24 - Season 1

I watched the first couple episodes of 24 back when it premiered over five and a half years ago, but I didn't stay with it. It's not that I didn't like it, but it was on pretty late and I might not have been old enough to actually follow it properly. Anyway, I always kind of wanted to watch it as it went on, but I never attempted to catch up at all until I started recently. 24 is a very interesting and enjoyable show, although its premise is slightly flawed just by its nature.

I prefer shows with continuous plots over procedural dramas like ER or CSI. That kind of show, if a good one, is always an entertaining way to spend an hour, but there's not much to compel you to keep tuning in every week to see what happens next. I know those shows have a lot of character development and continuing storylines, I'm just more interested in something that's main goal is to tell a story. 24's interesting because it's kind of like a procedural with each idea stretched over a whole season instead of just an episode. One season of the show is a ridiculously crazy day in the life of Jack Bauer as he attempts to save America and be a good dad at the same time.

The whole 24 hour thing is definitely a cool idea but you see some problems arise when it's implemented. I'm not going to use that stupid joke about when Jack goes to the bathroom, since even if he was on camera the entire time, an "hour" episode is still only about 40 minutes of content minus the commercials. But you do see some weird things happen with time. For one, it's amazingly convenient how often the most dramatic or surprising things always seem to happen at the very end of each hour in the day. I understand it's a show and there have to be some stretches of the imagination, but the show seems to strive towards believability and you notice these things. Some things seem to happen much quicker than you'd imagine they would, such as getting from one place to another in the middle of the day in Los Angeles, while other things seem to take too long, especially around commercial breaks, and it appears that nothing has actually transpired in the missing time. Something to the show's credit is they manage to go through the whole time without any real stretches of inactivity.

The plot can be over-the-top at times. You definitely get the feeling that the writers probably had some idea what they wanted to do but were mostly making it up as they went. There are betrayals, kidnappings, deception, pregnancy, drug raids, vengeful allies, shock-induced amnesia, just an absurd amount of craziness for one day. Some people will often make unbelievably stupid moves without strong motivation and you get the idea it was just the only thing the writers could come up with to get out of a situation without getting stuck in a corner. Again, I get that it's supposed to be entertainment, it just might work better without the whole one day thing.

A couple things really annoyed me. Senator Palmer (played charismatically by the "You're in good hands with Allstate" guy) and his whole subplot with the family scandal is interesting, but his wife becomes more and more unlikable as the day goes on. She starts out as the supportive companion in public who's maybe too business-only in private, but as it all unfolds she goes off the deep end and does progressively more insane things to "protect" him before he finally snaps (in what's actually a pretty awesome scene). I can't even remember why she thought it was a good idea to bully his secretary into trying to sleep with him, and that wasn't the worst thing she did. Also, toward the end, there's one last twist that results in a betrayal and a death that both seemed completely unnecessary. The betrayal is only there because it's the least plausible one possible and they wanted to surprise you, and it just does not seem to fit with prior events and how much they helped Jack beforehand. The death defeats all of the extra work and complications that made most of the plot even possible, and it's very frustrating after all the time I spent hoping it resolved well. The betrayer better have a damn good explanation in the second season for their actions, and so far "I was doing my job" isn't cutting it. I don't know why I'm so carefully avoiding spoiling who did what, this happened five years ago and no one reads this blog.

I was disappointed with the conclusion of the story, but not with the resolution with the primary bad guys (Though it was weird to see Dennis Hopper in the role and his accent was terrible). Despite some plot difficulties it was a very fun show, and I'm definitely going to keep watching. According to Bauer Count, Jack kills three times as many people in the second season as he does in the first, so it already looks more entertaining.