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DVD 24 - Season Two
Jack Bauer is having another one of his "very bad days" in the second season of the groundbreaking real-time thriller 24. Once again the hours are ticking by with more guaranteed cliffhangers than a convention of mountain climbers. Holed up in a Los Angeles condo and estranged from his daughter, Jack is no longer on the government payroll; unfortunately for him, this small fact doesn't seem to matter to President David Palmer and the NSA, who call him back in to the CTU and give him 24 hours to infiltrate a terrorist organization that is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the city of angels. All Jack wants is to get his daughter out of the city, unfortunately Kim's new employer, the abusive father of the child she is nannying, has other ideas.
Fans of the original won't be disappointed, as there are more than enough shock moments in the first few hours to hint at the climactic build-up to come, while newcomers can quickly get involved in the lives of Jack and his family. There are some new characters to bolster the veteran cast and, interestingly (although not surprisingly), Jack's character has taken an altogether darker, more psychopathic turn. The danger the characters find themselves in also has a much more global, not to mention topical, impetus, grounded as it is in the war against terrorism. Although the territory is more familiar this time around, this second season is just as much a high-tension, taut, adrenalin-fuelled ride as the first, and one that will have you glued to your TV for the next 24 hours. --Kristen Bowditch
I guess this show just isn't for everyone. I enjoy exciting drama, but for a show that's supposedly based in reality, excitement must be tempered with believability. There are simply too many moments in this show that made me cry out, "Nope, I don't buy it." The first season was the same way, but I stuck it out to the end just to see if it would surprise me with a good ending. It didn't. A few years later, I started watching the second season just to give it another chance. Alas, the bounds of believable fiction were breached all too often, like in the following cases:
1. Nina Myers, the traitor from Season 1, is brought back in the midst of the nuclear crisis and offered a full pardon in exchange for valuable information about her criminal contacts. If Nina had such intimate knowledge of her criminal cohorts, why didn't she offer this information when she was first caught in exchange for immunity? Was she just waiting in prison for the right moment to betray her associates? She had no reason to keep this information to herself; she had been caught and therefore had nothing to lose and everything to gain by ratting out her contacts.
2. David Palmer's ex-wife Sherry is brought back inexplicably to help her husband deal with the crisis. After showing that she was obviously a conniving reptile of a woman in the first season, why would a rational man like Palmer allow her to help him with a nuclear crisis? The answer: the producers wanted to bring back yet another familiar face. And, surprise surprise, Sherry once again turns out to be plotting something behind her husband's back! This was a one-shot character (much like Kim Bauer), and I was very unhappy to see her again, especially after how annoying she was in the first season. And furthermore, we are expected to believe David Palmer is a good president, yet all of his advisors turn out to be scheming behind his back. Should we trust a man with such obviously poor judgment of character to be the "good" president he is shown to be on the show?
3. Resorting to extreme measures to find the nuclear bomb before it goes off, Jack Bauer is forced to execute a prisoner and cut off his head, threaten to execute a terrorist's family, and even more abominable acts in the name of national security. I didn't buy for one minute that it was the "only way to get to the bomb". What kind of incompetent counter terrorist agency is so lacking in informants and resources that, in the event of such a crisis, they can't think of ANY other means of finding a nuclear weapon? If the government was really able to do the things that Jack Bauer and Company do in this show whenever they felt there was a crisis, we'd all be in trouble.
4. Apparently, there are a total of about four agents working at CTU. Sure, there are plenty of background people constantly bustling around the office, talking on phones and working on computers, but whenever a situation arises that requires the services of an agent, the task always falls to either Tony, Jack, George Mason, or an unnamed black man who is killed the moment he begins to show signs of a personality. Everyone is always supposedly busy, but busy doing what? They couldn't be running down leads or doing anything not related to the nuclear crisis, because evidently they have no leads other than the ones Jack Bauer turns up, and I find it hard to believe that any other case would take precedence over the bomb.
5. Palmer enlists the help of a Secret Service agent that is a former Green Beret to torture the head of the NSA for information about the conspiracy against Palmer. The legal and ethical problems with this aside, the show seems to imply that because the man is an ex-Green Beret, he must possess a great deal of knowledge on how to torture people. Why on earth would a Green Beret know this? Members of the U.S. military are not allowed to torture enemy prisoners by virtue of the Geneva Convention. I think most writers have no understanding of how the government works and they merely assume that shadowy organizations must have intimate knowledge of torture tactics.
6. Where is the humor? I grant that there's a crisis going on, but this was also true in the first season when the danger did not involve everyone in Los Angeles. Real people don't constantly act stone-faced and humorless, not even if their job is important. I only think there should be some humor to give the characters more depth, and to make them more likeable and relatable. Because no one so much as ever cracked a smile, I found myself incredibly distanced from the characters and ultimately didn't really care what happened to them. Why should I? When the writers and actors take such pains to let us know that there is nothing real or believable about the characters, it becomes difficult to feel anything but indifference towards them.
