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Thought I'd take the opportunity of the resurrection of this show to open up a little discussion about it. Surprised actually to find that there was no existing thread for it because, whether one likes it or not, it's certainly among the most indelibly signature series of the century so far.

I happen to like it very much despite its supposedly reactionary political bent which is far more complex and nuanced than is generally acknowledged. The deceptive aspect of it resides in its action oriented form and relentless forward motion along with its extreme, even unhinged narratives, especially as it rolled forward. Of course I would argue that external form resembles the fracturing psyche of the main character more than a little.

Been re-watching the show from the beginning for the first time since original broadcast. It's remarkable to me for just how insanely addictive it is (and I've seen them all before!). It's like a pure narcotic drip. I'll often marathon through the bulk of some season set or other but nothing like this. I have to almost physically tear myself away or I'd end up watching all eight years straight through. Obviously the effect is intentional but I've rarely been as susceptible to it as I am here. It really is masterfully plotted and propels forward constantly like an unending ceaseless flow. And it helps too just how uniform every episode is no matter who directs; there's virtually no discernible deviation from the look and feel of how it all plays all the time. I know there are those with political/aesthetic objections who would disagree with this assessment of its magnetic pull but I am not one of them. I've also been taking advantage of the re-watch to try and determine to what degree certain decisions seem to have been made from the start or at least how much room is provided to allow for the various twists and character reveals (in other words, can it be said to make sense). If you're watching this with these sort of things in mind it takes a genuinely exhausting toll. The ticking clock becomes ironic counterpoint to the action, too; it actually ends up taking on a host of meanings after awhile as it has its own unyielding purity, both constant looming threat and the one reliable resource. The episode in which Jack "does what he does" to Ryan Chappelle (trying to avoid spoilers) is still one of the most flooring things I've ever seen on TV (well, that and the handing out of cyanide capsules to the infected hotel guests in that same episode). I still can barely believe it. The hardest of hard core.

As much as the presidency of David Palmer has been said to have actively paved the way in the public imagination for Barack Obama I would go further and say that race is no more essential to this idealist image than ethics. Because Palmer is the President that everybody wanted Obama to be--always steadfast, always forthright, etc. It is worth noting then that in no small part due to the factor of his integrity Palmer ends up a one term President. In his own way, as with Jack, he cannot yield or bend because to do so is to break.

Upon reflection I think season 4 may have been the best one. It comes together about as virtually perfectly as can be imagined for this show. They've perfected their propulsive forward dynamic here alongside giving convincing weight to often hysterical melodrama always attended by the savagely relentless clock (with its super portentous thundering crashes upon every passing second--still think this would be pretty funny to license out as an egg timer). The other big thing this season had going for it was the way it handled the return of former, beloved cast members, carefully and slowly brought back in till over time they were all back in proper place. Enormously satisfying. As was the attention payed to plot parallels and reversals, often reaching back to previous seasons, and the consideration given to the cost of "professionalism" and its questionable differences from "fanaticism". The return of the ever appreciated Mia Kirshner helped underline some of those themes. The plotting is surprisingly tight, too. And unlike Lost, that other zeitgeist show of the time, immediate questions produced by the material are almost immediately answered (I can't count the number of satisfying examples of this: I'd find myself saying, "Well, okay, but what about...?" only to have someone quite literally address just that a minute later). And this was the last season before things became really depressing right away. It's all pretty impressive for such an extended long form narrative. Uniquely exhausting though. I'd hate to live in this alternate US that's constantly under the imminent threat of nuclear holocaust ("If you don't let me make that phone call, ten nuclear reactors will melt down in the next five minutes!!").

