24 Post-Rewatch Commentary
I'm not going to get into too deep an analysis here, because I lack the patience to go ahead and look up clips for supporting evidence, etc.
But, overall, my general impression was--this show is a lot smarter than I remembered it. This is not to ignore the vast problems with it, the propagandistic aspects, the typical action-show problems with invincibility and the like (like where Jack gets stabbed in the stomach, pulls the knife out, throws it in another bad guy's neck without missing, and proceeds to totally forget about/ignore the injury for the next sixteenish (I can't remember exactly) hours), etc. But just to say...they worked hard at finding plausible (for an action series) plotlines within the core concept of the show, they had a fairly dynamic range of characters...
Which is probably the main reason I enjoyed it so much. Because of the characters.
Starting with the presidents, we have them ranging from President Superman David Palmer to President Evil Charles Logan (oh, Logan), including President Allison Taylor, who has Ovaries of Steel to rival Laura Roslin's, who combines the best of Palmer with, after Logan's manipulation, the worst of Logan.
And, following on Taylor, we have a show with an amazing ability to write women, especially considering genre and so on. Hell, even Kim, who (justifiably) gets a bad rap among fans of the show (largely for her useless-to-annoying plotlines in seasons 2 and 3)? Is freaking awesome in season 1. She orchestrates three (would have been) successful escape attempts, with the first two only failing because her friend gets hit by a car and her mom gets brought to the compound and she doesn't want to abandon her, respectively.
And then there are the lady villains. From (in order of appearance as villains) Mandy all the way to Dana Walsh, with Nina and Marie and Sherry and omg so much manipulation and ass-kicking. A special mention must be made of Dina Araz, who is in some ways a villainous genderflipped Jack, with her devotion to her son and her devotion to her cause being her two primary motivations.
Which is not to say all the good-guy ladies are Action Survivors or brilliant and well-intentioned politicians. Michelle Dessler, who is primarily an analyst, is capable of taking down a suspect in (I timed it) 7 seconds. Chloe (<3) is Jack's baby sister by the end and willing and able to shoot people when push comes to shove.
Special mention must go to the beautiful and wonderful Dalia Hassan, of eighth season, with her giant eyes (seriously, they're enormous) and strong principles and cold hatred when she gets betrayed at the end.
I love 24. I love how it's smarter than I gave it credit for, and still hilariously ridiculous. I love a show that can give me all of these amazing characters (I didn't even talk about my favorite male characters, aside from Palmer and Logan (I love me my entertaining villains :D )). I love a show that, in a post-9/11 show about terrorism, does not exclusively focus on villains from the Middle East. Pretty much every season involves at least one home-grown villain, some being the Big Bad. Eastern Europeans (mostly Russian) play villainous roles at least as much. I love a show that, while overall having an Ends Justify The Means morality, eventually takes its time to explore the consequences of the aforementioned Means (which I discussed a little bit in my Season 6 Surprise Actors post, since that's where a lot of it happens, though some is also in Season 7).
It was a lot of fun to rewatch. I'm very glad I did.
ETA: For all the show's extreme over-reliance on the "I Have Your Wife" trope, there are instances where it works really, really well. There's First Gentleman Henry Taylor's kidnapping, which is the only thing that gets his wife to pretend to bend, when she's really just faking it long enough for rescuers to find him. There's the fact that Tony and Michelle get it played on them both ways (Michelle gets kidnapped late in S3, Tony late in S4), and both times Michelle handles it worlds better than he does. There's the point in S5 where Martha Logan essentially pulls this on her own husband by getting into the Suvarov's limousine when he's sold them out to prevent a nerve gas attack. That's the kind of stuff I mean with managing to find relatively creative plotlines in a fairly narrow concept.
And now I need to decide what to watch next. XD
But, overall, my general impression was--this show is a lot smarter than I remembered it. This is not to ignore the vast problems with it, the propagandistic aspects, the typical action-show problems with invincibility and the like (like where Jack gets stabbed in the stomach, pulls the knife out, throws it in another bad guy's neck without missing, and proceeds to totally forget about/ignore the injury for the next sixteenish (I can't remember exactly) hours), etc. But just to say...they worked hard at finding plausible (for an action series) plotlines within the core concept of the show, they had a fairly dynamic range of characters...
Which is probably the main reason I enjoyed it so much. Because of the characters.
Starting with the presidents, we have them ranging from President Superman David Palmer to President Evil Charles Logan (oh, Logan), including President Allison Taylor, who has Ovaries of Steel to rival Laura Roslin's, who combines the best of Palmer with, after Logan's manipulation, the worst of Logan.
And, following on Taylor, we have a show with an amazing ability to write women, especially considering genre and so on. Hell, even Kim, who (justifiably) gets a bad rap among fans of the show (largely for her useless-to-annoying plotlines in seasons 2 and 3)? Is freaking awesome in season 1. She orchestrates three (would have been) successful escape attempts, with the first two only failing because her friend gets hit by a car and her mom gets brought to the compound and she doesn't want to abandon her, respectively.
And then there are the lady villains. From (in order of appearance as villains) Mandy all the way to Dana Walsh, with Nina and Marie and Sherry and omg so much manipulation and ass-kicking. A special mention must be made of Dina Araz, who is in some ways a villainous genderflipped Jack, with her devotion to her son and her devotion to her cause being her two primary motivations.
Which is not to say all the good-guy ladies are Action Survivors or brilliant and well-intentioned politicians. Michelle Dessler, who is primarily an analyst, is capable of taking down a suspect in (I timed it) 7 seconds. Chloe (<3) is Jack's baby sister by the end and willing and able to shoot people when push comes to shove.
Special mention must go to the beautiful and wonderful Dalia Hassan, of eighth season, with her giant eyes (seriously, they're enormous) and strong principles and cold hatred when she gets betrayed at the end.
I love 24. I love how it's smarter than I gave it credit for, and still hilariously ridiculous. I love a show that can give me all of these amazing characters (I didn't even talk about my favorite male characters, aside from Palmer and Logan (I love me my entertaining villains :D )). I love a show that, in a post-9/11 show about terrorism, does not exclusively focus on villains from the Middle East. Pretty much every season involves at least one home-grown villain, some being the Big Bad. Eastern Europeans (mostly Russian) play villainous roles at least as much. I love a show that, while overall having an Ends Justify The Means morality, eventually takes its time to explore the consequences of the aforementioned Means (which I discussed a little bit in my Season 6 Surprise Actors post, since that's where a lot of it happens, though some is also in Season 7).
It was a lot of fun to rewatch. I'm very glad I did.
ETA: For all the show's extreme over-reliance on the "I Have Your Wife" trope, there are instances where it works really, really well. There's First Gentleman Henry Taylor's kidnapping, which is the only thing that gets his wife to pretend to bend, when she's really just faking it long enough for rescuers to find him. There's the fact that Tony and Michelle get it played on them both ways (Michelle gets kidnapped late in S3, Tony late in S4), and both times Michelle handles it worlds better than he does. There's the point in S5 where Martha Logan essentially pulls this on her own husband by getting into the Suvarov's limousine when he's sold them out to prevent a nerve gas attack. That's the kind of stuff I mean with managing to find relatively creative plotlines in a fairly narrow concept.
And now I need to decide what to watch next. XD