[Movie] 24 Season 6 Discussion Thread

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Season 6 Anticipation Thread


January 14, 2007 is finally here, meaning a new season of 24 starts tonight at 8/7c. So here's the place where you can discuss it with your fellow Gamingforce members! Just as before, the rules are that you can openly discuss anything that has already aired, but anything regarding future episodes (including previews for next week's episode, casting news, etc.) must be put in spoiler tags. Other than that, just have fun discussing the best show ever!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Holy shit. From the people who watched the leaked episodes (Team Weak Sauce), to the critics' reviews, everyone has been saying these episodes would be great. It's not that I doubted them or anything, but I just had to see for myself.

And see I did.

As out of it as Jack should be and even thinks he is, he's not. Going into vampire mode on that one guy and kicking the other one out of a moving train are some of the coolest thing he's done in the entire series. Therefore, I refuse to believe Jack can't do this anymore. Okay, so he didn't get all the info from that one guy. Who cares, he's still freaking awesome.

Also, just something I noticed, but why is it that every even numbered season has Middle eastern terrorists? Not that significant (or is it?), but just thought I'd mention it.

So anyway, I am now pumped for tomorrow. I can't even process two more hours right now (yes I could), so I gotta take a breather.

Also, I meant to close the Anticipation thread (it's here so there's really no more need to anticipate it anymore!), so I'll go do that now, to make sure there's no more confusion.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So yeah, more awesome last night.

The whole Curtis thing seemed pretty obvious. I mean, he was acting way out of character (he's usually one of the most levelheaded people on the show), so you knew either he or Assad was going to wind up dead. And since Roger Cross had been downgraded to just a guest star, it was pretty easy to figure out that it would be Curtis. The scene was still good though, it just would have had more impact if there wasn't so much build-up to it.

Also, the whole bomb going off seemed kinda obvious too, though that probably had more to do with everybody going OMG HOLY SHIT about this episode. I guess built my expectations up too high though, so it was kinda my own fault. About the only thing that could have really surprised me was if they killed Jack, which I knew was not going to happen.

And thank God they stopped this Milo/Morris shit, for now anyway. Morris seemed like a really cool character at the end of last season, but they just made him annoying now. Even without the Chloe background between them (which I'm trying to figure out where it even takes place in the context of the show), the fact that Morris could get away with so much disrespect to Milo just doesn't seem believable.

So now, not only do we seem to get Middle Eastern terrorists every other season, but now we get a nuclear threat in every other one as well? I admit I liked the idea of starting off with attacks already happening, but going back to stopping the nuclear threat (even if there is more than one of them) just seems kinda meh.

Wow, this post seems way more negative than I intended it to be, so just in case it doesn't seem like, I did enjoy the episodes. Other than things I mentioned above, I thought everything else was great. Also, next week looks to be awesome as well.

Next Week:

I can't wait to see how Graham is going to play into this.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by The Furious One

Cool thing about the DVD is it comes with half of the fifth hour

Actually, it's only the first 12 minutes. I thought the best part was that it came with a $10 off coupon for any other season (especially since I only paid $9 for the DVD).

Originally Posted by nuttyturnip

The question is, will the producers bring in another black guy so there's continued diversity at CTU?

Is the Muslim and the Irishman not diverse enough for you?

Originally Posted by Enter User Name

Season 1 was such a great season for many reasons, the main one being that creators were probably planning the show for years, so they actually had time to write 24 great unique, compelling, and realistic episodes. Season 2 was great too, because that was probably thought about for years too. Since then, downhill, like a rushed series of video games, where the developer has to put out a new one every year, with no time to polish the game and make it original.

Actually, they weren't planning the show for years. Maybe about a year, at the most. Before 24, they were still working on La Femme Nikita, which ran until 2001 (the same year 24 started). And just in general (listen to the DVD commentaries, and interviews and stuff), they've always said that they don't plan things out that far in advance, and mainly write as they go.

So to say that they even had Season 2 thought about for years was definitely way off. They didn't even know if Season 1 would get picked up for the whole season, so why start planning Season 2? And when you look at it, they had more time between the later seasons since they actually had breaks between them, unlike when 24 was scheduled like a regular show (starting in September, instead of in January like it is now).

