Rewatching 24

[AntonyF]

I'm rewatching season one of 24. I remember being very into it back in the day, and I watched it all over the years through ups and downs.

It's amazing to think how revolutionary it was at the time. It is however showing its age quite a bit. I think their heavy use of technology probably helps the aging process compared to some shows that can be more timeless. It also looks surprisingly low budget for what feels like a big concept show. (I imagine it gets more money in later seasons.)

But something surprised me rewatching season one and I'm a third of the way through the season: I thought "This feels really post 9/11" and looked up the date and sure enough season one ran from July 2001 into 2002.

It became a favourite cliché of news organisations to describe everything as post 9/11, much like their current fixation is Gen Z. GEN Z WEAR HATS! GEN Z REFUSE TO EAT TURNIPS. GEN Z HATE BOATS. GEN Z HAVE SAVED CRUISE LINES. et al. Everything had to be tied back to 9/11 for a long time and it still crops up in articles.

It may be just coincidence, particularly as it started two months before the event.

But it just has that paranoid vibe. Danger. The enemy within. Anyone could be dangerous. Outside forces are working against US democracy. The cameraman looked a certain way, he must be up to trouble. Oh there's a mysterious bag someone has, what's in it and what danger is there? No actually it's someone in a position of power as part of a big conspiracy who's the danger.

I could just be conflating drama with real events and am no better than the editorials. But I do wonder how much the events of 9/11 fed into that 24 narrative as they were writing it.

 

[Captaindemotion]

I do remember Kiefer being interviewed around the time of S1’s release and saying that they changed quite a bit because of 9/11, though I don’t really remember the specifics. I think, however, in S2 and from then on, they really leaned into the war on terror- someone was sent to Guantanamo Bay in that season. And whereas Nina told Jack that one suspect would respond better to the threat of torture than actual torture in that season (and he took her advice) he enthusiastically embraced, er, enhanced interrogation from then on.

I think the show’s politics were interesting in that while it in many ways echoed the idea that America was surrounded by enemies and needed to take drastic steps to stop them, as often as not the bad guys were the military-industrial complex or neoconservatives. The second half of S2 was Jack trying to prevent a war based on false intelligence, for example. The “good guys” often did bad things - not just torture but things like killing Ryan Chappell or in one season where they were prepared to send a young girl to her groomer so as to get information from her.

 

[FreezeC77]

I'm not sure at what episode they filmed after 9/11, but from what I remember they were like maybe 5 episodes into the first season (which at the time was still just thought to be 13 episodes until FOX gave it a full season order)

There was stuff with the female assassin character jumping off a plane that blows up that was edited for the premiere when it first aired I think late October/early November.

I do think you can see the earlier seasons were in that very much "America attacked... Rally the flag" type stuff and it wasn't until a few seasons in you started to dial back away from that and show more flawed American characters and domestic enemies intending harm to the country.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I remember not liking it at first, then trying it again in season 5, getting into it and going back and rewatching the old seasons and liking it. Then not liking the seasons after that.

There's a lot of things it does right, bringing the intensity, bringing the action and the twists. A lot of things it does wrong, like the Muslim fearmongering it did. I remember being on some message boards at the time, Muslim family blending in as integrated family when they're actually a sleeper cell, thumbs up, a single Muslim character falsely accused, uproar. The show stoked anti-Muslim paranoia. And even politics aside, the way they killed off characters for shock value rather than because it actually made sense in the story made you feel constantly manipulated.

I might rewatch seasons 1-3 and 5 someday but never watched the final season and don't plan to.

 

[Aragorn]

The first 13 episodes of season 1 were the best because they had a planned start, middle and finish in case they were canceled before getting the remaining 11 episodes. But you could tell they were just making stuff up as they went along and running out of steam in later seasons. So many stupid personal subplots that have nothing to do with the main plot, so much time dedicated to the president and his or her family and staff, so much petty bickering by supposed professionals in the middle of a crisis, overly complex evil plans that make no sense. You could make a drinking game out of sniper, mole, torture and immunity.

In season 4, a character got written off because she asked the new boss if her raised promised by the old boss was still going to happen (she asked this in the middle of a crisis!) and the new boss immediately fired her (in the middle of a crisis!).

In season 5, the one they won the Emmy for, CTU was infiltrated and a lot of people died because a character's crack addict sister's boyfriend beat him up and took his entry card (and somehow found some really bad guys to sell it to a few minutes later) and he wouldn't report it stolen.

There was also a season where a nuke went off in downtown Los Angeles and throughout the episode you see people out shopping like nothing had happened.

Seasons 4, 6 and 8 are easily the worst.

 

[Captaindemotion]

This thread seems as good a place as any to link to this interview with the leaders of Imagine Entertainment, which mentions the possibility of a 24 revival:

Imagine Entertainment Leaders on ‘Spaceballs 2,’ Rebooting ’24,’ ‘The Grinch’ and ‘Friday Night Lights,’ and Making a Movie Set in a Whale’s Belly

Imagine Entertainment's leaders discuss future projects like 'Spaceballs 2,' rebooting '24,' 'The Grinch' and 'Friday Night Lights,' and 'Whalefall'

variety.com

 

[The Realist]

The main thing I remember about season 1 was that there seemed to be some effort to stick to the hour-by-hour concept more realistically than in later seasons. As one example, I seem to recall we spent several early episodes where one of the story threads was just Jack’s wife and some dude driving around in the middle of the night searching for Jack’s idiot daughter. In later seasons, 20 improbable events would have happened within that 3-4 hour time frame, because they wouldn’t have had the narrative discipline and patience to have something like that take up several hours, as it would IRL.

 

[Aragorn]

Someone mapped out all the events of 24. The bad guys all really liked the same L.A. neighborhoods since everything on the show is always "10 minutes away."