Season 6 was a very pleasant surprise. I remember this season as being the show's nadir point and that seems the general consensus but it's actually not bad at all and, in fact, has a lot to recommend it. I think part of my initial reaction had to do with how scattered and generally unhinged things had become by this point (and the stuff with Jack's family came across as quintessential shark jumping). But looked at as a whole it's admirably *varied* rather than scattered. The structure needed to be shaken up and this did that. Also, the often utterly insane over-the-topness of it all reaches new heights here but what that does is allow for the show to shift slightly in the way it handles its central character. Though still shot through with ever widening cracking fissures and fault lines he simultaneously escalates to a pure iconic figure--the sheer hyperbole of everything sees to that. It's a wise move in terms of the overall series and the otherwise impossible to take seriously nature of it all. And somehow despite all that the show never abandons a vein of real emotional poignancy as well. It's understandably passed over quickly but it is always there and resonates (much of this has to do with Sutherland's consistently superb performance, hysterically overwrought much of the time but never fully losing touch with an essential recognizable humanness which makes his actions that much more disturbing). I also really appreciated the arc of Powers Booth's character. It's something for which this show rarely gets credit but the development of character over the extended and extreme duration is one of its strengths.

After rewatching the entire series I've also become so used to the whole "real time" thing that watching anything else is vaguely startling. Season 7 turned out to be far better than I remember too. So, oddly, at this point I would have to say the weakest overall seasons were 3 and 8, the final one. Which is surprising to me as I remember thinking 8 was great. And it is once it really kicks in but it drags on at the beginning far too long with the usual Macguffin drawn out to an almost excruciating degree (the one thing I really wearied of by the end was the constant recourse to "arming nuclear warheads" or "finding a detonator"; it was always better when they found something else). At least season 7 in its wild, chaotic insanity is varied enough for that to never be a problem. That season in particular prompts the question as to whether its ultra elaborate, byzantine narrative could possibly be made to make any sense at all. But that's not necessarily a problem.

Though it hardly needs to be said the show really does boil down to being an extended reflection or treatise on the application of torture. But more than that it's about the prolonged effects upon the characters themselves. By the end virtually everyone around our hero has been either killed or morally destroyed (not just "compromised"). It's hardly the pure triumphalist narrative many would claim. The relationship between Jack and Chloe is the crucial exception and one that provides a radical model for friendship and a deep abiding trust. As is suggested at one point the Jack Bauer character really does seem finally to be cursed (Job as ass kicker). But what remains fascinating is that, with very few minor exception I can recall, Jack is *always* right and yet the cost of that seems to be not only the loss of everyone and everything he loves but even his own capacity to love at all; it's the charting of a progressive dehumanization, a total disconnect and moral degradation, an inevitable descent into the abyss of an absolute authority.

Which is why the ending of season 8 is so strong. After what is almost too much set up Jack finally, irretrievably tips over the edge. He goes from being iconic to godlike (it really is The Apotheosis of Jack Bauer), a force of nature channeling the unrelenting vengeance of the Old Testament God, all knowing and without the restraint of moral norms or any civilized qualifications or governors on his actions any more. Actually, it's easy to see why Sutherland would want to return to this role. After this anything else would seem unfulfilling; it's like going from playing the god Ajax to some schlub in a CBS sitcom. As much as I welcome the return of this character and whatever he carries with him at this stage I still harbor some misgivings as I cannot imagine a better end than what we get in that final episode. He cannot meaningfully be killed (he's already died and came back at least twice); the only meaningful exit is what we had here: a bowing out, a heightened but ethereal fading away with a recognition of the last remaining fluctuations of love.

