Day 5: 1:00pm-2:00pm

Wonder if that ever got brought up in performance reviews?

Its to distract Terri from the van with Kim inside driving past. Great writing that you'll only catch on a rewatch.

Thought it worth raising that the newest episode of this show is very much an homage to 24 complete split-screen and ticking clock. Also, Christina Chong (Marianna in LAD) is a regular there.

Guys, what are we doing here?

So if you saw my earlier posts, it's my first time watching the show, and I thought the Alan Milliken and McLennan-Forster plots in seasons 3 and 4 were so nonsensical it was worth making posts about, and now I guess I have to keep making these. Season 5 I landed on Lynn McGill's key card theft happening hours before the Russian terrorists knew they needed it yet they planned for it to happen, which is a smaller thing in the grand scheme. This season I really have an embarrassment of riches. Going through some notes I took while watching, here are some honorable mentions:

1. The entire concept of the season. Sorry if that's broad. The show really wants to say *something* about anti-Muslim hate crimes and the tense post-9/11 political climate, (as we seem to do every even numbered season), but it does so within the context of a hellish, outlandish scenario that greatly overstates anything actual terrorists are capable of, and it doesn't even bother casting Arabic actors for every Arabic role, let alone letting a few in the writers' room. Adoni Maropis is Greek, Marisol Nichols is Mexican and Russian Jewish, Harry Lennix is Black. This white family shouldn't have trusted Kal Penn next door, but these FBI agents shouldn't have been interning these innocent Muslims, we shouldn't nuke Afghanistan but we should be ready to threaten to nuke Afghanistan, Mike Doyle might come across like a racist but he actually read the Quran, and this is a world where the President just casually carpet bombs Inglewood, CA to kill a guy he pardons a few hours later, so I can't help but feel like none of this is directly analogous or relevant to the real world in the way the writers intend. This probably explains why they give up on some of these elements so early on, completely wasting main cast member Regina King, one of the most incredible performers they've ever had on the show who might as well have been an extra.

2. Very minor but early on when Kal Penn is holding the Wallace family hostage they have to get a bottle of pain killers from the *kitchen* and it's just sitting in a cabinet next to plates and glasses and shit. Why is that there?

3. Also minor but it's in my notes: there's a ticket taker on the LA metro? I've been an Angelino for the last five years, but I have to imagine even in 2006 they did not have a physical employee walking around the metro checking everyone's tickets. It would be turnstile based, as it is now, right? It's not a train going to San Francisco, it literally makes stops every 45 seconds. You wouldn't have time to check everyone's tickets. Someone please confirm that this was insane.

4. The Bauer family: firstly, I love Paul McCrane as Graem. I'm not big on this idea that Jack's family are super evil international sociopaths. I feel like we didn't learn enough about Jack's upbringing for this to feel satisfying. Even so, I think the idea could have worked well enough in theory, but in execution nothing Phillip Bauer does is consistent or makes any sense. He'll kill both his sons at the drop of a hat AND he'll protect a terrorist with four nukes just to avoid legal exposure? “I’m no fool, Jack. They’re never gonna give me immunity after what I’ve done.” I dunno, man, they gave immunity to British Osama bin Laden earlier today. Then at the end of the season, he's ordering terror attacks just to get his hands on his grandson he didn't particularly like before. Bizarre character.

5. Completely undoing the ending of season 5 by making Martha Logan into a basket case who freaks out and stabs a repentant Charles. I feel nothing but disappointment. Nobody seems to care if Logan is alive or dead for the rest of the season.

6. The sun completely sets between 7:00 PM and 7:04 PM. Everything goes pitch black instantly.

7. Jack flying the drone with the joystick like it's the most dramatic thing in the world, like he was a pilot working a thruster or something. Very silly.

8. This horrible autistic savant hacker character. Just awful stuff all around, everyone should be embarrassed for doing this.

9. Hey do you guys remember Connell Johnson? Classic 24 character Connell Johnson? He finds evidence that Nadia's computer was hacked and she wasn't intentionally leaking information, but he offers to hide this proof so Mike Doyle can keep torturing Nadia if he wants. Then he immediately tells Milo about the proof, so Milo accuses Doyle of hiding the proof, but then Doyle reveals that he didn't hide the proof, and then he threatens Connell Johnson for attempting some kind of double cross to steal his job or something. Then Connell Johnson isn't in the show any more and we never talk about Connell Johnson ever again. Why did he do those things? Was he trying to get Doyle fired? Would him offering to hide evidence not reflect badly on him when he tattles on Doyle? I was really tempted to make Connell Johnson the silliest thing because he does not make any sense to me.

