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March 28, 2024, 06:09:48 PM

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24 - was it any good?

Started by Custard, September 13, 2021, 12:29:41 PM

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Custard

I remember really enjoying the first season as it felt so exciting and different and fresh. The 24 hour thing was a great idea, and it of course climaxes in a great and entertaining way

Second season, I'm struggling to remember anything about. I recall a foxy brunette lady leaping out of a plane after blowing it up. I remember an annoying family. Wasn't President Whatshisface doing something too?

Third season? Nope, that's all gone.

Didn't bother with the rest

So, was 24 good? Or was it a bit of a one season wonder? Did the concept get tired quite quickly? Or where there some decent later seasons?

It's crazy how massive it was at the time, yet hardly anyone seems to talk about it these days

Utter Shit

I would say it was a one-season wonder, but that one season can be any of them. They're all basically the same, so whichever you watch first will be your favourite. I enjoyed it well enough at least for the five seasons I watched, while acknowledging that it was completely brainless. Habib Marwan was a great villain.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I remember thinking Season 2 had a better main plot than the first (or more compellingly high stakes, anyway) but the subplots were worse - even taking the first one's temporary amnesia subplot into account. I can't actually remember the rest, but one hilariously melodramatic Season 2 cliffhanger, in which Kim got her foot caught in a trap and a mountain lion popped up to menace her, is etched into my memory.

I must have been dead into it at first, because I missed the last episode of the first season and bought the DVD set just to see what happened. My Enthusiasm clearly waned after that though, as I never saw Season 3 or beyond.


I hold Jack Bauer responsible.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on September 13, 2021, 01:11:54 PM
I can't actually remember the rest, but one hilariously melodramatic Season 2 cliffhanger, in which Kim got her foot caught in a trap and a mountain lion popped up to menace her, is etched into my memory.

Ha, I was just about to bring that up as my main memory of the show, there were some very tense cliffhangers which were far better, but that was the show at its most ludicrous. Just looking at the wikipedia page now and it seems I stuck with it until season 8 where I lost interest half way through, and never bothered with the shorter "Live Another Day" and "Legacy" seasons, but I probably should have quit after season 5 as it was fairly poor after that.

jobotic

Watched the first half of Season 1. Can't remember much about it but I know I was gripped but then he got his daughter back after twelve hours and then she instantly got captured again or something and I thought fuck this.

kalowski

Put me down as another who'd come here to mention the mountain lion. Kim's every increasing jeopardy was ludicrous.

Custard

Didn't she end up getting a job with Jack etc, even though she had zero qualifications and could barely even go to the corner shop without getting abducted?

I know they liked the actress and wanted to keep her around, but sheesh

Inspector Norse

I remember liking the first series a great deal although it was pretty evidently ludicrous right from the start.

Watched the second and possibly third series too but at some point I definitely started wondering when they were going to do something genuinely surprising like having them foil the terrorist plot after 9 hours and spend the remaining 15 episodes eating dinner, watching sitcoms and sleeping. A couple of them down the pub after work, someone going to Walmart. Possibly an episode focusing on the CTU nightwatchman doing a crossword or reading jazz mags.

Spode

Quote from: kalowski on September 13, 2021, 02:28:50 PM
Put me down as another who'd come here to mention the mountain lion. Kim's every increasing jeopardy was ludicrous.

Bad enough in isolation but comes an hour or two after being locked in a basement with a fella who's pretending the whole world has gone up in smoke and just before she gets caught up in an armed robbery.  Which comes as a bit of a shock after the light relief of the dad she babysits for murdering his wife opening the show.

I loved 24 when it first came out. Saw series 2 first, which for obvious reasons took some of the edge off series 1 when I saw it, but then it moved to Sky and I didn't see any series for years. Stumbled across series 4 on DVD on a dinner hour mooch and watched it all in practically one sitting. Nonsensical stuff but loved it.

Think i've probably seen a good proportion of the rest but they all just merge into one for me, with Logan's stupid face all over them.

DrGreggles

S1 is one of the greatest seasons of TV ever.
2, 3 and 4 have their moments, but the rest was pretty forgettable.

I honestly believe that, if they had just done s1 and quit, it would be remembered as a classic show.

Magnum Valentino

Quote from: jobotic on September 13, 2021, 02:18:16 PM
Watched the first half of Season 1. Can't remember much about it but I know I was gripped but then he got his daughter back after twelve hours and then she instantly got captured again or something and I thought fuck this.