I agree with you that Season 1 is the best season, so I'm not against you or anything, but to give you my honest opinion, I just think maybe you're disillusioned with the show or something. I mean, admittedly, some of the plots are starting to wear a little thin, but what long-running show hasn't experienced that? The way you talk about it though, you make it seem like the show has had some massive decline in quality, which it really hasn't. That's just my opinion, though.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Enter User Name

Look, I'm not certain about it, but what I mean when I said they were thinking about the show for years, was that maybe the creators, even while making La Femme Nikita, or even long before that, had an idea in their mind, "Won't it be great if we made a show about a government agent who had his family kidnapped?..." and over several years, thought about different ideas, scenarios, etc., long before they even decided to make the show maybe having enough ideas for a couple seasons over the years. And when it came time to actually write the show, they already had these great unique ideas, and didn't have to quickly come up with something. It seems obvious to me, that they used all of their good ideas first, and now they are just quickly coming up with ideas. Some new ideas are good, but a ton are bad.

Yes, to me, I do see a massive decline in quality. The writing is very bad compared to the first couple of seasons in my opinion. The ideas are hashed way too much, most of the surprises don't really shock me anymore, cliche after cliche, 95% of the characters are lame and don't care about any of them at all, etc. I haven't watched the first 2 seasons in a couple years, so maybe the show has always been like this, and just didn't see it(I doubt that). Maybe I will have to get back and watch them again. But I definitely see many problems now, as with the last couple seasons too.

I started watching 24 at the very end of Season 1, I didn't really know what was going on, so it didn't know how great it was. When Season 2 started, I watched from the beginning, and I remember being blown away. So I bought Season 1 on DVD and was even more blown away by Season 1. I can tell you now, if I had started watching at season 3(which was okay), 4, 5, or 6, I would not have been blown away. So I do definitely see a decline in quality.

I don't watch a whole lot of different shows, but one show I watch that have been around as long as 24 is The Shield. That show has always been consistently great, although not perfect. But the difference is, there are only 12-13 episode per season of The Shield, and there are 24 episodes per season of 24, so I can definitely see it has to be much harder to write double the amount of episodes in the same or probably shorter amount of time. That's why I say they should take a year off, and take the time to write a great season instead of having to rush everything.

Okay, but the creators have said that the first thing that came in their mind was the real-time concept, not the story or setting or anything. All that came afterward, so it's not like they had this massive amount of time to work on these things like you seem to think they did. Who says you can't write great stuff in a short amount of time anyway?

As for the show taking a break, I doubt that's going to happen, and it doesn't really need to. Besides, since it's at the height of it's popularity now, this would probably be the worse time for it to take a year off. They just got all these new viewers with Season 5, so why drive them all away by not showing the show? Maybe you've just had an overload of the show or something, and thus, you should take a break from it, but I honestly don't think the show taking a break would affect it that much.

But honestly, this all stems from your percieved decline in quality of the show, so while you think Seasons 3-6 are bad, it doesn't mean that they actually are (personally, I think Season 2 is the worst season, looking back at it). I can't make you change your mind about this, but I did want to mention these things.

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Pretty good episode. Not much really accomplished plot-wise, but alot of Jack's backstory was revealed, so it was still good.

So yeah, Romano is Jack's brother. Never saw that one coming. It's all fine in delivering the shock value, but I seriously want to know more about him, especially in relation to what he did last season. Hope Jack doesn't kill him first, though. As for Jack's father (shame they couldn't get Donald Sutherland to play him), I doubt he's actually bad (red herring like what), but a Bauer/Bauer showdown would be pretty awesome. Also:

Spoiler:

Funny that there would be a downed helicopter in the same episode Paul McCrane comes back. I'm just waiting for him to get helicopter'd.

Fayed is definitely no Marwan. While Marwan seemed like he had his shit planned to a T, Fayed is just half-assing it, and almost making it up as he goes along. I mean, I know he actually got a nuclear bomb to go off, but he did it in the worst way possible (in that it didn't go off in the location he wanted it to, and he lost the engineer and that component thing so he could set the other bombs off in a timely manner). Sorry, but so far I wouldn't put him up too high on the "Greatest 24 Villains" list.

And what's with that scene at the beginning with Wayne and his cabinet? It seemed like it was almost word for word like the scene in Season 2 about going to war with those countries that supposedly helped Sayed Ali. And just in general, Lennox is getting fucking annoying, and not even in a good way (i.e. as a character you love to hate, like Miles last year). The fact that anyone would even give him the time of day anymore is just stupid.

Once the action picks up again (in other words, once Fayed can actually use the rest of the bombs), I'm sure the show will get better overall, but for now, getting some backstory on Jack's family ain't all that bad.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I also agree that there was nothing much really going on in tonight's episode. I know the bad guys have had some holdups before, but this is starting to get a little ridiculous.