I have a love-hate relationship with the show, but I certainly agree that it was a defining one for its decade. A great core cast and the series wasn't afraid of throwing in relatively known-name cameos throughout, not just the villain of the season types (Peter Weller, Julian Sands, Powers Booth, Dennis Hopper, etc) but also people like Vanessa Ferlito, Sean Astin, Jürgen Prochnow, Isaach De Bankolé, Lukas Haas and so on who would get kind of mini-arcs of a half dozen episode secondary story within the main season, which I thought worked really well to allow those actors to pick up the ball while the main actors were otherwise indisposed with the main plot mechanics of simply getting from place to place, working out what was going on, and so on. But it had a habit of wasting them, or not really using them to their full potential. I'd even argue that Keifer Sutherland wasn't really utilised as fully as he could have been (instead more as the dependable straight man for the show, who occasionally oversteps his limits and has to pay for his moral compromises), particularly during that on again/off again drug addiction plot in season 3 which could have provided a much meatier drama than it did. Though I think that is one of the prime problems with 24 in that the action has to be kept at such an intense pace that it doesn't allow for on the one hand actual drama to build up over time (because that slow build is anathema to the fast pacing), and on the other the show has to keep throwing in rather overblown 'faux dramas' every episode to keep the tension level up, some of which pay off and others just completely fizzle out after they have done their sleight of hand job of distracting the audience for that episode or two (or eight or nine in the case of some of the more ambitious ox-bow lake redundant passages that run over a third of a season!)

I agree with John Cope that the mid-point of the series was my favourite too, though I like Season 5 the best due to the performance by Gregory Itzin as President Logan who does a brilliant arc as a slimy Nixon-type who of course ends up being the major bad guy of the season. John Cope talks about "the hardest of hard core" in the series, and little else in the series matched the moment two-thirds of the way through that season where, as per usual, Jack has (seemingly) won the day pretty early on (you think he would have learnt by now that the job is not over until the full day is complete!) and that celebration is surprisingly undercut by President Logan retiring to his office and preparing to commit suicide knowing that his role in the big conspiracy will soon be uncovered. Until he finds the one thing that he can possibly use to weedle his way out of the situation, which leads to his placing of his gun back into its case and nervous flop-sweat look around the empty office as the cliffhanger into the final run of episodes.

I think President Logan and his First Lady are actually better than the more celebrated David and Sherry Palmer in some ways. The Logans certainly have a more believably antagonistic relationship compared to the more coercive and manipulative (so coercive and manipulative she actually invades later seasons unbidden!) Sherry! I particularly like the way that compared to the shrewish Sherry, that Martha Logan is actually upset and angry at her husband, and struggling just as much against the collapse of her idea of their relationship over that day as with the terrorism stuff (I also like the way that the writers continually keep backing her into a corner and forcing her to have to choose whether to go along with her husband or go against him) rather than just trying to coldly manipulate the situation to her advantage, as Sherry does. I guess comparing the two First Ladies is instructive in their respective backgrounds of bred into power versus clawing their way up the ladder using media tools. I should also say that I really liked the Sherry arc in season 3 of over confidently sorting out her (by now ex-) husband's problems by murdering the blackmailer and making everything worse!

I don't know if I would agree with John Cope's point about the series preparing the way for Obama. If anything the series makes the idea of a black President seem absolutely terrible with its beyond-noble central figure constantly being manipulated by every member of his family (and entourage!), and with its subplots in the first season about the son in jail, the daughter raped, the mother cold and manipulative there seems to be the very literal suggestion that this man cannot keep his family together (the parallel with Jack Bauer), so what hope does he have of thinking he will be able to run the country any better? The later seasons throw more and more at our abused saint (and he does become a kind of Kennedy figure, even down to getting assassinated, in an act that seals his reputation!) until he is party to aiding and abetting some pretty heinous crimes! Strangely while David Palmer is (willingly by the show) allowed to step down before he is brought down, Logan doesn't really get afforded the same opportunity!

On the mechanics I'm also pretty ambivalent. The thing that always kept me watching the show was the ticking clock into the advert cliffhangers. Everything is geared around those moments, to such an extent that for the most part I honestly don't really think I actually care about anything that actually goes on in the show itself apart from the push in on a worried characters face and the sudden cut to the ticking clock, or the montage of all the disparate characters in different locations on screen simultaneously at the end of each episode. I think I was left feeling that the aesthetics of the structure of the show meant more to me than any particular character moment in the show. I think it means more than even the 'story' of Jack Bauer does (which is why I think the series didn't really work when it did that 24: Redemption TV-movie, becoming something both non-24 and more conventional, and why I think any prospective movie version would inevitably lose the main element that made the entire show special. So I'm glad we are getting another series!). Every episode is constructed in a way that, however filler-ish or relatively uninteresting (or even most egregiously, but also a regular occurrence, focusing on something completely irrelevant or repetitive) a particular single show might be, there are always those structural elements there to keep the drama powering along until the more-ish cliffhanger.

