24

New season of 24
i roped in my roommate adam to watch it with me. he was hesitant at first, but when i told him it was like the 'walker, texas ranger' for the new millenium, he was sold. it helps watching it with adam because we have a similar sense of humor so we both find the same comedy in the uber-melodrama that is 24. so after the first two episodes, here are some of our thoughts:

• why didn’t the guy clip off jack's finger before answering the phone? he had it there between the clippers. why not just snip it off real fast, go and take care of the phone call and come back and take care of the other nine?


• love the fact that jack kicked that guy out of the subway car. thought it would have been really funny if he would have been in a middle car of the train and when he kicked him out of the doors, he would have just kicked him into another car that they guy would have blown up. but this is jack bauer and they were conveniently on the last train. of course.


• all of the terrorists are middle-eastern and probably islamic. that isnt really politically correct. while it may be factually correct, there is no way that fox would have the bad guys be muslim radicals. we all know that the 'real' bad guys will be some white honkeys from kansas, or some wasps or some white european businessmen. some sort of group that the aclu wont get upset about.


• im glad jack has already told someone to 'trust him.' ive missed hearing those words on a weekly basis. granted, its better when it comes before jack is about to do something crazy like kill someone's father and he asks the person to 'trust him,' but its nice hearing it nevertheless.


• it was an interesting twist that they didnt actually trust jack and follow what he said. jack was right of course. nice they did this early in the season. no one, including the president of the united states will question jack for the rest of the season.


• i dont think the president would ever have a goatee.


• it also looks like the president's sister will take on the role as the family relative that is extremely annoying and gets in the way and you hope the whole season that there will be some sort of situation where jack will 'have to kill' him/her, but it never happens.


• just when i thought jack couldnt come up with another way to kill someone, he proves me wrong and does it with his teeth by biting the guy's vein. very unexpected. and also totally ridiculous and high on the comedy scale.


• as with every 24 season, there was plenty of good torture, like the knife in the knee.


• i was annoyed once again that there was a total disregard for the layout of LA. its one of the most populated areas on the planet, its totally spread out, there is hardly any transportation, so everyone drives. nothing is really 'close.' yet jack gets out of his torture cell somewhere in LA, hears that they are going to blow up the wrong guy in 15 minutes and conveniently is only 3 minutes away from the person, so he is able to save him. impossible. i guess in a way it makes sense: jack bauer pretty much defies the laws of nature and physics, so why not defy the laws of traffic that govern LA. i guess i also understand that if they didnt disregard the layout and the traffic of LA, then at least 5 of the 24 hours would be spent watching jack travel from one place to another while listening to ryan seacrest in the morning. that would be boring. though, i do think there would be a little entertainment if in one episode terrorists were killing a ton of people and jack couldnt save the day because he was stuck in traffic on the 405. that would be awesome. they just cut to jack every 15 minutes and he's in the same place just pissed off, swearing and banging his head on the stearing wheel while terrorists run rampant through the city. i would really respect the show more if they had a 'traffic' episode each season. i dont think they are writing their shows with my respect in mind though, so i doubt this will happen.

all in all, it was alright. pretty classic 24. tomorrow night is the other two hours of the four hour premiere, and those hours are supposed to be so 'explosive' (pun probably intended by fox, but im not sure) and crazy that my heart will probably stop beating. so more to come tomorrow.