Karen Hayes resigning like that just didn't seem to work. She's like one of the strongest females on the show, so for her to just back down like that just didn't make any sense. And now that she's going back to CTU, I hope they don't try to make any Tony/Michelle-like situations like they did in Seasons 3 and 4.

Wasn't really anything else noteworthy tonight. I thought they were gonna end by revealing who McCartney's contact was, but since they didn't I guess it wasn't anyone we know (not really many people they could bring back anyway, and hardly anyone that could actually program nuclear triggers).

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by nazpyro

"Protecting family is important; I believe your dead wife would agree."

Damn, son.

There's a quote from the preview that was fucking awesome, but I can't use it until next week.

But that was said tonight. Graem said it sometime within the last ten minutes. I was gonna add it to the wiki myself, but by the time I thought about it I didn't remember the exact quote (I did add Karen Hayes's "son of a bitch" quote though, as that, along with Lennox's response, was pretty awesome as well).

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by nazpyro

I meant there was another quote said during the preview by Jack for next week.. related to pain.

Also, with the departure of Karen Hayes, there is room for another bear to return... a POLAR BEAR. Yes, this guy is no joke; he's MIKE NOVICK.

Oh okay, I see what you mean. I know which one you're talking about, too.

Also, return of Mike Novick would be awesome. This season could use some of him, along with some AARON PIERCE.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah, this episode was definitely better, as the plot finally picked up (though it wasn't until about halfway through).

So yeah, Jack is crazy! Not like we haven't seen it before, but it's always good to see. After going through that though, it would have been great to see Jack get the satisfaction of killing Graem (or at least torturing him some more), but instead his Dad does it for reasons I'm still not even sure of. Seriously, I just don't find Phillip that interesting a character, but at least he seemed more convincing as a good guy, which is what they should have kept him as.

Finally glad to see Wayne get some backbone. The scene was pretty predictable, but it played out well nonetheless. I still don't expect him to be as good as his brother was, but at least he's becoming a good president in his own right.

And as for the Morris thing, it was an good twist, but I'm waiting to see how it plays out. Morris has always been kind of a shady character (doing somewhat illegal stuff when not at CTU, and even using that hacker program or whatever in this episode), so it will be interesting to see if he's actually willing to help Fayed out for the right price.

Two hours next week. Awesome. I doubt it will be as good as the two mid-season episodes they showed last season, but they still look like they be some of the best of the season so far. At least I hope they are.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Vivace119

Did you listen to the conversation that Philip had with Graem before killing him?

This clarifies the reason/s why he killed him. He knew that Graem was going to be put through further interrogation. This could potentially lead to him giving away philips involvement and/or other important information.

Yes I listened to it, and as Graem said, he proved he could take the pain by withstanding Jack's torture for as long as he did (only finally giving Jack some unrelated information to get him off his back). So if he could do that, that's obviously not the main reason why his dad killed him, meaning there is some other reason why he wanted him dead. That's what I got from it, anyway.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Awesome episodes. Jack owned. Palmer owned. Milo owned. Some pretty good twists. All in all, a pretty good two hours.

Nice to see Fayed actually do something, since he's pretty much done nothing since the nuke went off three hours ago. But with papa Bauer and Gredenko now doing the evil deeds, it looks like Fayed might be on the backburner again.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

I rather liked Milo's getaway. Refreshing that he isn't nervous under fire like Chloe, despite being a techie =p

Interestingly, while not addressed in the show, Eric Balfour says that Milo has gotten some field training. I'll just post the excerpt from the interview featured in the lastest issue of the 24 Magazine.

Quote:

Where has Milo been since Season One?

As far as we've discussed, he went back to Division, got some more field and intelligence training, and has now been hired full time by CTU to run the intelligence Department there.

So take that as you want. No matter what, the scene was still fucking awesome, and I hope he gets to do some more stuff like that later in the season.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Acro-nym

Upon further thinking, I've come to the conclusion that they should've waited a week to do the two-hour special. It just seems like the flow between the last episode and the upcoming one is better.

I can agree with that. They were both good episodes, but there wasn't really anything about them that connected them too well beyond the typical show plots. They kind of did the same thing last year too. It would have been perfect if they showed the gas attack being carried out, and then them trying to stop it. I guess they wanted to end on something big though, which was Edgar's death.

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Pretty alright episode, though I have to admit, I'm getting kinda tired of the whole family angle now. It worked with Graem (I guess because of his connection with last season), but everyone else (Phillip, Marilyn, Josh) just seems to drag it out for no reason.