So I'm ambivalent. I love the 'real-time' gimmick, even though watching episodes back-to-back (which is perhaps the best way to watch the series) only emphasises the unreality of some of the real time stuff! Yet I have little to no interest in the 'terrorist of the month' stuff and even less in the 'office politics at CTU' sections - it is telling for me that the sections that I felt ended up being the most interesting were the ones where the mundane routine gets broken and we get the gas attack on CTU itself, or the interactions with Nina in season 3, or Chloe having to do her job from outside the comfort of the office environment (including rebuffing advances in a bar!) in season 5. They are brief flickers of a more intense, uncomfortable and troubling thriller series that gets pulled back as quickly as possible to the 'tracking the dirty bomb/uncovering the traitor' style main plot.

Similarly the callousness of the torture and the terrorism (and the attitudes of certain of the main characters around all that, which perhaps reached its heights in season 4 with Jack torturing his new girlfriend and the Iranian 'sleeper cell' family with the mother and son deciding to turn against their father and fall in with the good guys but get decimated despite that. It was particularly interesting to see Shohreh Aghdashloo playing on a similar kind of role to the one she had in House of Sand and Fog during that run of episodes) often hits hard, but a deeper and more thoughtful show would actually show some of the consequences of that in a more sustained way instead of just sweeping away the implications with the brushing of the current set of secondary characters from the narrative as the plot moves on to the next group. Sure Bauer ends up tortured and destroyed himself, but I never really feel the sense that he learns anything, just feels sorry for his lot of having to shoulder the burden of doing society's dirty deeds to do his duty for his country.

By the way John, have you played Metal Gear Solid? That is a game series that twists itself into ever more convoluted knots of identity and spying as it goes, making it perhaps a self-aware statement that they've got Sutherland in to voice Solid Snake in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V!

colinr0380 wrote:I'd even argue that Keifer Sutherland wasn't really utilised as fully as he could have been (instead more as the dependable straight man for the show, who occasionally oversteps his limits and has to pay for his moral compromises), particularly during that on again/off again drug addiction plot in season 3 which could have provided a much meatier drama than it did.

I grant you that is certainly the case but I also think that the show was well aware of that or at least became well aware of it as time went on. Rewatching it I also couldn't help but note the way the long term drug abuse effects are essentially and summarily swept aside after season 3 (I think there is some cursory reference to it later). But I came to like what the show did with this stuff because, as I say, it really does eventually become about building up a depiction of Jack as plagued Job figure; this is certainly true by season 6 which may be more of a crucial one than most realize. As the absurdities pile up, Sutherland's performance becomes more crucial too in order to ground all this insanity in some kind of believable expression. He is the "straight man" to be sure but that seems undoubtedly the point. The ways in which he may not be seen to be so "straight" enter into our own estimation of him as the series progresses.

colinr0380 wrote:I don't know if I would agree with John Cope's point about the series preparing the way for Obama. If anything the series makes the idea of a black President seem absolutely terrible with its beyond-noble central figure constantly being manipulated by every member of his family (and entourage!), and with its subplots in the first season about the son in jail, the daughter raped, the mother cold and manipulative there seems to be the very literal suggestion that this man cannot keep his family together (the parallel with Jack Bauer), so what hope does he have of thinking he will be able to run the country any better? The later seasons throw more and more at our abused saint (and he does become a kind of Kennedy figure, even down to getting assassinated, in an act that seals his reputation!) until he is party to aiding and abetting some pretty heinous crimes! Strangely while David Palmer is (willingly by the show) allowed to step down before he is brought down, Logan doesn't really get afforded the same opportunity!