I think they didn't know until it was too late that they'd been picked up for the full season so they had a mid-season "ending" and then had to spin wheels somewhat to get to the actual 24th episode because it wasn't a certainty they'd have to make it, hence the awful amnesia subplot.

Anyone who thinks season 1 is better than 2 or 3 is fucking mental, unless some of that comes from the novelty of having watched it when it was new.

The redemption of George Mason is one of my favourite TV subplots ever.

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on September 13, 2021, 04:11:52 PM
I think they didn't know until it was too late that they'd been picked up for the full season so they had a mid-season "ending" and then had to spin wheels somewhat to get to the actual 24th episode because it wasn't a certainty they'd have to make it, hence the awful amnesia subplot.

Anyone who thinks season 1 is better than 2 or 3 is fucking mental, unless some of that comes from the novelty of having watched it when it was new.

The redemption of George Mason is one of my favourite TV subplots ever.

The nuclear bomb going off in Los Angeles, and then everyone being back at work a couple of hours later with all their original faces.

Utter Shit

Which series was it where the terrorist plots had a Russian dolls vibe, where each plot was actually diverting from an even bigger attack. I think there were three plots in total. Bonkers show.

Also fair play to Jack Bauer for overcoming a heroin addiction in about four hours.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I was going to make some point about it being one of the first big shows of the bingewatch boxset era, but it probably doesn't benefit from watching it that way. When you watch one episode a week over several months, it's easier to ignore how ludicrously compressed the timeframe is really meant to be.

studpuppet

I watched it until about 3pm on the first Day, when one of the characters very conveniently developed amnesia in lieu of a plot.

EDIT: the mother conveniently develops amnesia after her daughter conveniently went off a cliff in a car. Even the 24 Fandom page has trouble explaining it:

QuotePaulson sensed danger when the other agents didn't respond so he had Teri and Kim hide in a room. Jovan Myovic broke into the room where they were hiding right before Teri took a car from the garage. Jovan got in his car and drove after them. Teri tried to lose the car and turn on another street. While seeing if Jovan was chasing them, the car which Kim was in fell down the side of a hill and Teri assumed that she was dead.

With her shock at witnessing what she believed was Kim's death, Teri experienced Dissociative Amnesia and was unable to remember anything about her life.

kidney

I like the episode where there's a mole in the CTU

mothman

I think we watched the first three seasons, by which time it wasn't on BBC2 anymore and so became too difficult to watch. It was starting to get samey anyway.

MojoJojo

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on September 13, 2021, 04:51:20 PM
I was going to make some point about it being one of the first big shows of the bingewatch boxset era, but it probably doesn't benefit from watching it that way.

I think it might have been the first watercooler moment show, which just kept the tension up the whole time. Definitely influential.

Mister Six

#18
I think, incredibly, I watched all of these except for the reboot with the black bloke, even the made-for-TV movie with Tony Todd where the UN peacekeeper is a GODDAMN COWARDLY FRENCHMAN who has to be saved, or possibly semi-tragically killed, by ARE BRAVE BUAER.

It's absolutely a load of shit, but kind of gets more fun in the later seasons as they give up any pretence of plausibility and just have impossibly well-funded terrorists letting off mushroom clouds in LA etc every hour or two, while Jack wrinkles his brow and pants at something off screen. BINK BINK BINK BINK.

Although admittedly, my enjoyment was augmented by a now-defunct board that ripped the piss out of every episode, especially how Bauer ended up becoming an almost godlike figure whose every whim was always morally correct, and how any character who so much as questioned him would (at best) be humiliated, and at worst have to sacrifice themselves to attain redemption for transgressing the edicts of His Holiness, Jack of Bauer. This would even apply when, say, Jack decided torture was wrong after five seasons of doing exactly that, and then a few episodes later he'd clamp a car battery to someone's bollocks and torture would be fine again.

The last of the proper 24s is probably the most entertaining for Brits, because it has Chloe turning into the woman from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Jack running around an authentically shit and drab corner of London, talking frantically about how some terrorist he glimpsed entering the Crown and Cushion or whatever "just went into the pahb". Always sounds weird when Americans say pub, but it's x1,000 when it's Jack bleedin' Bauer.

Quote from: Shameless Custard on September 13, 2021, 02:31:50 PM
Didn't she end up getting a job with Jack etc, even though she had zero qualifications and could barely even go to the corner shop without getting abducted?

I know they liked the actress and wanted to keep her around, but sheesh

Her first scene is someone saying exactly that, so she hacks his email or something, and throws a sassy face, and then a couple of hours later begins a run of being incessantly kidnapped or menaced by terrorists/doomsday preppers/mountain lions/toddlers. Of course.