Logan coming back is awesome. Not that the people they have now aren't good, but 24 always makes returning characters seem even more awesome, regardless of whether they're good or bad. I can't wait to see what he brings to the story.

And sorry, but there's basically nothing they can do to make me feel sorry for Lennox. Eh, so he's not working with the people trying to get rid of the President. So what? He's such a fucking prick that I don't care, and honestly, he should have tried to do something earlier to stop them (he's not exactly an undecover agent, so he shouldn't even have tried to string those guys along). Hopefully we'll be able to say good riddance to him soon.

And what's with CTU this season? In seasons past, you could argue that it was the center point of the show, but now it's just there to provide artificial drama. Chloe is in like every freaking scene now (I like the character, but she's better in small doses rather than large chunks; and she's not even as quirky anymore, anyway), Nadia is severely underused (seriously, from the first few episodes, I thought she was a really important person at CTU, but now it's hard to even remember she's there unless she's in a scene), and Morris is just fucking annoying, now as depressed loser rather than the jealous lover of earlier this season. Buchanan is alright, though he too is a little underused. Milo is really the only interesting character there right now, so I hope they give him some more focus.

But I'm probably being a little too harsh. Anyway, next week looks like it'll be good, especially the stuff with Palmer and Logan.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by nazpyro

Jack pretty much took hour to dress up. Probably went to the bathroom too. I've never seen this before. What the hell?

Seriously.

I'm not saying less focus on Jack is necessarily a bad thing, but if that focus is put on some crappy Morris plotline that needed to end two episodes ago, it is. Even the Palmer stuff, which honestly wasn't that much better, was at least was needed plotwise. More and more I'm seeing the introduction of Morris as a bad thing. At least the Jack/Logan stuff was awesome, what little of it there was.

FELIPE NO

I gotta say, most of this episode was pretty bland. Aside from the part when Jack was trying to get the info from the Russian dude, I would almost say this was downright boring. All the political stuff was especially uninteresting, since there really are no more characters left that we know/care about.

At least next week looks good, though.

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Originally Posted by Gechmir

I don't think they'd keep a character around who as much of a douche as he is.

Well, they kept Ryan Chappelle around for three seasons, so you never know.

I thought this episode was just average, but it wasn't even a smooth average. It was more like half the episode was extreme sucktitude, and the other half was extreme awesomeness. I officially do not care about any of the political stuff anymore, as every character there sucks, including this Craig T. Nelson look-a-like they have as the Vice President. All the stuff at the Russian consulate was awesome though.

But then again, all the stuff at CTU sucked, and so did the Martha Logan stuff. Aside from their attempts to create more artificial drama with Doyle, I thought he was actually alright, so I wouldn't mind if he stuck around for a while (at least long enough to fight alongside Jack at least once). But all the Martha stuff was predictable garbage. Seriously, my main gripe about that was that they played into what the fans wanted and actually made Martha and Aaron a couple, which just seems stupid to me (wasn't he married with kids and stuff anyway?).

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So I think everybody is in agreement that Audrey isn't dead. It just seems stupid in the context of the show, and the fact that Kim Raver is available since The Nine hasn't even been filming in like the last four months (and has been all but officially cancelled) makes it seem even less likely that she's officially dead. This just served as a way of bringing her back into the plot as far as I'm concerned.

As for the rest of the show, Doyle is looking to be a cracked-up Jack Bauer wannabe, Daniels has to be the stupidest person to ever be put in power (but seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if someone (like a Kingsley-type person) has their hand in his pocket), and Nadia most likely isn't a mole (and to echo naz, Milo wants to bang her).

How ya doing, buddy?

So yeah, I'm really late in talking about this episode (even with th crash), which just goes to show how much I liked it.

Seriously, I could bitch in detail about why I didn't like it, but that would take too much effort that isn't even worth it. The main thing was that even when the episode had one saving grace in Palmer coming to the rescue, they ruin it by reusing an old plotline afterwards. Ugh. I'm still hoping this season can get better somehow, but really, I don't see how that can happen (maybe Zombie Almeida).

But yeah, that episode of South Park was hilarious. That maybe be my second favorite episode ever (because nothing will ever top Chinpokomon).

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Originally Posted by nuttyturnip

If you just close your mind to the absurdity of the plot and enjoy Jack's body count, the episode was awesome.

Defintely. My biggest problem was with the lockdown. Why don't they have electronic locks in this place? When the guy was going over to manually lock the door, it seemed pretty fucking stupid, especially after they were able to seal all the doors quickly last season during the Sentox attack. But whatever, other than that, all the CTU stuff was pretty awesome.