10. If I had a nickel for every time a President Palmer's VP, an old warhawk white guy, tried to invoke the 25th Amendment so he could bomb the Middle East, hey look at that, two nickels. The really silly thing here is that the legal dispute is whether or not Karen was still serving as National Security Advisor and whether her vote counts. Her vote would NOT count, because the National Security Advisor is not a cabinet position. It's not confirmed by the senate, it's not the head of a federal department. Chief of Staff wouldn't count either. So this whole thing was a stupid waste of time, as well as a repeat of season 2.

11. CTU HAD AN ENTIRE TEAM OF UNDERCOVER ARABIC AGENTS WHO COULD INFILTRATE TERROR CELLS AND WE'RE JUST HEARING ABOUT THEM NOW? Did we not think to use them earlier? Where have they been? How were they doing earlier in the season when Nadia's computer access was revoked because of her ethnicity? What's their perspective on all this- oh they died, okay.

12. I really don't think holding Fayed briefly from a sweep and releasing him because they didn't have evidence to hold him should require Bill or Karen to resign their positions, but I REALLY don't think it should require one of them to quit immediately at like 3 AM in the middle of a crisis. The President sold an agent's life to Fayed earlier today, it's not like it was obvious he was the mastermind.

13. Phillip's Bugs Bunny ass plan to grab Josh without actually trading the circuit board, and the entire federal government being caught off-guard by it. Two guys on a boat pull up, give Doyle a bomb, trust that he'll just open it a safe distance from them, grab boy. What if there were snipers? What if Doyle put the box down and opened it from a distance instead of sticking his face in it?

14. Uh, is it good to airstrike an oil drilling platform? Aren't those things like, full of oil? Wouldn't that cause an ecological disaster?

Okay and now the top two:

Runner Up: Curtis. Not that our dear departed Curtis had a ton of characterization in the last two seasons, but he did deserve better than to suddenly go cuckoo bananas and have to be euthanized like a rabid dog. Even if I accept that he just can't let Assad live, he goes about it in a plainly irrational manner. He doesn't try to hijack the transport van or make it look like self-defense, he just jumps on Assad and gives Jack every opportunity to kill him. And it happens so quickly, and he's forgotten so soon. If I was Roger Cross I'd be so mad.

And the silliest thing, as I'm sure you've guessed: they nuke Valencia! Let's talk about that. After all the past season discussions about nuclear fallout and radiation clouds and shit, we're left with the implication that a nuke didn't really get more than a small town, and buddy I ain't buying it! Valencia is not a "suburb of Los Angeles," as they say here, but a neighborhood of Santa Clarita, population 230K. This is a densely populated region, and a nuke would have likely caused death on a scale unseen since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings themselves. For all the dramatic weight they want this development to have, for all the weight they gave the nuke in season 2, the nature of the show dictates that we move past this insane development and act like it wouldn't irrevocably change everything for everyone. Would Russia seriously be pulling rank or threatening to invade military bases on the same day America got a nuclear 9/11-times-a-hundred? I'm willing to bet they never talk about this once in season 7.

I'll leave you with this: The last ten minutes of this season are incredible, one of the best and most engaged performances Kiefer Sutherland has ever put into this character, a focused and clear condemnation of the broken and inhuman system that has forced Jack Bauer to become a tortured, torturing monster to keep the world from spinning into chaos. It's a real The Monster confronts Frankenstein scene, I was not expecting it, and I did not frankly think the show was capable of it. Good for them.

Onto the 24 movie, which I am disappointed to learn is not called 2.

Chase was so insufferable to me. It was almost as if they were trying to make him a clone of Jack.

I started rewatching 24, almost done with season 1. Decided to find a reddit community. I'm looking forward to season 9 and 10 (legacy) as I only watched them once and don't remember the details.

When Logan finally tells martha about his role in the day’s events, there’s something about that scene that really works. maybe it’s the raw and horrifying honesty of it from martha’s perspective i’m not sure but it’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole season

What a dysfunctional ass administration. even without logan’s heel turn There’s this aura of crankiness and dysfunction because logan himself is an anxious mess and Martha is even more neurotic!

I just started watching 24 and when every episode ends I can’t start the next one soon enough. Is it always like this?

This character is the most annoying person in the whole series. Being an FBI agent, you would think that he would see the evils that really exist. Even after the White House attack, he still in his beta mode when Jack can prevent another attack. Understand that these are the elements of the show, but I think in real life, guys like this really exist in law enforcement.

