posted
Title pretty much says it all. Even people I know who slodged through the last season of prison break and remained devoted to heroes through all of its brain-slayingly bad droughts and may even have a pathological addiction to bad television have finally had enough and cannot tolerate or abide the show anymore.
A plan to march to the studios and kill the writers was aborted last minute due to worries that we have no way of knowing that there are even any writers at all. Any notion of talent being present in any form, however misapplied, at this point in the show's run is purely conceptual. it is difficult to truly assume that sapient minds might plausibly be responsible for such a thing.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've been watching the season two DVD's lately, and think they are so very very good.
This is like a way worse version of season two. Even some of the plot twists are the same. *I haven't finished season two, so please no spoilers*
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
Well, there isn't going to be any more of it, since it's cancelled. So maybe the writers have been punished enough - I don't know as I haven't watched the show since season 6 (year of the Nuclear Family Feud).
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The first season of 24 was INCREDIBLE, and it just went downhill fast from there. We're trying to watch season 7 right now. Two people passed out even while the big thing happened early in the season. We just walked away about six months ago, and we're trying to work up the motivation to finish the remaining twenty episodes.
posted
Yes, they shopped it to NBC, but that isn't going to happen.
The last two episodes have actually been decent. That guy from office space wasn't bad as the parole officer. I was thinking he was doing a fine job, but that the whole plot was just so annyoing by that point that it was painful to watch every scene involving it.
I'm glad that plot finally got swallowed up by the main plot.
Chloe with a gun was great--they did a good job of making her say "Chloe" type things in that situation.
Here are the mistakes 24 made, as I see them (with one specific spoiler from past seasons, but definetly lots of vauge ones, and many spoilers from this season):
1. One year, for the sake of keeping things exciting, they just killed way too many people. 24 usually worked by, every season, introdudicing a few new people, developing some people who had previously been new, and then killing some people we had known previously. One year, the balance swung too far in the direction of killing, without developing new likeable people for us to care about in their place.
They tried to rememedy this by bringing back some people we already knew but didn't care too much about, and by bringing back some people we thought were dead, but it didn't really "take." I'd say the only new character they introduced in the last couple of seasons that a lot of people liked (including me) was Renee.
2. They misdiagonosed the problem. Rather than realzie the show was about CTU, when they tried to fix the problem, they did it by focusing the story more on the white house. However, the white house hasn't been interesting on that show since Logan stopped being a regular. They banked a lot on tying the Jack Bauer plots and the White House plots closer together and it just didn't work. I actually think they were all banking on Cherry Jones being able to be as compelling as President Palmer, and to be be perfectly honest, I don't think she rose to the occasion.
3. When they tried to fix the problem, it was like a reboot. So this season, with CTU back, they've had to completely recast the entire place. They needed us to care about the new characters, and they needed us start developing an interest in them. Instead, though, they totally blew it by having all the time at CTU be focused on a huge distraction that would have only been interesting if we already cared about any of the people involved. Since we don't, it's just annoying and distracting.
4. They let Jon Cassar get away.
5. They got away from the heart of the show. The heart of this show has always been conflict. Both internal and external. If you watch season 1 and 2, the thing they do so well is not put two people together for a scene until those two people have reason to be in conflict with each other. Sure, if you read the dialogue, it might read like they're talking about all the same stuff they're talking about in the boring scenes this season--schematics and program loads or whatever--but character A was always given a reason to totally be in conflict with character B before they started talking schematics and program loads, so you were riveted because of what somebody could say.
But then, they'd withold the confrontation until it had changed meanings. For example, (okay, specific season 2 spoiler) when Tony wanted so bad to just call Mason out on trying to get out of town, and we totally agreed with Tony, they didn't let that real confrontation happen until after we, as an audience, knew Mason had already been exposed to the radiation and was going to die. So by the time Tony got to say it, we knew he was out of line, but we still liked him, because we remembered when we felt like he did. It created riveting conflicts, while at the same time keeping all of the characters symathetic (even Mason, by that point), and staying nuanced.
END SPECIFIC SPOILER.
Same with the moral dillemas that used to be all over this show. How does Jack save the Senator and his daughter? How does Jack stay undercover and still save the mall? What terrorist demands do you give in to to save people or buy time, and which do you refuse to give in to?
I think last season they really dealt with that question of where the line is with Renee, and that's part of what made it so interesting--this season they totally lost all nuance. Does Renee stab the rapist ten times or thirty times? That's not nuance, that's broad strokes.
That's why I get frustrated when people complain that they say that the problem on 24 is that people are tired of seeing Jack fight terrorists. That's like saying the problem on CSI is that there are too many murders or that nobody wants to see another investigation. If it wasn't a day where Jack fights terrorists, it wouldn't be a day they'd show us.
6. They got away from the premise of the show. Remember season 1, when a red light could affect the plot? People actually LIKE the 24 hour real-time premise, and the more the producers abandoned it, the more they lost what made this show different and appealing.
