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emaidel
02-07-2008, 02:22 PM
I must confess: I am hopelessly, and forever, addicted to "24." I only started watching it towards the end of season 5, but never missed a single episode of season 6. For Christmas, my wife bought me the DVD's of Seaons 4 and 5, and after watching all of them, I'm now back-tracking, by watching seaons 1-3. Currently, I've got 8 more episodes of season 2 left, before moving onto season 3.

Never in my life have I watched so much television! We start to watch "24" at, say, 4:00 in the afternoon, and wind up watching it until past our normal bedtimes! We've actually watched it once or twice for a full eight hours!

"24" is one of the best written, acted, directed and photographed programs ever. Each and every episode is a nail-biting, white-knuckle ride that has you at the edge of your seat throughout, and each episode concludes with a cliff-hanger that somehow actually manages to top all the previous cliff-hanger endings! All of that's quite an accomplishment, that I've never seen any other program manage to duplicate, or even come close to.

Everything about the show is top notch: known actors (William Devane, Kevin Dillon, Gail O'Grady, Dennis Haysbert, Dennis Hoffman, Zeljko Ivanek, Kim Raver, Lou Diamond Phillips) appear frequently and perform all their roles most admirably, and there's no denying the outstanding efforts of the show's regulars, as well as its star, Keifer Sutherland.

If any of you reading this have never seen "24," then rush out to Blockbuster, or log onto netflix and rent all of Season One. Just be prepared to lose a lot of sleep, and eat a lot less!

Mr Peabody
02-07-2008, 07:49 PM
Yip, I got hooked at season 2. I never heard of it and was walking through Costco and some one was handing out free DVD's of it. It had 2 episodes. I was like, man! I gotta see what happens, so I ended up buying that seasons box set. But when 24 starts a season the DVR is programmed to record every episode. 24 is a bit far fetched at times but working inside the tough structure they made the show in you have to be. I mean I remember the time they are torturing Jack and he is near death, he has been injected with something to cause pain and eventually kill him but he gets away and ends up fighting his way out and running down the bad guy. I wish I had that fast recovery.

I tell you another incredible show and that is Dexter. It's going to start on CBS but I'm sure it will be sensored pretty good from what we saw on Showtime.

emaidel
02-08-2008, 05:01 AM
I've seen the first season of "Dexter" and thought it was terrific. It was another TV show I rented on DVD, and while we were strongly attached to watching it, we weren't as addicted to it as we are "24." I know it's coming to broadcast TV soon, but in addition to being severely censored, I think it's coming also because there are no new shows ready and waiting due to the writer's strike. If it's all new, then, that'll be a treat.

Woochifer
02-12-2008, 11:10 AM
I've been watching it from the beginning. One of the few TV shows out there that I make a point of scheduling around.

To me, 24 is defined by the first 13 episodes of Day One. That was the story arc that inspired the entire series, and compared to subsequent years, that was by far the most relentlessly tense and tightly written group of episodes. Unfortunately, the writers couldn't really stretch that original kidnapping plot thread through the entire season because Fox's initial order was only 13 episodes, and the writers had to build in an escape hatch to tie up the plot line just in case 24 got canceled midseason. That's why the second half of Day One felt tacked on with the Drazen storyline and the Teri-gets-amnesia subplot.

I think overall, Day Two was the best one from start to finish, with Day Five and Day One pulling up a close second. Day Three and Day Six were both subpar IMO.

The danger with 24 is that the audience has grown to expect the unexpected and the cliffhangers. I think Day Six really squandered a lot of good opportunities, from Jack's China abduction, to the whole storyline with his dad and his brother, to the megalomaniacal VP -- a lot of promising story arcs just fizzled out. And it got to a point where I was correcting predicting the plot twists -- not good considering that in previous seasons my predictions were almost always way off.

I think that 24 needs to get back to the basics that made the first half of Day One so edge-of-the-seat compelling. Day One, the peril seemed far more real and the threats were very personal. We don't need more terrorists, bigger WMDs, and more gruesome torture methods. It really should be about Jack in an impossible situation, being forced to make choices with very personal consequences.

I heard that the writers did write a very different storyline with no CTU and no feds involved in the plot, but the Fox execs scrapped it and forced them to come up with a more conventional plot, set in D.C. with yet another terrorist threat looming.



SPOILER ALERT



The twist for the upcoming season (as shown in the Day Seven trailer, which Fox has since pulled off of its website) is that the villain will be none other than Tony Almeida. It will be personal, but we'll see if this creates a nicely compelling battle of wits between two former trusted allies, or if it's yet another squandered plotline that sacrifices a fan favorite character in the process.

kexodusc
02-12-2008, 11:30 AM
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I also heard about the details in Wooch's spoiler...After Day 6 became the suckiest exhibit of shark jumping in recent memory, you had to think Day 7 would be looking for a change of pace. Here's to hoping they get things done right. Many of us said back before Season 6 started that Jack needed a nemesis. We though we were getting that in his brother, father, the Chinese, etc, etc, etc...but then the writers killed those angles off before they even started.

IMO, the show really suffered killing off 3 very good characters:
Nina
Tony
and President Palmer.

Sure the show endures without them, but I think they all had more mileage left in them.

Since season 1, the show has always displayed a struggle between 3 things - character development and continuity, plot development, and plot-twisting specatcle (the high spots). The first 2 have long been staples of any show, the the 3rd one seems to be what steers 24 in the wrong direction - while some scenes are certainly shocking there's a point where you become desensitized to it all. I hope 24 corrects things by focusing more on the first two items again.

As for Dexter - great series. One of the very few where the screen presentation is actually better than the books, IMO.

topspeed
02-12-2008, 05:05 PM
Desperate times call for desperate measures. After Day 6 became the suckiest exhibit of shark jumping in recent memory, you had to think Day 7 would be looking for a change of pace. Took the words right outta my mouth, Kex. I switched off last season about mid way through, just couldn't stomach it anymore. Day 7 will have to equal Day 1 to win my viewship back.

Thankfully, Terminator: TSCC has filled the Monday @ 9:00 slot very nicely. ;) As long you suspend the belief that someone that young and that hot could have a son as old as John, you'll find a pretty good show, IMO.

Rich-n-Texas
02-13-2008, 06:03 AM
I think I saw on the news last night that you're going to have to wait until Jan '09 for new episodes of 24.

Thankfully, Terminator: TSCC has filled the Monday @ 9:00 slot very nicely. ;) As long you suspend the belief that someone that young and that hot could have a son as old as John, you'll find a pretty good show, IMO.
Well, as network television goes, I actually make it a point to watch this one. Pretty good show.