I'd agree that the Logans' relationship certainly seems more complex than the Palmers though perhaps just complex in a different way. The parallels between the first President Palmer and Jack are instructive to be sure. What did you think of the later President Taylor, by the way? I have to admit that I resisted her a bit at first as I would have liked to have seen more with the Powers Booth President but I came to appreciate the craft and delicate work that Cherry Jones brought to her character. That's without doubt another tragic figure who's tragedy is heightened and highlighted by Jack's own as well as just his very presence and actions making it worse. The Iago effect of Logans' impact on her is pronounced and well considered too. What I especially like in those later seasons is the way in which the dynamic between Taylor and Jack more than ever resembles antique circumstances: a monarch's relationship to her favored knight within the context of a royal court. The way those associations are brought out and reflect on contemporary realities is also fascinating.

colinr0380 wrote:I think it means more than even the 'story' of Jack Bauer does (which is why I think the series didn't really work when it did that 24: Redemption TV-movie, becoming something both non-24 and more conventional, and why I think any prospective movie version would inevitably lose the main element that made the entire show special. So I'm glad we are getting another series!).

Completely agree with you on this.

colinr0380 wrote:Yet I have little to no interest in the 'terrorist of the month' stuff and even less in the 'office politics at CTU' sections - it is telling for me that the sections that I felt ended up being the most interesting were the ones where the mundane routine gets broken and we get the gas attack on CTU itself, or the interactions with Nina in season 3, or Chloe having to do her job from outside the comfort of the office environment (including rebuffing advances in a bar!) in season 5. They are brief flickers of a more intense, uncomfortable and troubling thriller series that gets pulled back as quickly as possible to the 'tracking the dirty bomb/uncovering the traitor' style main plot.

I agree with this too though I will say that I always find the often ridiculous emergence of tangential side stories quite endearing. It somehow just wouldn't be 24 without someone getting a call from their enraged ex or flustered babysitter.

colinr0380 wrote:...but a deeper and more thoughtful show would actually show some of the consequences of that in a more sustained way instead of just sweeping away the implications with the brushing of the current set of secondary characters from the narrative as the plot moves on to the next group. Sure Bauer ends up tortured and destroyed himself, but I never really feel the sense that he learns anything, just feels sorry for his lot of having to shoulder the burden of doing society's dirty deeds to do his duty for his country.

I think the fact that Jack does not learn anything is once again the point. He is at once inflexible, rigid and unyielding ("You need me on that wall!") and yet we can see, even if he cannot or chooses not to, that this is exactly what systematically destroys him over time. I return to that whole issue of him being portrayed as almost always correct in his judgment as I think this factor alone contributes much of the depth you're looking for.

colinr0380 wrote:By the way John, have you played Metal Gear Solid? That is a game series that twists itself into ever more convoluted knots of identity and spying as it goes, making it perhaps a self-aware statement that they've got Sutherland in to voice Solid Snake in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V!

I have not played this but I want to now!

John Cope wrote:I'd agree that the Logans' relationship certainly seems more complex than the Palmers though perhaps just complex in a different way. The parallels between the first President Palmer and Jack are instructive to be sure. What did you think of the later President Taylor, by the way? I have to admit that I resisted her a bit at first as I would have liked to have seen more with the Powers Booth President but I came to appreciate the craft and delicate work that Cherry Jones brought to her character. That's without doubt another tragic figure who's tragedy is heightened and highlighted by Jack's own as well as just his very presence and actions making it worse. The Iago effect of Logans' impact on her is pronounced and well considered too. What I especially like in those later seasons is the way in which the dynamic between Taylor and Jack more than ever resembles antique circumstances: a monarch's relationship to her favored knight within the context of a royal court. The way those associations are brought out and reflect on contemporary realities is also fascinating.

