brilliant plan that requires Jack’s daughter Kim to sneak out of her bedroom at night. If she decides not to sneak out, the whole plan is blown.

If Gaines had simply done an ordinary kidnapping of Kim and Terri (Jack’s wife), it would have been unnecessary to involve Janet, Kim’s innocent friend. Gaines could have simply done a home invasion after Jack went to work, and kidnapped mother and daughter. Instead, they murder Janet’s dad and impersonate him, having kidnapped Janet for no other reason than to provide a reason for Terri to be willing to go driving with a stranger (the guy pretending to be Janet’s dad). The whole elaborate scheme and fake story was completely unnecessary.

Later on, after mother and daughter have finally both been successfully kidnapped and taken to Gaines’ compound, they’re locked in a barn. Gaines apparently has access to a surveillance camera everywhere within a hundred mile radius, even inside CTU headquarters – everywhere but that damn barn.

Then, even later on… never mind; I’m sure all this stuff has been hashed out here in the past. [/spoiler]

Suffice to say, the first season was exciting, but got into some dumb writing, with one implausible event piled on another. It also had some really great scenes, and a powerful ending.

So, the box set of Season 2 is out. Is it better? Worse? Worth buying? Thanks.

2

I liked the first season pretty well. Probably felt the same way about it that you did.
That said, I thought the second season was utter shit. I stopped watching after about four episodes.

3

I liked Series Two. Don’t expect it to be any more plausible than the first one though!

4

The writing on all three seasons of 24 is stupid and implausable, but it’s fun, which is the whole point. It’s good old-fashioned escapism, with chicks in low-cut shirts and explosions and gunplay.

So, I would reccomend going ahead and getting season 2. It does start off much more slowly than the first one, but it’s just as fun, IMHO.

5

I’m with Avenger and friedo.

6

I bought it. Yeah, it’s stupid, but it’s good-stupid – and it’s so much better to watch it over a short period, with no commercials.

My only complaint with the DVD set is the half-assed approach to the bonus material-- to view the alternate scenes for the episodes that have them, you use a special subtitle setting that displays a little icon whenever there’s an alternate available. Then you watch the whole episode again and dive for the remote to push the “angle” button whenever the icon appears. I guess folks who want to use the actual subtitles just have to randomly press the button and hope for the best. I’d much rather just have any extra material available directly from the menu, to be watched after the episode. As it is, I doubt that I’ll ever actually see any of it.

7

I think the “outsourcing” of some of the crimes, as you describe it, is actuallly wise on their part because they head guys are then not directly involved. If Jacks comes after them, he has to first go through the people he hired. If they do it directly and he discovers who did it, its a direct link to the top of the chain of command.

        I think the first season was one of the most well done seasons of a series I have ever seen.  What I particularly like are the parallels between Palmer's and Jack's family relationships.  At the same time Jack and his wife and daughter are physically torn apart, they manage to, in the end become closer than ever emotionally, even right up to the death of Jack's wife.  At the same time, as David Palmer and his wife are forced together physically due to the confinement to the hotel from the assassination plot, they are torn apart emotionally.  The death of Jack's wife parallels the "death" of Senator Palmer's marriage.  Plus the end of the episode where Nina is revealed to be a spy is one of the most surprising moments I've ever seen on TV.  

       Second Season was good, but not as good as the first.  I would, and have, bought it on DVD.  I am still watching the third season, but I am very disappointed in it.
8

The first season was a bit less coherent than I’d have liked because they weren’t sure it’d be picked up, so they wrote the first plot arc for twelve episodes. When it was, they added the whole Serbian thing. But I still found it to be DVD crack. I’d have watched three of the four episodes on a disk, it’d be 2:30 in the morning, and I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep knowing there was one more episode available to me.

The second season didn’t really get absorbing until about the eighth episode, when the various threads finally came together and started going somewhere. After my addictive watching of the first season, I watched the first four or five episodes of Day 2, then stopped for a couple of months, picked it up again, and ended up watching the last 12 episodes in a 40 hour period. Kim’s plotline never really gets compelling, though, and is pretty skippable.

9

Thanks, guys – maybe I was using too harsh a standard of plausibility for Season 1, and should just enjoy it like a cliffhanger serial. I’ll probably get Season 2 when I’ve got more discretionary income.

10

Keep in mind that season one originally only called for 12 (or was it 13?) episodes. It wasn’t until after the first few had aired that Fox ordered the full season of 24 episodes, which is why there is a somewhat abrupt plot shift–they wanted the show to somewhat wrap up in case Fox pulled the plug early.

As for buying it, ask yourself this–will you watch it more than once? If the answer is no, then just rent the individual discs, it will cost less than half of what the box set does.

11

Good point. I’m already a Netflix subscriber; maybe I’ll just rent the disks through them.

12

Howdy, Baldwin! Well, you sure have stirred up my interest about my sig line. I created the dang thing years ago and haven’t used it in a long time. Anyway, according to quoteproject.com and quotecha.com: I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy. -Tom Waits :smack:

13

Radar Ralf – I remember snarkily correcting somebody’s sig line attribution (i.e., the line “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” originated with Dorothy Parker). Was that you? If so, I apologize for my snarkiness.

Well, my girlfriend and I spent a few nights watching the “24” Season Two DVD’s from Netflix. Enjoyed it, but Season Two is even more implausible than Season One. Particularly all the stuff involving President Palmer and his high-level people – didn’t believe it for a minute. And Kim’s entire storyline seemed an unnecessary and massively unlikely coincidence. But I guess you have to enjoy the story like the old action-packed movie serials, and not worry too much about plausibility. Yusef was cool.

We enjoyed the scene where mobs of rednecks in Marietta, Georgia endanger the peaceful Middle East community there, so the President has to federalize the National Guard (although I’d think the Governor would be taking care of things). See, we live in Marietta – or right next door, anyway.
Is it just my impression, or are most of the women in this show either perpetual victims or evil bitches?

14

Forgot to mention – during the show, I counted 13 people being interrogated (not including debriefings), 8 of whom were tortured. And five of the torturings were done by the good guys.

15

I can’t imagine ANYONE actually watching a season of ‘24’ more than once. It’s a very unusual TV show in that way, if you think about it. It REALLY goes against the norm when it comes to typical network fare:

  1. There’s really no chance this show could ‘build’ an audience during a season. Basically, if you haven’t watched the show from episode one of the first season you’ll be hopelessly lost.

  2. Not a chance of syndication (which, really, is what ALL TV series strive for).

  3. No repeatability factor. You watch it because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You watch it for the twists. Take that away and you’re not left with much a show.

I watched the first two seasons because somebody let me borrow the DVDs. I’m watching this season in ‘real time,’ and I have to admit it makes for a fun hour. But the idea of watching ANY of these episodes again? Not interested.

So, to answer the OP, no. Rent them instead.

16

Yep, that was me. I guess I really am thick, because I didn’t perceive any “snarkiness” at all. I thought you were merely trying to stick to the premise of this board - fighting ignorance. I was surprised to find out that a couple of websites attribute this quote to Tom Waits.