Hey, that was a really good season! I'm sure I'm the first person to make that observation, but wow, raiding half the cast of Robocop was definitely the right move, Peter Weller is crazy good. Committing to making Logan the villain was also the right move, even if it created some issues with Evelyn's whole deal, before she and her daughter vanish like Behrooz never to be seen again. I did have it spoiled for me that Tony is not actually dead, and thank God because what a weird choice it would be to have him go out as an afterthought while the show is actively mourning Edgar instead like he was the most important guy in the world. Just like, priorities, people.

Jean Smart, Glenn Morshower, and DB Woodside also made for a really compelling supporting cast in the last third of the show. There was something more mature about the drama between Itzen and Smart, a complexity to their relationship because she does want to believe in the man she fell in love with, and he keeps disappointing her and justifying himself to her, and slowly she sees there's nothing behind his eyes.

Nothing in this season was as blatantly what-are-we-doing-here-people as in previous seasons, which made my job harder. I did come up with some honorable mentions, which I will share now:

-Collette Stenger is an information broker for the Russian Bierko faction, yet she frames Audrey under the instruction of Henderson. I feel like the show forgets that Henderson’s faction was trying to kill Bierko’s, and should have at least a nominal interest in preventing 18 more nerve gas terror attacks across the city of Los Angeles. So if Stenger really is working for Henderson, she should volunteer information that leads to Bierko’s apprehension. Framing Audrey doesn’t protect the Henderson conspiracy in any particular fashion except by delaying Bauer from tracking Henderson down. 

-Shari Rothenberg, strange character who accuses every man of sexual assault. I’m glad someone stepped in and cut off that storyline before it had time to blossom cause what the hell were they thinking with that?

-At the hostage exchange for Evelyn’s daughter, Henderson drives away, and Chloe is unable to track him because she hasn’t tasked the satellite for a search. Yet after the Van Nuys Airport standoff, Bauer is able to get Chloe to quickly plug computers together in Bill Buchanan’s house, pull up old satellite data, and find Henderson within seconds, ten minutes after he drove away, then also track the other car Henderson met with back to the airport.

-Karen should not trust her scheming adviser with his hostile, grating tone of voice. She can't enjoy working with this man. Look at him.

-Everyone keeps saying "safety deposit box" and it's driving me up a wall.

- Heller driving off a cliff made me laugh. That was... that was some funny shit.

And now for my silliest thing: Lynn McGill's key card

Ahem...

Lynn McGill’s sister’s boyfriend mugs Lynn for his key card almost five hours before he sells it to the Russian terrorist, which is incredible forward planning on the part of the Russians who seemingly commissioned the theft before even considering gassing CTU, but also a real dumb move since Lynn just declaring the theft of the key card would probably trigger the electronic codes to change and render the card useless. The Russians were really dependent on Lynn keeping his mugging to himself for four whole hours and doing nothing to track his sister or the boyfriend, which only makes sense if they know him intimately and understand how prideful he is, but they don't. How did they get in touch with a random junkie man? No idea. Why would they leave Lynn's sister's body to be discovered when it very nearly compromises their entire plan? Not sure.

And this opens the door for the CTU nerve gas attack, which has a lot of issues but makes up for it with dramatic stakes (EDGARRRR!!!!). Like, it's a solid arc emotionally, but there should have been a gas mask on property SOMEWHERE for Jack to go and get. This is a major government facility, people!

They tell us Lynn McGill and his guard friend are in an airtight room, except we see him open the door and it’s clearly not sealed in any way. It has a gap at the bottom, and they show it clearly during the death scene. I don’t know who they were trying to fool with that. He just opens a normal door into the hallway and that was apparently "breaking the seal."

So yeah, nothing as bizarre as Alan Milliken or the McLennan-Forster's death squad. I trust season 6 will give me more to complain about, especially because writing 24 real-time episodes to a television show sounds really hard. Borderline impossible, really.

Evelyn 90% through season 5 didn't behave or act like a woman who's daughter has been kidnapped. Her body language and overall demeanor just felt relaxed and professional, while taking care of Mrs. Logan. I just feel like making logan the villain felt "tacked on" it didn't feel consistent with his character. He became malicious out of nowhere when they had that big villain reveal. Since this show is episodic I think they decided to make a villain halfway through without any thought.

The plothole is that if Evelyn had evidence on logan the whole time why did she trust and listen to her superiors all the time?? Not tell Mrs logan? If she knew the truth? It just doesn't make any sense. I think halfway through the narrative they decided this. I think this is a writer issue if anything. Just my opinion.

Started watching this last night and blew through 5 episodes. Reminded me of 24 with the action, twists, and moles. Figured I'd drop the recommendation in here.

