But, hey, we had plenty of time to deal with Starbuck's redneck boyfriend or her out-of-the-blue about-face in character!
But he was retired in S.7 anyway; Bill brought him out of retirement as he was one of the few he could trust. Remember when he showed the President's daughter his ID and she noted that he was retired? Besides, Jack hasn't been an active government empoyee since mid-season 4 or a CTU employee since S3 and they keep getting him involved. As for Pierce helping Jack, if they were willing to get Chloe to leas the taskforce hunting him down, surely they could also involve Aaron in some capacity.
Yes, and Olivia had Aaron reinstated, which is why I've chosen to believe that he either a) was asked to retire again at some point after her arrest, or b) decided entirely on his own to retire again. I could see someone either in the White House or the Secret Service deciding that, although President Taylor decided to move forward with prosecution of her own daughter, Pierce needed to quietly remove himself from a long-term renewal of his position. That's true, of course, though I'm not sure it's comparable. I don't think there were any situations in season eight that Aaron was uniquely suited for, unlike the many times Jack was needed by CTU/FBI/the government in general after he was no longer on active duty. The difference is that Chloe was already a current CTU employee and they foolishly believed she could be managed. That's an assumption that always struck me as being particularly idiotic, in fact. One could also assume that, though unstated, there was some morale concern about replacing too many directors/interim directors during a single day.
Network TV is simply on it's death bed. And Cable, though they can produce some great shows, they don't have ANY consistency on when it airs, which loses A LOT of people... IE: we be screwed
HBO may have had some difficulties in the past with shows like The Sopranos, but, for two examples, AMC and FX don't have issues with consistency. On AMC, all three seasons of Breaking Bad and all four seasons of Mad Men have premiered in the same time period. On FX, the only season of The Shield that aired out of its "normal" timeframe was season seven, which premiered several months later than had been normal. All three seasons of Sons of Anarchy, however, have premiered in September. Justified season one premiered in March, with season two being moved up to February, so that's still in the same ball park. Syfy has its own typical scheduling as well, which has sometimes differed depending on show and only seems to me to have really been dropped with the second half of Caprica. As another example, TNT's Men of a Certain Age has premiered in December for both of its seasons so far, though it's the only TNT show I'm watching so I don't know if they've had issues with other shows. Could you provide some examples of what networks do have issues with consistency? Apparently they aren't ones that I've been watching, so I'm curious.
Here's an EW story confirming the binning of Billy Ray's proposed movie script: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2010/12/31/24-movie-kiefer-sutherland/