24, or that's 168 for us mere mortals!

[sinanju]

So I rented the first disk of the second season of 24.  I've never watched that show, but I learned that Laura Harris--Daisy Adair on Dead Like Me--was in that season as Marie Warner.  I wanted to see that, so I rented the first disk to see if it was worth sitting through.

Wow.  Not, "Wow!  What a great show!"  More like, "Wow!  No wonder Jack Bauer is such a super secret agent.  An hour of Jack Bauer's life is life seven hours of my life.  It's like dog years."

The first episode covers 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. PST.  What happens in that time?

1. A terrorist suspect is tortured until he fesses up to the plot to destroy Los Angeles with a rain of nuclear fire (i.e., a nuclear bomb).  This is a bit of a cheat, though, because the torture was going on well before we started the 24 hour clock.  But I'll give them that one.
2. The information gets passed up the chain of command all the way to the President, who travels from picturesque "Lake Oswego, Oregon" (and oh how we locals love to see those majestic mountain peaks encircling placid, isolated, undeveloped Lake Oswego....) to a facility where he is briefed on the situation.
3. The President makes an international phone call to the Prime Minister of BadGuyLand and threatens him.
4. The NSA, CTU, and all the rest of the alphabet soup agencies are told to Deal With This ASAP.  Some employees are telephoned and told that their day off has just been canceled (presumably, a gopher is told to do this).
5. A big cheese decides that Jack Bauer should be called in to help.
6. Several fruitless attempts to contact Jack are made, but he's not done brooding.
7. The President himself calls Jack when all other attempts to get him fail--after enough time has passed to make it clear that only the President can move him.
8. Jack travels from his home to CTU HQ and is briefed on the situation (with time out to telephone his daughter and urge her to get the hell out of Dodge Los Angeles.
9. Jack has time to formulate a cunning plan to get in good with the bad guys, which will involve making use a federal prisoner.
10. His boss at CTU calls in a few favors to get the prisoner handed over to their custody.
11. The prisoner is physically transported to CTU HQ.
12. Jack has time to work up his fake background (albeit, they're simply doctoring previously existing files, so I'll give them this one).
13. Jack shoots the prisoner as part of his cunning plan.
14. Marie Warner (remember her? the whole point of my watching this thing?) and her very ethic (i.e., middle eastern) fiancee are getting ready for their wedding.  Her fiancee is fingered as a possible accomplice of one of the bad guys; Marie's sister agrees to spy on him in some unstated fashion.

And all this happens in just SIXTY minutes!  And I've completely ignored the subplots involving Jack's attempt to talk to his estranged daughter, who is working as a nanny or an au pair or something for Psycho Abusive Guy and will clearly be in peril from this lunatic for hours.

I've got the second episode playing now, but I'm not paying a lot of attention.  If Laura Harris shows up onscreen, I'll watch but...I doubt I'll bother with the rest of the 24 episodes.

Comments

[raine-wynd.livejournal.com]

According to IMDB, Laura Harris shows up:

"24" (14 episodes)
Day 2: 8:00 a.m.-9:00 a.m. (29 October 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. (5 November 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. (12 November 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. (26 November 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. (3 December 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. (10 December 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. (17 December 2002) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. (14 January 2003) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. (21 January 2003) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. (4 February 2003) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. (11 February 2003) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. (18 February 2003) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 9:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. (25 February 2003) - Marie Warner
Day 2: 7:00 a.m.-8:00 a.m. (20 May 2003) - Marie Warner

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. But...I have to confess that the fourth episode is on right now. I've been watching them while I netsurf. As long as I don't think too hard about the logistics of all this activity happening so fast, it's actually been pretty interesting. I may end up watching the rest of the season after all.