Except Milo. It seemed kinda pointless to even bring him back if they're just gonna kill him off, especially killing him off in the least coolest way possible (by the way, does the Silent Clock even exist anymore?). And since he did kinda bring down the beginning of the season with the whole Chloe-Morris triangle thing, it seemed even more pointless to bring him back. Oh well, at least I can still get my Milo fix from the novels, where he's a better character than he was on the show this season.

I guess in general though, I kinda feel like the assualt on CTU is a copout for how terrinle this season has been. The writers know that attacks on CTU are always awesome, so they probably figured throwing one in towards the end of the season like this would help improve the show a little bit before it goes off this season. It was still awesome regardless, but it seemed kinda randomly thrown in rather than something intregal to the plot.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Gechmir

The books are decent? ;O How nifty is Milo in them?

Yes, the books are pretty decent, especially if Season 1 is your favorite season. The only real problem I would say they have is that they're very...flexible with the time factor. There's 24 chapters in each book, obviously, but sometimes a chapter will go from like 9:05pm to 9:55pm without anything really happening, and then the stuff that happens in that last five minutes couldn't even happen in five minutes in real time. Granted, it's a book, so it's obviously not going to be in real time, but they could have at least try to make it correspond to how it would be if it was.

Well, there are a few more problems as well. Some of the stuff in the books can be a little contradictory to the show sometimes (i.e. one of the books says Richard Walsh recruited Jack into CTU, even though the show said Christopher Henderson did), and it can be annoying sometimes (like I'm really supposed to believe Edgar was working at CTU since before Season 1). Also, the series has two different writers, and its obvious sometimes (one author usually writes more action-oriented stories, while the other usually writes more politically-oriented). This isn't that much of a problem, until they start introducing their own original characters. Basically, they'll be there in one book, then they'll be gone in the next, then they'll be back again in the next, since each author writes every other book. It would just make more sense if they tried to work together and make a cohseive universe.

As for Milo, I think he's been in every book so far, but his role varies. Most of the time he's just at CTU along with Jamie (she's so much better in book form, since you don't actually have to see her ugly face) doing the analyst thing, but in one of the books he actually went out and did some field work. Overall though, I think he's more awesome in the books than he is on the show, definitely better than he was in Season 6 anyway.

But yeah, they're only about $6 or so each, so you get your money's worth from them. It's also pretty cool to get some insight into some Season 1 characters that didn't come back, like Richard walsh and Teri Bauer, so that's a plus. For the most part, they are in chronological order, so you should start with the first book (Operation Hell Gate) if you do want to start reading the series.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by ctu

my fave season was allways season 2 so whats the book of that one like (if they made 1

All the books are pre-Season 1, and are not based around any specific season. Of course, since they take place before Season 1, that's where the majority of the characters come from.

They're really kind of stretching all of these things happening beforehand though, so hopefully they start to base some of the novels between other times. Something between Seasons 2 and 3 would be good (I know 24: The Game covered this, but there's still plenty of other things left open during this time period).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Ugh, I thought this episode was terrible. Starting with Marilyn's hysterical crying (for someone who cares about her kid, she sure was trying her best to get herself killed) and that totally unbelieveable takedown of the terrorists, this episode just kept going further and further downhill.

I mean seriously, their reason for bringing Jack's dad back was to make him crazy? God. And all the stuff with the president is just stupid as well. I honestly can wait until next week, because I'm in no rush to see what happens next, something I've never said about a season finale before.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by nazpyro

I found the Simpsons 24 pretty amusing. It really should've been the 400th episode, because that one was some weak sauce.

It was alright, but seriously, there was not enough time Jack Bauer. He was only in like two scenes, and one of them had already been showed through commercials. I liked the rest of the 24 aspects of the episode, but it was ripoff in the Jack Bauer department (and even more in the Chloe department). Then again, it's really not that much different than how this season of 24 has played out (lack of Jack for the lose).

And man, I haven't even caught up on Heroes (I'm still one episode behind), so that's not even an option for me. Is tonight's episode gonna be two hours like 24's season finale?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Yeah, I heard about that. It's kinda stupid for FOX to do this when the producers are finally making some changes to try and add some more life to the show. If we end up with even more crappier plots than last year, FOX will definitely be to blame.

As for the show ending, I kinda want it to go at least one more season so it can redeem itself from last year, and not go out on a sour note like that. And as unplausible as it would be, I've always wanted to see two back-to-back days. I think that would be an awesome cliffhanger, but of course it would take two seasons to do.

Jam it back in, in the dark.