I think that is a great way of looking at the relationship, and I certainly agree that President Taylor was a great character too. In a way the entire series is about the people in those positions of seeming absolute power realising, after having finally reached the top job, that their position doesn't grant them immunity from being manipulated or outright bullied into decisions. That's perhaps the one consistent trait shared by all of the various different gendered or raced Presidents, whether they are saints or sinners, and I particularly like the way that Jack has to build fresh relationships up with each of these Presidents over and over, with his position fluctuating within that shift, respecting the holder of the position but eventually protecting the actual notion of Presidential leadership more than the individual holding it over the short term. He'll more often than not prove himself indispensable to them during the various crises, but not without having to overcome a degree of suspicion from the incoming 'monarch'!

John Cope wrote:

colinr0380 wrote:Yet I have little to no interest in the 'terrorist of the month' stuff and even less in the 'office politics at CTU' sections - it is telling for me that the sections that I felt ended up being the most interesting were the ones where the mundane routine gets broken and we get the gas attack on CTU itself, or the interactions with Nina in season 3, or Chloe having to do her job from outside the comfort of the office environment (including rebuffing advances in a bar!) in season 5. They are brief flickers of a more intense, uncomfortable and troubling thriller series that gets pulled back as quickly as possible to the 'tracking the dirty bomb/uncovering the traitor' style main plot.

I agree with this too though I will say that I always find the often ridiculous emergence of tangential side stories quite endearing. It somehow just wouldn't be 24 without someone getting a call from their enraged ex or flustered babysitter.

I'm with you here too. While I say the minutiae of these plots don't particularly engage me I do understand your point, and I think that part of the charm (and perhaps frustration!) that I find with the show is that some silly new boyfriend tussle or tiny decision could either turn out to be a completely self-contained plot that runs for a few episodes at most, or could turn out to be the tiny cog on which the massive main plot turns. More often than not in the early seasons I was able to accurately predict which was which, but it didn't prevent the series throwing in a few twists that were pleasingly unexpected!

John Cope wrote:I think the fact that Jack does not learn anything is once again the point. He is at once inflexible, rigid and unyielding ("You need me on that wall!") and yet we can see, even if he cannot or chooses not to, that this is exactly what systematically destroys him over time. I return to that whole issue of him being portrayed as almost always correct in his judgment as I think this factor alone contributes much of the depth you're looking for.

I do agree with this too. He kind of seems to be in his own terrorist purgatory of a repeating cycle of terrible events after the first few seasons (I found rewatching the early, more laid back, episodes of season 1 again for the first time since 2002 last year was a particularly strange experience!), with seemingly no way of breaking the cycle, and of course the ante and associated paranoia constantly getting higher and higher each time around!

I really do think in some ways Jack Bauer and 24 in general are perhaps the closest that episodic TV has come to the experience of video games, particularly in the focus on the moment-to-moment aspect of simply getting past the next obstacle to reach the next bit of story content, a focus that can sometimes serve to distract from seeing how everything is fitting into the larger picture. The moment-to-moment struggle also provides the experiential feeling for an audience that is perhaps the main entertainment of the show, even more than really seeing the main bad guy stopped or a particular sub plot reach its conclusion - that just means that we're about to start down the path of a new storyline!

Never has a ticking clock been such a welcome thing. Glad to have Jack (and cast and crew) back again and also glad that tonight's 24 premiere was a two hour episode as often it takes the first full hour just to set stuff up. While much remains the same or at least reassuringly familiar (the future office is much the same as the past one, the use of the phones is a constant regardless of how models change, Chloe's group is like an off the grid primitive CTU, the multiple pictures-in-picture format returns) there's just enough of a spin to make it interesting. But, more importantly, is that they deal with the return of the character very well. As I said before, by the end of season eight Jack ascends from the mythic or iconic to virtual godlike proportions. Hard to imagine where you go from there. But what's nice is that he's brought back to earth by emphasizing the character's vulnerabilities while at the same time making him, at least initially, an almost spectral figure; meanwhile, the effect of his haunting presence or lack thereof upon others is also emphasized (and drawn out through parallels as we see with Heller's physical and mental frailty). It also makes sense that Chloe would have ended up as she has as leaking state secrets is pretty much what she was going to do at the end of season eight. There is some humor lightly laced through here whether intentional or not (Chloe asking Jack what he's been doing for the last four years upon sight of his cohort's Serbian gang tattoo, the pronouncement that Jack is wanted for attempting to assassinate the President as it prompts the question, "Which one?") but much of it is pretty dour depressing stuff. But when was it not, even amongst all the triumphalist rhetoric? And they still show too goddamn much in the trailer.