I firmly believe that the producers of the show have never quite seen the show the same way the audience does. Especially those of us who watch the show on DVD have always seen it not as 24 separate shows, but as one, long 24 hour story. I think the producers have spent too much time trying to make each episode more self contained (This is the week Jack tries to get the guy out of the air tight container. This is the week Jack tries to shoot his way to a phone.) and not enough time telling one big story.
In a way, this makes things EASIER for 24. While the CSI guys have to figure out a new character and new conflicts every week, 24 could, ostensibly, figure out just one scenario and then slowly develop it over the whole season.
This is also why it's HARDER for 24--if CSI has a miss, that scenario dissapears after a week, and next week they get to start over from scratch. If 24 messes up, we have to deal with it for a whole season.
When they try to bail out of a story early, and persue a different scenario, the audience cries foul, because they really do see it as one big 24 hour story, and they feel cheated, like a novel taking up a totally different storyline in the last third.
They should have stayed truer to the 24 hour scenario, exploiting the advantages that it gave them, rather than abandoning it and letting it become more of a generic action show.
7. They needed to be building towards something. I thought this was where they were going a couple of seasons ago, when they started having this little room of secret puppetmasters who were controling the actions of certain key characters. I was waiting for those people to turn out to be the grand schemers behind everything bad Jack had ever tried to prevent, and that the show would start to build towards Jack bringing down this huge, all-encompasing conspiracy that had been manipulating all of these people. Instead, the way they went with that--who those people turned out to be--was a total misfire for me. That whole thing died too soon for what they could have done with it.
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: and we're trying to work up the motivation to finish the remaining twenty episodes.
What happened?
quote:Is this what watching a soap opera is like? It has to be..the over acting, bad camera work, stupid plot twists…this show blows now. I mean really really blows. It’s not even watchable anymore, the only reason I kept watching last night was so that I could do this blog post. How sad is that?
quote:Let me also tell you who sucks behind the scenes:
Brad Turner who has been directing episodes since 2004. Milan Cheylov who has directed episodes since 2007.
Brandon Braga who has been writing episodes since 2009. Alex Gansa who also has been writing episodes since 2009. Patrick Harbinson who has written 3 episodes in 2010.
Many Coto and David Fury who have produced episodes since 2005. Ditto Brad Turner. Brannon Braga and Alex Gansa have been co-executive producers the last two years when this show has gone in the tank. Blame those idiots.
And Series Casting…which is absolutely horrible: Debi Manwiller and Peggy Kennedy…Please quit your jobs today. There was a specialty casting person who worked from 2002 – 2007..bring them back: Patricia Homan Davila.
Why do they have all these Indian actors playing Iranians? Is there anyone out there who is enjoying this season?
quote:Originally posted by Lalo: and we're trying to work up the motivation to finish the remaining twenty episodes.
What happened?
quote:Is this what watching a soap opera is like? It has to be..the over acting, bad camera work, stupid plot twists…this show blows now. I mean really really blows. It’s not even watchable anymore, the only reason I kept watching last night was so that I could do this blog post. How sad is that?
quote:Let me also tell you who sucks behind the scenes:
Brad Turner who has been directing episodes since 2004. Milan Cheylov who has directed episodes since 2007.
Brandon Braga who has been writing episodes since 2009. Alex Gansa who also has been writing episodes since 2009. Patrick Harbinson who has written 3 episodes in 2010.
Many Coto and David Fury who have produced episodes since 2005. Ditto Brad Turner. Brannon Braga and Alex Gansa have been co-executive producers the last two years when this show has gone in the tank. Blame those idiots.
And Series Casting…which is absolutely horrible: Debi Manwiller and Peggy Kennedy…Please quit your jobs today. There was a specialty casting person who worked from 2002 – 2007..bring them back: Patricia Homan Davila.
Why do they have all these Indian actors playing Iranians? Is there anyone out there who is enjoying this season?
brandon braga is a serial offender. he's a classic example of a really, really bad writer and/or creative developer.
i'm sorry, 'writer' needs to go in giant quote marks.
Aha. I wondered if the original writers were replaced. Since the show's become more and more hysterically Republican as time goes on, I have to wonder if Braga, et al, weren't brought in for ideological reasons.
And I mean even more Republican than when the evil ACLU lawyer stopped Jack from saving the country by torturing the evil Muslim. It's really gone off the deep end.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Well I remember that a lot of the lead producers of this (or something) went on to make that documentary about islam which was like a parody of right-wingers telling you 'you need to be wet-your-pants terrified of islam AT ALL TIMES otherwise they will come in the night and GET YOU'
maybe it's why they have to hire indians to play iranians.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Sad really -- it may not be as great as it once was, but it is better than most TV programs on the major networks today.
Posts: 232 | Registered: Jun 2004
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