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Fox orders pilot for new 24 series

If it's not a 24 hour real time show, can they really still title it 24?

24 lost me after season 5. They started treating their characters as way too disposable to get emotionally invested. And the stories just weren't interesting enough if you didn't care about the characters.
 
JirinPanthosa said:
If it's not a 24 hour real time show, can they really still title it 24?

24 lost me after season 5. They started treating their characters as way too disposable to get emotionally invested. And the stories just weren't interesting enough if you didn't care about the characters.
Click to expand...

Sure, why not? The gimmick of having each episode take place in real time isn't really an asset to the show anyhow. One soon notices that these people aren't ever going to the bathroom (except to make sneaky phone calls) nor do they sleep (unless knocked out) and they gain the superpower of being able to drive across Los Angeles in ten minutes. The real time idea also meant a lot of filler in the first eight seasons- Kim getting kidnapped repeatedly, a sitcom plot about a baby at CTU, a suicidal teenager whose death adds nothing to the arc, constant backstabbing and infighting amongst CTU staff, rednecks showing up to blackmail their party girl (who is now a CTU agent) and a parole officer doggedly following them, an endless parade of love interests who usually end up tortured and/or murdered or who are sleeper agents, et cetera et cetera. It utterly kills the rewatch value of the show. I have no interest in spending eight full days watching this series again so I can be reminded of Kim trying to outwit a mountain lion or so I can see Lynn McGill being a fussy, nitpicky bureaucrat for several hours just so it can pay off when Jack talks to CTU under duress and tries to warn them with a code they have forgotten about but Lynn remembers. 24 has evolved beyond the need for these hours of filler.

Having said that, I thought Season 9 was the best yet and avoided most of these problems. There was a bit of filler but there just wasn't enough time for too much. And Jack is getting tired of being yanked around by villains so he has started throwing them out of high windows. There was still the obligatory mole and the office infighting and some unnecessary subplots (Audrey is having relationship problems! Oh no!) but in general the story was tight because it had to be. If that's the direction they're taking this new series in, I'll give it a look.
 
JirinPanthosa said:
If it's not a 24 hour real time show, can they really still title it 24?

24 lost me after season 5. They started treating their characters as way too disposable to get emotionally invested. And the stories just weren't interesting enough if you didn't care about the characters.
Click to expand...

They did it with Live Another Day, and it was successful enough for the creators to consider this sequel series. The season was 12 episodes long, but there was also a 12-hour time jump, too. As long as the format is still 1 season = 1 day, then it'll still hold true.
 
That argument boils down to 'We shouldn't have real time because it's harder for bad writers to fill the between time'. Solution, get better writers.

Yeah, they spent too much time on less interesting characters. And they ditched the cool multi screen stuff after season 1, and made things ridiculous trying to top themselves every season, and started killing characters for shock value instead of for story demands. But real time is the thing besides Kiefer Sutherland that made the show special, and now they ditched both.
 
Typo. Same as the Cartre. Both now edited. My iPad hates the BBS reply box.

Oddly enough the link said Haskins too but has since been corrected.
 
JirinPanthosa said:
That argument boils down to 'We shouldn't have real time because it's harder for bad writers to fill the between time'. Solution, get better writers.
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Or have a shorter season with less filler and probably more budget friendly. That's not a sign of bad writing (i.e. short stories and novellas are in many ways harder to create than novels). You talk about it LAD as if it was a failure, and yet here we are in a thread about a sequel/revival series. Keep in mind, they had an *even shorter* version: a 24 tv-movie (Redemption) that itself had high ratings triple the amount of the series average and acts as its own season between 6 and 7. Any professional writer will tell you that being concise is a skill.

Format is nice and it provides structure for creativity, sure. But if you're the one that created that structure in the first place, you're allowed to play with it however you want to make it work. Variation from structure can be helpful if you know the structure inside-out in the first place -- the cilche of needing to know the rules in order to break them is common in fiction. If you can say it in 12 hours instead of 24, then great. If you're more focused on the format than the content, you're probably focusing on the wrong part of the show.

It should be also noted that one of the heads of LAD, Redemption, and the last few seasons of 24 (which saw a resurgence in quality), was Manny Coto, who is one of the heads of this new series. So I'm pret-ty sure that he knows the format, and therefore how to tweak it, better than most.
 
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JirinPanthosa said:
If it's not a 24 hour real time show, can they really still title it 24?

24 lost me after season 5. They started treating their characters as way too disposable to get emotionally invested. And the stories just weren't interesting enough if you didn't care about the characters.
Click to expand...

I can relate to your feelings. Season six was the first 24 season I bailed on. It was just too much, too over the top, too stupid, and I hated how things ended with Jack's partner. So my love for 24 sort of died there, however I did come back and watch Redemption and some of Season 7 and I did like President Taylor and Renee Walker. However somewhere along the way I didn't finish that season. I did watch Season 8. It was uneven but I thought a decent enough finale.

I did go back and watch Season 7 and then Season 6 recently, which was the tough hill to get over. Season 7 overall wasn't that bad. And I don't hate Season 6 now as much as I did back then. I still think the idea for the main villain was asinine and they should've been more explicit about Wayne's fate. Or followed up with Wayne's sister. But I did like Powers Boothe and how he conducted things a midst his own imbroglio. I did enjoy Live Another Day though.

My rough rankings of the seasons:

1. Season 5
2. Season 2
3. Season 9
4. Season 1
5. Season 4
6. Season 3
7. Season 7
8. Season 8
9. Season 6
 
Since this has been announced I haven't been able to get "Black Bauer" out of my head.
so it's Eric Carter
Eric Carter
Eric Carter
Eric Carter
ahhh, it's still there!
 
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