I think Season two was the best season simply because it took what season one got right and avoided the same mistakes.

I think over the course of the series there were only maybe a half dozen “money” moments: Nina’s flipslop, Teri’s death, Jack beheading a bad guy just to go undercover, CTU being blown up, jack shooting his boss…

Many of these events recurred, but obviously, every time you show you’re willing to go over the edge with something like these plot twists that were completely unthinkable and unexpected in a TV show at the time they first aired, they become expectable and predictable. CTU could blow up in season 8 (oh wait, it did) and It wouldn’t come as a shock. Kim could be killed and it wouldn’t come as a shock. There could be a mole in CTU (oh wait, there have been 47) and it wouldn’t come as a shock. Palmer getting killed was one of the only examples of the kind of shock 24 was great for in the later seasons. I don’t think many people expected him to return to the show let alone be killed immediately.

I believe there was an important note someone made once about how many people died in each season of 24 or were killed by jack or something and the number increases rediculously after season one, which was relatively realistic and restrained.

and I never bought the end either, the whole (most trusted person to the protagonist is the villain) revelation thing has become a tired cliche, and most of the characters actions didnt gell with the revelation. thats why most of this series has been a guilty pleasure for me. each season starts out great and ends great, but it never has been able to fully maintain that tension and suspense that it begins with. by the middle of the season it starts to spin its wheels finding somthing to keep it going, then their is the fact that their are so many things happen that somtimes the writers forget that all this is happening within a day and not a year.

if i were to create a favourite season list it would be like this

1 season 5 (most fluid storytelling of the whole series, nothing really annoyed me here (apart from the random tony false death)
2 season 4
3 season 2 (skip the kim moments and the season is a winner)
4 season 3 (they should have kept chase throughout the whole series)
5 season 1
6 season 7
7 season 6

Ill have to go back and watch it again, but I was fairly sure Logan sent Martha in some caravan that was about to be ambushed by people who were with Logan.

The problem with this show is just got so hokey with its twists and killing off of characters. You could never get emotionally invested in anybody cause they would kill them off the second youd start to like them (Chloe and Jack excluded) At least with Lost, they didnt start to kill characters off until the end, 24 made a series out of it.

The momoent of 24 I hated and despised the most, when Jack killed Ryan Chappele. You cannot, under any circumstance, have your hero execute one of his own people, a civilian at that, under threat. Like whats the deal with that? The writers couldnt come up with anything more creative? God Damn.

Season 5 was the most audacious, but Season 2 still appeals to me for its baseline simplicity.

What happened is that the US government couldn’t tip off Suvarov that he was being betrayed to the terrorists in order to spare the lives of LA citizens, since Bierko had the nerve gas. Martha simply gave Logan no choice by stepping into Suvarov’s limo without Logan’s consent.

When she was nuts, he tried having her commited, not killed.

Season 1 was intense, fresh, and incredibly well thought out. Then they killed Terri, which was an awful idea.

Season 1 – well-written and creative with some horrendous subplots ***1/2
Season 2 – competent and well-executed but never particularly striking ***
Season 3 – absurd first third, decent second third, phenomenal final third ***
Season 4 – excellent action, strong character work, great villain some terrible storylines (the terrorist cell family, the arms company shutting off a power grid and sending in special forces to cover up barely anything) ***1/2
Season 5 – very tense buildups with satisfying payoffs, intricate storyline, LOGAN ****
Season 6 – pure formula, occasionally great but mostly bad with a mundane final act – **
Season 7 – silly but fiercely entertaining ***
Season 8 – first two-thirds: average and formulaic ‘A’ plot execution, awful Dana Walsh subplot. second two-thirds: phenomenal writing and moral dilemmas (I appear to be the only one who completely buys Taylor’s endorsement of the cover-up) and impossible to predict **1/2

The big twist that the President had been in on the whole thing… man. Plus, you had great villians like the Russians played by the great Julian Sands and Mark ‘Romo’ Shepard, along with Peter Weller. When Jack kills Henderson for the deaths of Tony, Michelle and Palmer… it felt very personal and satisfying to the long time viewer/fan.

I also really enjoyed Season 3. Mainly because of the strong second half with Saunders, Chappelle’s death and the virus getting out. I don’t think this season gets nearly enough credit for what it did or tried to do.

As for favorite season. I guess Season Five was the best in quality. But my favorite was Season One. I just have so many fond memories of watching that season when the premise was fresh and new and you had no idea what to expect. You held your breath until the commercial. Yeah, the amnesia storyline was beyond lame. But I can forgive them for that now because they were just getting their footing on how to write for a 24 hour storyline. Besides, Season One had the best finale. Nobody in their right mind would have thought that the hero’s pregnant wife would end up dead…But that’s exactly what happened. Blew me away.