These examples, and many others, ultimatley make for a show that is never boring, but which is so unbelievable that it becomes hard to enjoy it or want to know what happens next.
Yes, I know torture is now legal in the U.S. and all that. Still....
While this chapter of "24" is very suspenseful and well made, I found the graphic, gratuitous scenes (at least 3 of them) of torture, twice perpetrated by the putative "good guys," too sadistic to stomach. They put me off to the point where I will no longer watch this show.
WOW this blew me away...
......the first time I was exposed to 24 was during the season premiere of Season Five. I was at a friends house and he was flipping through the channels and this was on. I loved the show from then on, but knew I would have to get caught up to know what was going on. I never watched an episode again for a long time (because I always worked when it was on). Recently one of my friends was telling me how great a show 24 is, and a store had the Seasons 1-4 on sale for $16, so I decided, why the hell not. I bought Seasons 1-3, then four and now 5. This is by far the best TV show I have ever watched. You will litteraly get hooked on it, as you will want to know what is going to happen next. It's full of plot twists and will not put you to sleep, it is very good. Although Season 2 was not as superb as the first one, it was still outstanding. This one is about a nuclear bomb that is set to go off in Los Angeles. The only thing I did not like was the last four episodes there were times when it seemed something could go wrong, and it did times five!!! Other than that it was great. I would give it 4.5 stars. Now I'm off to Season 3!!!
Such a simple idea--yet so fiendishly complex in the execution. 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes places over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes (well, 45-minute episodes if you subtract the commercials). Everything takes place in real time, which means no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, no handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked so things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time. Not that easy.
Creator Robert Cochran and his team of writers and directors have done an impressive job of putting the jigsaw together and keeping the tension ratcheted up high, as federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) runs around L.A. trying to stall an assassination attempt on an... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 17 September 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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There's not one cougar to be found in 24's dynamic third season, and that's good news for everyone. After Jack Bauer's daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) survived hokey hazards in season 2, she's now a full-time staffer at CTU, the L.A.-based intelligence beehive that's abuzz once again--three years after the events of "Day Two"--when a vengeful terrorist threatens to release a lethal virus that could wipe out much of the country's population. Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) attempts to broker a deal for the virus involving drug kingpin Ramon Salazar (Joaquim de Almeida), whose operation Jack successfully infiltrated at high personal cost: to maintain his cover, he got hooked on heroin. That potentially deadly triangle--drug lords, addiction, and bioterrorism on a massive scale--sets the... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 07 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Oh boy. Here we go again! Just another exciting day in the life of 24 super-agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). The season kicks off with a deadly terrorist strike resulting in the kidnapping of his new boss, the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane). Although a fired, ex-employee of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), it is no surprise who is going to shift into full gear to bring the terrorists to justice. However, it doesn't take the super-agent long to discover the kidnapping of his boss is part of a much larger plan, master-minded by Habib Marvan (Arnold Voslo) the middle eastern terrorist cell leader the US government has been trying to track down for years. Considered by many to be the best season of the first four, 24 - Season 4 is a definite... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 06 December 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Arguably the series' best season to date, season 5 of 24 literally starts with a bang and never lets up, with an intricate executive-level conspiracy to control Central Asia's oil supply. Piling crisis upon crisis in an escalating series of deceptions, twists, and deeply hidden agendas, the day-long ordeal begins with a devastating political assassination connected to a disgraced former CTU agent (Peter Weller) and a radical group of Russian separatists (led by British actor Julian Sands) threatening to release lethal nerve gas in Los Angeles to protest a U.S./Russian treaty about to be signed by President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin). As Logan's unstable wife Martha (Jean Smart), Secret Service agent Aaron Pierce (Glenn Morshower), and chief of staff Mike Novick (Jude... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 05 December 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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He pops pills, watches soaps, and always, always says what's on his mind. He's Dr. Gregory House (Emmy nominee Hugh Laurie, Blackadder). Producers David Shore, Bryan Singer, Katie Jacobs, and Paul Attanasio haven't rewritten the hospital drama--at heart, it's a cross between St. Elsewhere, ER, and C.S.I.--but they've infused a moribund genre with new life and created one of TV's most compelling characters. More than any previous medical procedural, it resembles Attanasio’s underrated Gideon's Crossing, but House is lighter on its feet. As fascinating as he is, the show wouldn't work as well if it were all House all the time (that would be like Sherlock Holmes without Watson or Moriarty). Fortunately, he's joined by an intriguing cast of... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 30 August 2005 Usually ships in 6 to 10 days
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