Mister Six

Quote from: Magnum Valentino on September 13, 2021, 04:11:52 PM
I think they didn't know until it was too late that they'd been picked up for the full season so they had a mid-season "ending" and then had to spin wheels somewhat to get to the actual 24th episode because it wasn't a certainty they'd have to make it, hence the awful amnesia subplot.

The producers just wanted to let Jack's wife go to sleep for a few episodes, and the actress was fine with that, but the network demanded every character continue to be in peril throughout, hence the amnesia bullshit.

stonkers

I was well into it for seasons 1-4, missed 5 (which I've heard is one of the better seasons), watched 6 and the TV movie then stopped bothering.

It's all pretty stupid but season one did somewhat try to maintain the 24 hour concept, Jack actually falls asleep at one point. Didn't the first couple of seasons try to claim it was happening in real time, then they ditched that when it became obvious the timescales made no sense at all.

Spode

If we're ranking 24's greatest dorks, and we're not, I'd like to put Paul forward from series 4.

Jack steals his wife, tortures him with a lamp and then gets him off the life support to save a terrorist. Not a great day for the lad.

On the plus side, does get to shoot a gun.

mothman

Huh, just looked it up, we watched the first four seasons and definitely started the fifth
Spoiler alert
when Jack had faked his death at the end of the previous season
[close]
which was in 2006 when we'd just moved into the house we've lived in ever since. I recall I had this complicated setup involving an S-video cable adapter and possibly an early HDMI connected, so I could pipe pirated episodes from my laptop to the TV. It was the only way we could do it - if we just watched it in the laptop, we'd do so in bed, and then fall asleep in five minutes (new baby, we were so tired...).

Quote from: Spode on September 13, 2021, 07:39:56 PM
If we're ranking 24's greatest dorks, and we're not, I'd like to put Paul forward from series 4.

Jack steals his wife, tortures him with a lamp and then gets him off the life support to save a terrorist. Not a great day for the lad.

On the plus side, does get to shoot a gun.

Season 4 also had Shohreh Agdashloo in, to this day my wife does a mean impression of her saying "Behrooz" (the name of her character's son).

Dex Sawash


I would generally just avoid this sort of show but I just watched all of Homeland and somehow liked it ok so I'll give this a try since CaB doesn't universally hate it.

Mobius

I loved it and still do. Some seasons are a bit weaker than others but they're basically all the same really. I read recently they're hoping to bring the show back with Bauer again, thank god. Wasn't into the non-Kiefer ones.

I've read all of the Vince Flynn novels so I've a pretty low bar for this sort of stuff.


Magnum Valentino

Quote from: stonkers on September 13, 2021, 07:26:08 PM
I was well into it for seasons 1-4, missed 5 (which I've heard is one of the better seasons), watched 6 and the TV movie then stopped bothering.

It's all pretty stupid but season one did somewhat try to maintain the 24 hour concept, Jack actually falls asleep at one point. Didn't the first couple of seasons try to claim it was happening in real time, then they ditched that when it became obvious the timescales made no sense at all.

They didn't ditch it, they just truncated the opening voiceover. They also dropped the mention of what day it was ("of the California presidential primary"). But the time was always visible and it was implicit that it was in real time. Bet I'm being stupid and have misunderstood you.

Also, the idea of mini-screen shots of a character sleeping has really tickled me.

Still think about your one saying "Behrooz" all these years later as well. Nominated for an Oscar you know?

jobotic

Doctor, Doctor Dad, Dad...oh, I've been captured

ElTwopo

Can't remember the series when this happened, but when
Spoiler alert
Tony Almeida came back from the dead
[close]
I did actually punch the air with glee.

I enjoyed it for 5 or 6 seasons. It's utter bollocks but also actually entertaining.

EDIT - the spoiler above apparently happened in Season 7 which I don't think I watched. So fuck knows. Or maybe I'm misremembering an earlier season. Help me Gamesmaster.

Spode

Quote from: ElTwopo on September 13, 2021, 10:18:09 PM
Can't remember the series when this happened, but when
Spoiler alert
Tony Almeida came back from the dead
[close]
I did actually punch the air with glee.

I enjoyed it for 5 or 6 seasons. It's utter bollocks but also actually entertaining.

EDIT - the spoiler above apparently happened in Season 7 which I don't think I watched. So fuck knows.

Wasn't the justification for it that he didn't get the silent clock first time round so wasn't actually dead? Death juice got plunged directly into his heart but the clock chimed.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Having never seen it, I declare it gimmicky shit