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All posts by hardy24
Survive – Season 8 Promo
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24 @ Comic-Con 2009
The 24 Cast & Crew had a panel at Comic-Con yesterday discussing Season 8, and Almeidaisgod.com have a terrific first hand account of all the news and revelations.
Have a read here, though obviously be warned of spoilers for the start of Season 8, including cast and some early plot points.
Time’s up.
I write this having now seen the final two episode of Season 7 three times. This has thankfully given me some distance from the emotional impact of the episodes. I thought about writing a season recap and finale review immediately after seeing the episodes, but it would have been entirely postive and I would have revealed the idiotic fan-boy within.
With that distance I can now more easily point out the weak spots, and unfortunately there where still a few. The Taylor’s storyline did finish strongly and all involved made the best of what they where given, but as a political family the show didn’t get us emotionally invested in them as we did in the Palmers during Day One, and so there scenes never had the weight and gravitas that the writers were clearly going for. Kim never looked truly comfortable in the scenes which required her to stalk bad guys & talk technobabble nor did Renee in her final scenes.
Looking more generally at the season, during the hours that Tony’s true motives were shadowy (at best) many online hoped beyond hope that when revealed they wouldn’t be a betrayal of the character, and that they would make sense. Thats up for the individual to decide, i’d say they did. But actually I don’t what to focus on Tony, I think he’s recieved enough coverage this year thanks to the sterling work by the folks at aig.com.
The most interesting thing for me was Jack revealing how he became the one man counter-terrorist army he is now widely seen as being (especcially by the wider media when they report on and review the show), because this is far from the man he was back in the very first episode. Perhaps it’s been a gradual change, but at several points during the season i’d wondered how he went from this….
“Nina, you can look the other way once, and it’s no big deal, except it makes it easier to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that’s all your doing is compromising because that’s how you think things are done, You know those guys I blew the whistle on?, … , You think they were the bad guys?, because they weren’t, ‘bad guys’, they where just like you and me, except they compromised, once“ ~ Jack Bauer, 12:49 AM Day 1
… to this …
“If you don’t tell me what I want to know, then it’ll just be a question of how much you want it to hurt.” ~ Jack Bauer, Day 5
There are numerous answers, ranging from the one Jack himself gave about “Adapting to your enemy” at the beginning season when testifying to the Senate to the one I’d always tried hard to accept which was that losing everyone he cared about meant he grabbed hold of protecting his country as the last worthwhile thing in his life. But during the course of the season the show seemed frustratingly unwilling to explore this as much as i’d expected given the events of the prequel TV movie “Redemption“. Instead the season often at times gave us the most abrasive and unapologetic Jack we’d ever seen.
The final two hours where therefore a refreshing change of pace, the final twenty minutes as Kiefer’s performance and some wonderful writing finally reconciled the two extremes …
“I’ve been wrestling with this one my whole life, I see 15 people held hostage on a bus and everything else goes out the window, I will do whatever it takes to save them, and I mean whatever it takes, because maybe I thought if I save them, I could save myself, … , it always starts out with a small step, before you know it your running as fast as you can in the wrong direction just to justify why you started in the first place, these laws where written by much smarter men than me, and in the end I know that these laws have to be more important than the 15 people on the bus, I know that’s right, in my mind, I know that’s right, … , I just don’t know if in my heart could ever have lived with it” ~ Jack Bauer, 07:31 AM Day 7
In that beautiful moment, Jack made sense again, not just to me, but I think to himself, in admitting (and maybe realizing?) why he was willing to take the extreme measures he does, he found the closure he as a character had been chasing ever since he held the dying Teri in his arms at the end of Day 1.
Kiefer and numerous producers have often been quoted as saying that Jack isn’t indesctructible, despite what many of us believe, and that given the right time and circumstances they would kill Jack off.
I’d suggest that at 07:59:59 on Day 7, those right circumstances have been reached, and i’m firmly of the belief that if Jack does return for Day 8, it can only take the show and the character backwards.
His time has run out.
The Return of Real Time: An Immediate Response to Episode 6
I’ve just this minute finished watching Episode 6. Downloaded from itunes. Watching on a 25 inch HD TV. It’s the easiest way for me to watch it in a timely manner, and in good quality.
I wanted to give my reactions to the episode while they where fresh in my mind, before they faded, because thats what this episode was all about. The very real sense that the situation is evolving and changing, and that the facts and scenarios this second could be different in the next. You dare not miss a beat, or you’d be lost. This firmly re-established 24’s true premise, that we see a story unfold one piece at a time, nothing skipped, or abbreviated or summarised.
You didn’t watch this episode, you witnessed it. The cabinet meeting scene made be me feel as if I was an aide sitting in the shadows, whose opinion maybe sought at any second – and if it was, the episode prodded – what would your opinion be. Many people won’t have known what their answers would have been, but I betting a lot of people thought about what their answers would have been. And thats the point, it made you think, forced you to try to form an opinion, and then forced you to re-evaluate it based on new information and thoughts presented.
