24: Season One
Mar. 18th, 2003 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI've now seen all 24 episodes of 24, Season One, thanks to the wonders of DVD ...
Overall, I'd have to call 24 a purely average show. The plotting wasn't anything special and the scripting was sometimes hackneyed enough that I could predict exactly what the characters were going to say; about half of the "surprise" episode endings were no surprise to me as well.
Nonetheless, I found a couple of the characters fairly compelling. David Palmer, the Presidential candidate, was the most interesting, and after that by a bit Jack Bower. The show also did a pretty decent job of making even the minor characters really live ... usually for a short time, until they got killed.
The show really blew me away, though, in its real-time format. I'm very impressed by how innovative that was, and also by the fact that they did a decent job of carrying it all off.
I often write, in my game design columns, about using the "powers" of your medium. And, I think one of the powers of the TV medium is the ability to skip about in location and time. For "24" to purposefully move against that power, and to actually to turn it to their advantage was very impressive.
The real-time aspect gave a sense of immediacy and constant danger. The first couple of times that the clock appeared on the screen, marking the last couple of seconds before the end of the hour, my heart just dropped out, I was so on the edge of my seat. That faded a bit as the season progressed, but I could still feel the tension all the way up to the end.
Of course the real-time aspect caused problems too. I've never seen so many telephones used in a television show, nor heard so many statements of how much time something would take. It was relentless. And because they needed to encapsulate a single, coherent story within the day, and given that they had 24 hours to string that episode out through, there was some repetition.
The worst was Kim's story. She was KIDNAPPED by local boys, then got free, then KIDNAPPED again and this time taken to the white-trash bad guys, then got free, then was ATTACKED at a safe house by the Euro bad guys' hired killer, then got free, then was KIDNAPPED by the Euro bad guys themselves. Then got free.
What a day.
Likewise, Jack Bower twice was running around doing the semi-bidding of the bad guys because they'd taken his daughter captive, once around 9am and once around 10pm.
There was also a notable stop at the end of episode 13, where everything came to a temporary halt, with the assassination attempt on Palmer foiled and Bower's family freed and I felt that put a notable crease in the show's plotline. I can only assume that 24 was originally only greenlighted for 13 episodes, which is pretty standard for a Freshman show.
Overall, it was really interesting to see a TV show down in this very different manner. Given that most shows improve from season one to season two, I'll be quite interested in seeing what they do with this format the second time around. I'll also be interested in seeing how they treat the time between seasons. Because of their format they have the ability for notable changes to occur from one season to another; I hope they're going to take advantage of that.
The show's a thriller, and thus doesn't really have much subtext to talk about, but it did a decent job of being a thriller, and for 90% of even the good shows out there, you can't ask them to rise above their genre.
Next up on the DVD rental list: Six Feet Under.
Overall, I'd have to call 24 a purely average show. The plotting wasn't anything special and the scripting was sometimes hackneyed enough that I could predict exactly what the characters were going to say; about half of the "surprise" episode endings were no surprise to me as well.
Nonetheless, I found a couple of the characters fairly compelling. David Palmer, the Presidential candidate, was the most interesting, and after that by a bit Jack Bower. The show also did a pretty decent job of making even the minor characters really live ... usually for a short time, until they got killed.
The show really blew me away, though, in its real-time format. I'm very impressed by how innovative that was, and also by the fact that they did a decent job of carrying it all off.
I often write, in my game design columns, about using the "powers" of your medium. And, I think one of the powers of the TV medium is the ability to skip about in location and time. For "24" to purposefully move against that power, and to actually to turn it to their advantage was very impressive.
The real-time aspect gave a sense of immediacy and constant danger. The first couple of times that the clock appeared on the screen, marking the last couple of seconds before the end of the hour, my heart just dropped out, I was so on the edge of my seat. That faded a bit as the season progressed, but I could still feel the tension all the way up to the end.
Of course the real-time aspect caused problems too. I've never seen so many telephones used in a television show, nor heard so many statements of how much time something would take. It was relentless. And because they needed to encapsulate a single, coherent story within the day, and given that they had 24 hours to string that episode out through, there was some repetition.
The worst was Kim's story. She was KIDNAPPED by local boys, then got free, then KIDNAPPED again and this time taken to the white-trash bad guys, then got free, then was ATTACKED at a safe house by the Euro bad guys' hired killer, then got free, then was KIDNAPPED by the Euro bad guys themselves. Then got free.
What a day.
Likewise, Jack Bower twice was running around doing the semi-bidding of the bad guys because they'd taken his daughter captive, once around 9am and once around 10pm.
There was also a notable stop at the end of episode 13, where everything came to a temporary halt, with the assassination attempt on Palmer foiled and Bower's family freed and I felt that put a notable crease in the show's plotline. I can only assume that 24 was originally only greenlighted for 13 episodes, which is pretty standard for a Freshman show.
Overall, it was really interesting to see a TV show down in this very different manner. Given that most shows improve from season one to season two, I'll be quite interested in seeing what they do with this format the second time around. I'll also be interested in seeing how they treat the time between seasons. Because of their format they have the ability for notable changes to occur from one season to another; I hope they're going to take advantage of that.
The show's a thriller, and thus doesn't really have much subtext to talk about, but it did a decent job of being a thriller, and for 90% of even the good shows out there, you can't ask them to rise above their genre.
Next up on the DVD rental list: Six Feet Under.