OK, fans. Time to weigh in on your predictions for the season. Make them silly. Make them snarky. Make them serious, deep thoughts about the nature of man in a crazy universe.
Or don’t.
Jack is back after nearly two years of being on hiatus. The season will kick off with a 4 hour, back to back extravaganza on Sunday and Monday (7:00 PM - 9:00 PM Central on Fox). Given all that has transpired since then in our own politics, expect a very different show than the one we’ve come to know and love over the years.
But here’s your chance to sound off about the death of CTU, the probablilty that the Jack Bauer we’ve all come to know and love over the years is about to be co-opted by a kindler, gentler Jack, and the return of Tony as a bad guy.
Or not.
My post last month asking you, my loyal and fanatic readers, whether I should continue writing my summaries of each 24 episode saw 260 of you vote with just about a 50/50 split between “don’t care” and an affirmative response. Therefore, beginning Monday morning, I will resume my post-episode blogging of the series for the 4th year running. I will try and have the summary up shortly after midnight central time - if these old, fat, creaky bones will cooperate and allow me to stay up long past my bedtime to satisfy my own fanatical devotion to the show and fulfill the wishes of many of my equally dedicated readers.
As usual, I will try and keep it light but also try and make some serious observations about how the show has changed as America has changed and how the character of Jack Bauer fits in to our culture and society in a post-Bush world.
The countdown has begun. Can you hear the clock ticking?
2:13 pm
I am totally against torture. In real life. 24 is fiction. As opposed to real life.
Some people seem to have a hard time telling the two apart. Just because it works for Jack Bauer doesn’t mean it’s a good idea in real life. And the flip side: just because something is bad in real life doesn’t mean it’s bad in fiction. In real life it might be a bad idea to drive the Batmobile through traffic at 150 mph. But I kind of think it’s okay in fiction. I don’t think that’s real rush hour traffic. You know? It’s even possible that Gotham isn’t a real city.
As a guy who makes his living writing fiction I think it would be great if everyone understood this line. Real life over here, fiction over there. Not the same. I don’t want to shock anyone but Jack Bauer isn’t real. Sadly, Dick Cheney is.
That being said, my favorite Jack moment: when he shoots the molester and cuts off his head doing a “Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia” thing.
“I’m going to need a hacksaw.”
Here’s hoping that in this new season Jack will need a hacksaw. And then feel kinda bad about it.
3:59 pm
I am totally against getting on the moral high horse about torture.I believe it is not a straight black and white issue.
I also happen to believe that there are a lot of honest and decent people in the intel services who do the “dirty jobs” that we can judge and wax eloquent about from a safe distance. People like the fictional Jack Bauer.
Rick, please continue with summarizing the episodes. And I
hope you had fun watching the Vikings lose last weekend. I sure as hell did.
4:10 pm
Rick,
All of my predictions on 24 over the years were proven wrong so I will shut up and not make a fool of myself again.
But I, and others, really appreciate your observations of each episode. Therefore in advance of the season, thanks for your efforts!!
4:41 pm
Hey Rick, so glad that the close vote pushed you into the YES column for this season. Look forward to your summaries and commentaries as always.
My prediction for the season:
Due to a shift of the new administration’s position on terrorists (so as to appease its fanatical leftist base), the White House and the news media will start referring to terrorists as “Jihad Kittens” in an effort to make them appear less evil. At the end of the season, Jack will save our butts and inflict over 200 kills/mamings, but he will immediately be crucified by the media for having killed kittens.
Bonus prediction: Chloe won’t shoot anyone this season, but she’ll eviscerate at least one bureaucrat with sarcasm.
6:41 pm
When the British were leaving Haifa they noted that the Arab quarter was being shelled “indiscriminately” to “intimidate” the Arabs. The prewar majority Arab population of Haifa was 55,000, after the war only 5000 remained. So now 60 years later the Palestinian version of Irgun fires rockets into Israel, gee I wonder where they got the idea that terrorism works. Begin was a member or Irgun and we talked to him, so why wouldn’t we talk to Hamas?
2:51 am
24? What about the opening season for “44″?
Here’s the scoop on episode one. Obama’s Secret revealed: Claim credit for the turnaround with a plan that wont work but will ’save jobs’ by sandbagging the jobs numbers!
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/01/obamas-team-sandbags-jobs-numbers.html
What they are claiming is that with Obama’s plan, the total employment numbers will be no higher than they were in Q3 2008. This is not ‘creating’ any net new jobs, this is merely treading water. They are further making the very dubious claim that the economy, if left to its own devices without huge Government deficits, would in 2010 have 4 million fewer jobs than in 2008. When in the last 60 years did that happen? Never! Obama is sandbagging the numbers, concocting an alternative scenario that is nothing more than a fearful spectre, so that zero net job creation will still be ’saving jobs’.
11:01 am
Islamic terrorists will be shown to be rank amateurs compared to the soon to be discovered master terrorists who will include members of Congress, CIA staff and shadowy money men.
Rick, keep up the summaries, they are great.
4:48 pm
Jack is coming back–or is he. We will see tonight and tomorrow night. Will he still be the same “hit them hard guy” or will he evolve into a politically correct Obamaitized version. I think hollywierd and the Bay lefties will get their Jack or maybe I should say Jill. Remember the old nursery rhyme. Jack went up the hill and Jill came down (something like that)!! More to come.
6:54 pm
Can’t wait. For either the premiere (looks like about 79 minutes and counting) nor Rick’s commentary. Rick: I didn’t check in and see the poll, but if it truly was 50-50, put me in the YES column.
Go Jack Go!! Take no prisoners: unless they have useful information of course. And while you’re in DC, check in with Mitch Rapp: he could teach you a thing or two about ruthlessness.
7:29 pm
Open thread for the start of the 7th season of 24…
After skipping a season due to a writer’s strike, the producers of 24 gave us 24 junkies a two hour pre-season teaser back on November, and now it’s time for the 7th season of 24 to officially begin. It’s four hours long - part one a…
9:04 pm
Keep up the commentary, Rick - makes Tuesday mornings great!
My only prediction is that CAIR’s sensibilities will again control 24’s depiction of terrorists. African militants (but only non-Muslim Africans), Chinese mafiosi, drugged-out Swedes, blue-haired Grannies - anyone but radical Islamists!