Funnilly enough, seasons 4 and 6 are amonst the worst ones for me. The 4th season is the only one I've never been able to finish, and I consider it as the very beginning of what plagued later seasons : confused plots supposed to be intense but actually completely loose (nuclear meltdown : 3 casualties, including Edgar's mom), arabic bad-guys stereotype, CTU mole killing someone in the computer room, etc etc.

Season 6 has the awfully written family plot, with a story going worst and worst every episode up to the point I didn't care anymore. The whole Bauer family was certainly one of the worst idea the writers have had, and it constantly feels during the 2nd half of the season.
On top of this, the season opens with the nuclear detonation which is left completely disregarded past the 4th episode. But what are 12 000 nuclear casualties during the destruction of Valencia anyway ?

Still better than Tony changing sides every 10 minutes in season 7 or Jack going full RoboCop during season 8...

I just recently started this show, I'm in season 3 now, about halfway through. Though the political subtext and frequent scenes of torture are really queasy, I'm pretty impressed with the show stylistically. It's obvious that they had a big budget and used it. Very sleek, it sort of brings the aesthetic of action movies to basic TV. Some of violence is pretty intense too, I remember quite a bit controversy about it back when I was a devout TV Guide reader. It's a lot of Tom Clancy, a little James Bond, some old-style serial, a little bit Die Hard. It requires major suspension of disbelief-Bauer is so hilariously superhuman, he makes Chuck Norris look like a wuss-and they have to go way over the top to preserve the conceit of the series-and though I've heard it changes in later seasons, I want to punch Chloe. Overall though, in spite of it, I'm quite enjoying the show's propulsive forward momentum and twists and turns, even if they are occasionally silly and every line of dialogue tends to end in an exclamation point.

A late reply to han, but yes they did soften Chloe up some over later seasons, though in season 4 they did this not really by making Chloe less insufferable but more by making everyone around her act badly wrong and paranoid in some shape or form. It was less a case of Chloe being raised up than every other character being brought lower in comparison! (Though it was a characteristic of season 4 as a whole, which had to find a way of bringing low a number of more minor characters, by showing them as weak, ineffectual, quick to anger, etc, in order to replace them with the main cast of characters by the end of it).

This is just a silly comment as I've spent some of this Easter weekend re-watching season 4 of the show (mostly wanting to refamiliarise myself with the first half of the season due to Alberta Watson's recent passing), but whilst watching I came to the, new to me but not really staggering for anyone who watches the show, realisation that the series is perhaps meant to play as being the ultimate condemnation of open plan offices full of people 'hot desking' from computer to computer! The show is full of those CTU-set office politics moments of people nosily poking into other people's business, or looking suspiciously over their computer terminals at the person opposite them, or through semi-opaque glass doors at each other. Nobody has any free space to work unhindered. Every terrorist or new boss or suspicious witness has to be paraded through the main work area for everybody to take a gander at. No wonder the levels of paranoia are through the roof, if there are no boundaries in place!

Sure, everyone having separate offices might reduce 'rapid work flow' and 'teamworking across specialities' and so on, and could allow spaces for moles and various other nefarious characters to plot against CTU in relative security. But as far as this series is concerned they still do that anyway, and I'm just trying to think about the hours of my own life lost watching the characters bitching at each other about not properly doing their jobs or refusing to pass across security protocols and so on when they could have been safely isolated away from each other to concentrate on their actual tasks at hand!

(Plus of course when we get to the nerve gas attack on CTU in season 5, that open plan office looks like even more of a flawed idea!)