Observations on "24"

[waider]

I've got two episodes left to watch in Season 2 of this rather good show. The following occurred to me along the way:

• they were way too slow to lock onto the idea of cellphone tracking in the first season
• Jack should have named his daughter Trouble, to avoid future surprises
• Fully expecting Trouble to phone Tony at CTU at some point and have Tony say, "Look, Trouble, would you ever just FUCK OFF and stop calling us?"
• They didn't expect to get a second season. Or, they didn't put as much effort into the second season script. The twists in the second season are a lot less smooth than the first, and Trouble's side story is just distraction instead of being an integral part of the plot like it was in season one.
• After they'd accidentally overtortured Jack in season 2, all I could think of was, "huh, he knows the drill here. he was in Flatliners".
• Reminding me that Jack's powers of regeneration put Wolverine to shame.
• Season 2, as mentioned, with the looser plot has to make WAY more use of "guy turns up just in time", "guy stays alive just barely long enough", etc. in order to resolve plot difficulties
• In general, I don't really notice the Real Time nature of the show, since I guess I'm used to the stock Hollywood "car leaves scene"-"car arrives 300 miles away in next shot" and also since they tend to cut away from the boring location-change action.

I'm told season 2 ends with a huge cliffhanger; with two episodes left I can pretty much figure out what it is. Rather a shame, since they left the end of season 1 complete, and cliffhanging an end-of-season show like this seems incongrouous - there's supposed to be a 1-year gap between season 1 and season 2, but if you cliffhang at the end of season 2, does season 3 roll straight into the next 24-hour period?

Comments

[kodi]

This interview is a bit spoilish regarding the cliffhanger, so you might want to skip it until you watch the last two episodes of season 2, but it's got some interesting information from one of the writers.

The neat things I learned from the interview were (1) in the first two seasons, they only had the first 6 episodes written when they started filming, and in season 3, they started with only 3 episodes written and (2) "I'm happy to report that [Trouble] will not be running around being chased by cougars this year.... [Trouble] is now integrally involved in the plot of the show.... She's out of trouble and a new haircut!"

[waider.livejournal.com]

Huh. I note the potted description of the interview describes Jack Bower as CIA...

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

After they'd accidentally overtortured Jack in season 2, all I could think of was, "huh, he knows the drill here. he was in Flatliners".

This gave me a good belly laugh.

[bitpuddle.livejournal.com]

I don't think they expected a second season, either. Things have gotten rather improbable.