Right here I have to stop to make an apology, because in the cabinet meeting scene, Cherry Jones as President Taylor suddenly made sense, as if a reveal has been made, a new depth to the character has been unveiled. She gave a terrific performance in that scene. Perhaps it’s only now we’re seeing her give the performance that was apparently always in her as she’s suddenly being given something to work with, and is more than just an explanatory device.
She truely conveyed the sense on conflict in her mind, but also the resolve she felt that the course of action she was taking was indeed the right one. Even as I came to the conclusion that the only logical conclusion in this situation would be to withdraw the invasion force, she explained her own logic and even though I disagreed with her, I couldn’t call her naive or hopelessly idealistic, all I could think in reply to her argument, “Then your braver than I am”. Continue reading The Return of Real Time: An Immediate Response to Episode 6
“Sit Back & Enjoy The Ride”
I’ve been sitting, watching a blinking cursor for half an hour, trying to figure out how best to describe my thoughts on the first four episodes. To coherently present thoughts I’m sure many of you have been having about the episodes we’ve seen so far, that moves beyond “That was awesome!”
But in truth i’ve run out of time, so this review isn’t going to be as comphrensive as I’d like, more simply an overview of why it was so good, using as few cliches as possible.
I’ve already written up my thoughts on the first 17 minutes, but in brief when I saw the first 17 minutes on the 24: Redemption DVD I loved them, I couldn’t imagine how they could have been any better. And so in the manner of those first minutes episode 1 and 2 continued, solid, subtle, with slowly building tension creeping up on you, all created by masterfully crafted dialogue.
The first two episodes have so much to love, Jack’s testimony to the Senate, and in general how the episodes very slightly changed the shows position on torture. They’ve received a fair amount of criticism for the shows use of torture in the past, and rightly so in my view, but whatever your opinion on torture you couldn’t have failed to notice how the writing had grown lazy in using torture as a way out of every corner. This left them with a bit of a condundrum, continue as before and it sends a clear message to a legion of fans who are tired of the repetition that the writers aren’t listening – do a complete u-turn on torture, and it would be seen as a cynical move. But they managed to negiogate the minefield well by being slightly more open about it, not being as defensive, and airing various different sides of the argument. All this added up to some interesting and dramatic moments, how far would Jack have gone after Agent Walker appear to give him the green light?, and how far was Walker prepared to let Jack go?
The most intelligent writing the series has had in a long time means the episode 1 and 2 are extremely entertaining and engergetic, but in reality are just a good solid foundation for the rollercoaster ride that was to come in 3 and 4.
24 Is Back, I Can’t Wait & You?
If you’ve visited this site in the past, you’ve noticed me around, but with the slight shift that we’re taking away from news and toward opinion and commentary regarding series 7, I felt like I should reintroduce myself:
I’m Daniel Hardy, Liverpool fan, Web designer and TV addict.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what my tastes in TV are – they change and evolve, and I often have a hard time describing them beyond “I like good TV.” Just what is good? It’s simply too subjective a word.
Well, in 2001 I was given a helping hand: a new show started airing and I could point to it and say “That’s what I like”: 24.
Perhaps it’s a bit tedious to list the reasons I liked it. It’s been done by so many other people so many times before. But I will try anyway, in the off chance I might mention something new: it was fresh, it was cool, it made you think and it did truly break the mould for TV at the time, something which is very hard to do.
You mulled every episode over for a full week. Some people thought of that week as a curse; it was in fact a blessing. You needed seven days to recover and to fully play back all the key points in your head and analyse and plot possible future developments. When the new episode finally arrived you compared your projections against the actual happenings as the plot thickened. That was the ritual.
When series one finished, I wasn’t sure at first if there would be a second. Then I heard that there would be but they might not use the same characters. People thought that was crazy – after all, we’d just spent so much time getting to know these rich three dimensional characters. Viewers wanted to know what happened to them. What would Jack do after the death of Teri?
Personally, I would have perfectly understood them not using the same characters. After all what I truly enjoyed was the unique format, and the characters were a product of that format, not the other way around. This feeling meant I’ve never quite fallen into one of the “Jack is 24” or “Almeida is God” camps.
It’s not that I don’t love Jack and Tony as characters – I do. When they lose a loved one in a terrorist plot, it hurts, when they get betrayed, I’m angry. Yet I don’t need these characters to be the centre of attention to enjoy the show, I’m much happier when the show as a whole is stronger.
This is why I enjoyed series five, why I could view it as something other than a betrayal of the faithful audience. It had a lot of similarities to the original, often going for silent menace over loud bangs. Gregory Itzin’s President Logan was a joy to behold, Jean Smart as Martha perfectly cast and plus a well written central arc to the series which slowly boiled up, right to the finish. It’s true that it required too much of a sacrifice to get there, and Tony’s exit was botched, but on the whole it was good, very good, and so with a lump in my throat I’d accepted his death as a penance that had to be paid. Continue reading 24 Is Back, I Can’t Wait & You?