Open Thread * “24″ is Back!!!

This is an OPEN THREAD (where you can bring up all the stories that are off-topic in our writers’ stories).

I am DVR’ing “24″ so I won’t miss LD’s premiere radio show tonight with Larry Johnson hosting! (You’ll be alerted 5 minutes before LD and LJ’s show starts.)

However, I’m excited about the premiere of “24″ for a couple reasons:

(1) We are proudly promoting the book by Jane Mayer, the exceptional reporter for The New Yorker. Larry is reading her book, and is engrossed in it. Last year, Jane Mayer wrote a critical article about 24’s misuse of torture wrongly portrayed as a reliable method for extracting information and confessions. (BTW: A number of Daily Kossacks told me that Mayer’s criticism of 24 was silly. Why? Because Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin just LOVE 24. Okay? Okay.)

(2) There is nothing more entertaining than watching an episode, then rushing to Dave Barry’s hilarious “24″ blog and read how he and his readers make fun of the show.

BELOW, snippets from Jane Mayer’s article and from Barry’s blog:

From Jane Mayer’s New Yorker story, “Whatever It Takes” — although it’s one of those articles so fine that it’s silly to quote from it:

The office desk of Joel Surnow—the co-creator and executive producer of “24,” the popular counterterrorism drama on Fox—faces a wall dominated by an American flag in a glass case. A small label reveals that the flag once flew over Baghdad, after the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. A few years ago, Surnow received it as a gift from an Army regiment stationed in Iraq; the soldiers had shared a collection of “24” DVDs, he told me, until it was destroyed by an enemy bomb. “The military loves our show,” he said recently. Surnow is fifty-two, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a “soul patch”—a smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip. When he was young, he worked as a carpet salesman with his father. The trick to selling anything, he learned, is to carry yourself with confidence and get the customer to like you within the first five minutes. He’s got it down. “People in the Administration love the series, too,” he said. “It’s a patriotic show. They should love it.”

Surnow’s production company, Real Time Entertainment, is in the San Fernando Valley, and occupies a former pencil factory: a bland, two-story industrial building on an abject strip of parking lots and fast-food restaurants. Surnow, a cigar enthusiast, has converted a room down the hall from his office into a salon with burled-wood humidors and a full bar; his friend Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, sometimes joins him there for a smoke. (Not long ago, Surnow threw Limbaugh a party and presented him with a custom-made “24” smoking jacket.) The ground floor of the factory has a large soundstage on which many of “24” ’s interior scenes are shot, including those set at the perpetually tense Los Angeles bureau of the Counter Terrorist Unit, or C.T.U.—a fictional federal agency that pursues America’s enemies with steely resourcefulness.

Each season of “24,” which has been airing on Fox since 2001, depicts a single, panic-laced day in which Jack Bauer—a heroic C.T.U. agent, played by Kiefer Sutherland—must unravel and undermine a conspiracy that imperils the nation. Terrorists are poised to set off nuclear bombs or bioweapons, or in some other way annihilate entire cities. The twisting story line forces Bauer and his colleagues to make a series of grim choices that pit liberty against security. Frequently, the dilemma is stark: a resistant suspect can either be accorded due process—allowing a terrorist plot to proceed—or be tortured in pursuit of a lead. Bauer invariably chooses coercion. With unnerving efficiency, suspects are beaten, suffocated, electrocuted, drugged, assaulted with knives, or more exotically abused; almost without fail, these suspects divulge critical secrets.

The show’s appeal, however, lies less in its violence than in its giddily literal rendering of a classic thriller trope: the “ticking time bomb” plot. Each hour-long episode represents an hour in the life of the characters, and every minute that passes onscreen brings the United States a minute closer to doomsday. (Surnow came up with this concept, which he calls the show’s “trick.”) As many as half a dozen interlocking stories unfold simultaneously—frequently on a split screen—and a digital clock appears before and after every commercial break, marking each second with an ominous clang. The result is a riveting sensation of narrative velocity.

Bob Cochran, who created the show with Surnow, admitted, “Most terrorism experts will tell you that the ‘ticking time bomb’ situation never occurs in real life, or very rarely. But on our show it happens every week.” … Read all.

Now, from Dave Barry’s blog on 24, some Barry humor samplers:

According to the Los Angeles Times, when the writers’ strike began only “eight or nine” of next season’s “24″ episodes were complete. Of course, that was also pretty much the situation last season, but they went ahead and broadcast 24 episodes anyway.

Posted by Dave on November 6, 2007 at 11:57 AM

………

24

In last week’s episode, Jack and company ended up on Sesame Street, and it was (and we mean this in a good way) weird, even for The Amazing Steve. Tonight, if we understand T.A.S. correctly, will be the final episode of 24 — Two Days Later. So let’s all give a big hand to Steve for all the amazing work he has done this season. We’ll see you all here again when the regular season begins and the professional writers take over.

Edgar is still dead.

Posted by judi on November 5, 2007 at 09:00 PM in 24 | Permalink | Comments (36)

October 29, 2007
24

In last week’s episode, Jack Bauer ended up on The Jetsons. Edgar is still dead. Ridley and I are somewhere on book tour. Give it up now for The Amazing Steve.

Posted by Dave on October 29, 2007 at 09:00 PM in 24 | Permalink | Comments (108)

October 25, 2007
OHMIGOD

Jack is on trial! CTU is gone! Jack is on his own! Except he has a hot partner! And TONY IS NOT DEAD! Which means…. there may be hope for Edgar!

YouTube link here (Thanks to Dock Rick)

Posted by Dave on October 25, 2007 at 09:18 AM in 24 | Permalink | Comments (15)

October 24, 2007
WHY DON’T THEY JUST SET UP A PERIMETER?

Smoke cancels 24 filming.

(Thanks to Annie Where-but-*cough/hack/wheeze*-here, who says, quote, “Wusses.”)

Posted by Dave on October 24, 2007 at 10:00 AM in 24 | Permalink | Comments (93)

October 22, 2007
24

In last week’s episode, Jack ended up in an episode of The Flintstones, where for a while he became Jack Boulder of the Cro-Magnon Tactical Unit, in which capacity he produced an early prototype of the taser, consisting of a piece of carpet and a pair of socks. Edgar is still dead. We give you now The™ Amazing™ Steve™, who has done a fine job with the plotting so far, without even once jumping the shark.

AND NOW, TONIGHT’s EPISODE — AND KNOW THIS: ALL OF DAVE BARRY’S REGULARS WILL BE LIVE-BLOGGING THE TWO-HOUR PREMIERE!:

And here you thought newspapers no longer had objective, reliable reporters!

Honestly!