August 29, 2004
Finished 24
I finished watching 24 this weekend. It was very good, although I did have a couple problems with it. I wasn't even sure I would like this show when I bought it, but it turned out to be one of the best purchases I've made as far as TV series on DVD. Was never a big fan of Kiefer Sutherland either, but he was excellent in this show, couldn't see any other actor playing Jack Bauer. Looked into purchasing the second season but it cost $65 right now, think I'll wait until it goes on sale. The one problem I had with the DVD set was the lack of features, no commentary tracks, just an alternate ending and an intro with Kiefer. The picture quality was very good though, in widescreen no less, which is unusual for a TV show.
The sequence where Terry evades the safe house killer, then stops the car to go see if the killer is coming back. The car falls off a cliff about ten feet and explodes into a massive fireball, presumably killing Kim, causing Terry to collapse and then have instant amnesia.
This was very ridiculous to say the least and it was pretty hard to maintain my "suspension of disbelief" at this point. I can see why the writers did it, to seperate the mother and daughter, so Kim could go see Rick and Terry would meet up with her ex. But still, it was so unbelievable, they should have tried some other way to do it. They did reveal that Kim had survived the crash very quickly afterwards [like anybody believed she was dead in the first place!] and Terry recovered her full memory within the following episode as well.
The Serbian agents seemed way too organized in comparison to the CTU agents, who were much less together and riddled with enemy operatives. Kim gets kidnapped again! And the revelation of the second mole, Serena, was kind of hard to swallow. Seemed like she spent all this time helping Jack, you would think an enemy agent would just have let him get killed much earlier on.
Apparently, only 13 episodes were ordered when the series was first green-lighted, so they kind of wrapped up the initial storyline in those first episodes. When they got the order for the full 24, then they had this second storyline develop for the last 11 eps, which kind of fractured the season into two halves. And the second half seemed a bit weaker. Although it was nice to see Lou Diamond Phillips and Dennis Hopper guest star.
And what happened to all the secondary characters? Milo seemed to be at Jack's side every two minutes when Palmer was at CTU, but pretty well disappeared completely after that. And Jack's replacement, Alberta, she makes like she's going to kick ass and take over, change everything, then boom, she's gone. Maybe they make return appearances in season two?
I'm glad they went with the "unhappy ending", it worked much better than the alternate "happy" ending. Can't wait to get the second season dvd. And season three and eventually four as I've heard they've been renewed for a fourth season.
Posted by Fungii at August 29, 2004 10:37 PM |