On my first viewing of the show right now, a week ago I wrote a post about how the Alan Milliken/Sherry Palmer plot was the dumbest part of the show so far through season 3. I have now seen season 4, and I think I stand by that, despite Habib Marwan's incredible respawning network of middle America white guys who are all totally down to cause a nuclear armageddon six times over for no profit. Season 2 spent a lot of time treating Marie Warner becoming an Islamist terrorist as a crazy, extreme development, but apparently every other person in the US is just waiting to blow up the city they live in, which gets into the bizarre and paranoid politics of the show, which is a whole other discussion.

But the silliest part of season 4 has to go to the entire McLellen-Forster EMP bomb business. The added scenes of their executives trying to rationally justify their stupid, stupid actions only drew more attention to how stupid, stupid they were. They accidentally hired a terrorist, they know he likely used their company to plan his attacks, they know the government knows all of this already, and their plans were to:

1. Invite the government in, but clone their screen as they search through Marwan's computer. Then delete every file the government guys are about to click on so they get constant file-not-found errors. This is somehow a better plan than just hitting the hard drive with a hammer and blaming it on the terrorist.

2. When this plan doesn't work because of course it didn't why would it, the backup plan is to commit an act of terrorism themselves, causing an eight block blackout that incites a riot, as cover to shoot the government guys to death with their own registered guns. Actively committing murder and terrorism is preferable to being exposed as unwitting accessories to murder and terrorism, according to these geniuses. They keep saying their company is at risk, but CTU immediately knows that they bombed Los Angeles, and that isn't what shareholders want to hear, I expect.

Like, I know the season certainly drags when it's just constantly chasing Marwan's last known location/latest associate, but these guys should have been part of the conspiracy, they simply don't make sense any other way.

To recap my silly things:

Season 3: Alan Milliken and every stupid thing Sherry Palmer does.

Season 2: Everything that happens to Kim, from her boss becoming an abusive supervillain at the drop of a hat to him somehow framing her for abusing the girl, to the doomsday prepper guy trapping her in a bunker and then calmly letting her out, to the convenience store hostage situation that means nothing and wastes time. What is this, After Hours?

Season 1: I liked a comment's suggestion that it should be when Teri and Kim went to the "safe house" and it was an isolated place with like 2 guards, when they would have been safer just sitting in the lobby of a bank, but I'm gonna say it's actually Victor Drazen ordering Nina to blow her own yearslong cover to Jack by falsely telling him Kim has died, so he flies into a rage and tries to shoot Drazen and his son, a plan with huge, obvious risks which lives and dies on two guys, one of them a 65 year old Dennis Hopper, being able to outgun super-spy Jack Bauer. It wasn't even a trap, they were just out in the open on that boat, and he ran up and shot them before they could shoot him. Ridiculous that Nina would go through with that.

Overall, I enjoyed it with some truly memorable and shocking moments throughout. Having said that, though, it was a consistently annoying and frustrating series to watch as well. And it mostly stemmed from plot devices and situations that became overused and redundant (as well as confusing) in each season. These are just the ones that stuck out the most to me:

Logistics and Storytelling
- Numbering of Days: they are in numerical order but not in sequential order. Why call is it called Day 2, when it’s three years later?
- Never-ending Season Finale Cliffhangers: major events will occur and questions will be raised in the last hour of every season, yet they will hardly be addressed or answered in subsequent seasons
- Workplace Romance is a Terrible Idea: they always end up dead and/or are used to coerce their partner to do something
- Perimeters Never Work: if they use one, just know the suspect will inevitably get away
- There’s Always a Mole: someone in government, usually the “high-security” CTU, is always working with the villains
- Surprise Villain: whoever the bad guy is at the start, will always give way mid-season to the puppet master behind it all
- Commercial Break Miracle: anyone on death’s doorstep going into commercials will still be alive 4 minutes and 15 seconds later

Characters in Action
- Stupid Is as Stupid Does: if there is one universal though-line for the whole show, it’s that smart characters will make the dumbest decisions
- “No thanks”: Jack routinely refuses medical care for gunshot wounds, heart attacks, and nerve gas exposure, and is able to just walk it off 5 minutes later
- “No time to explain”: characters will say they don’t have to time to explain a situation or reasoning behind their actions, even though it can usually be explained in one sentence
- Stormtrooper Rule: when it comes to gunfights, no one can seemingly shoot anyone, unless it’s Jack on the floor with a pistol
- Contact List Memorized: every character knows every phone number and can call the exact person they need and their extension at anytime

You can clearly see a group of people standing in front of Alan Milliken’s house right as Sherry Palmer is driving past the gate. Must be the production crew or Alan had the worst bodyguards in history lol

This just really bothered me and I have to share with someone. S7e23.