However, my single favorite moment in 24 history was from Season Four. When Tony returned to the series out of nowhere to save Jack and Audrey. I couldn’t believe I was so excited, literally screaming “Tony!!” That was a great moment.

Season 8 may have had a slightly slow start, but the slow buildup was ultimately rewarding. It remind me of Enterprise’s third season, which also had a slow start, and finally culminated with the Azati Prime episode and the season’s subsequent home stretch. Having Manny Coto and Brannon Braga as executive producers on both shows certainly helped.

I was never as critical of the whole Dana Walsh subplot as most people. Having gone through Erin Driscoll’s loopy daughter and Kim’s cougar hunt, Dana Walsh doesn’t even make the team of bad 24 plotlines.

As for the finale, i was pretty shocked with the decision to drive Jack this far past the ethical lines and turn him into judge and jury to the point of biting Pillar’s ear off, killing the russian diplomatic corps, and slicing Pavel open in a Saw-esque torture scene. But i understand it was necessary and it had that impact. You felt like 24 was drawing to a tragic conclusion.

It was almost funny seeing Logan screw up his own suicide attempt. As for Allison’s last-minute admission of guilt and refusal to sign the treaty, it had me biting my fingernails. That’s how good Cherry’s performance was. It kept me riveted. Kudos also to Necar Zadegan, who really managed to carry on past Anil Kapoor’s Hassan.

Howard Gordon really nailed those final scenes down. It had to be about Jack and Chloe. Nice nod to season 3, reminding everyone how much we used to HATE Chloe O’Brian in the early days. It’s amazing how far she’s come. Jack Bauer isn’t the only one who would trust her with his life. I would too.

That final scene had it all: brilliant Rodney Charters cinematography, Sean Callery’s unforgettable score, Kiefer and Mary Lynn, Howard Gordon’s simple-yet-meaningful words, and Brad Turner’s talent for putting the whole thing together.

Having the drone shut down on Kiefer’s face, and cut to an actual countdown instead of 15:59:57 was a stroke of genius as well. It was a final thank you to the fans for sticking out for 8 seasons. I never thought 24 would live past the Victor Drazen days, let alone nearly 10 years.

Where does Jack go from here? God only knows. Looking back, i don’t see any other possible ending for him. I know i’ll miss him. If there is a 24 movie, i only hope they carry the post-season 8 story convincingly. At least Howard Gordon is still a producer on the film.

The problem I had with the Dana Walsh situation was the way she was so passive when her boyfriend showed up and then suddenly turned into a cool and collected natural born killer when her flip was switched like a Cylon sleeper agent. I would not be the slightest bit surprised if that twist was written off the cuff rather than planned from the beginning.

I didn’t completely buy President Taylor’s descent. She completely lost the plot very quickly, throwing out every character trait that had been established about her, namely her integrity. She refused to cover up a murder orchestrated by her own daughter FFS. And I didn’t get why revealing the truth to the world would be a major derailment to peace. It would set back the proceedings sure. But it’s not going to change the resolve of the IRK’s leadership to that peace. It will only strengthen it as indeed it did.

By the way, Kamistan is such as silly name that even the writers recognised this. Most of the time they had the characters refer to it as “the IRK” rather than “Kamistan”. Think about it. Do you say “Pakistan” or “IRP”?

I recently saw season 4 for the first time. Now that was retarded. Every plot twist made zero sense, which just made the villain’s talent all the more frustrating. It was talent purely because the writers had written it that way (and they never did explain why exactly he was so well equipped and well coordinated that he could constantly outwit the combined intelligence forces of the United States.

The nuclear reactors plot in particular was stupid. It was based on the conceit that every sophisticated piece of technology is controllable via the Internet if only you can get through the firewall. It annoyed me when I saw season 7 with the stupid safety valves that couldn’t be opened and it doubly annoyed me here because even if the terrorists had control over every valve and pump in a nuclear reactor, what happened is physically not possible. You cannot remove a containment structure from the command line. They didn’t even pay lipservice to how the melted material got past containment. And the operators just sat on their hands when all they needed to do was physically cut all electrical power to the reactors through the complicated technique of pulling fuses. Without electrical power, nuclear reactors shut down because the control rods are pulled down under gravity and through hydraulic pressure or spring loading into the core.

And they were sure casual about a powerful nuclear warhead getting stolen. They just ambushed the convoy off screen like they were holding up a 7/11. Why were they even transporting nuclear weapons in the middle of a terrorist attack? They dropped a line about them moving when the alert level went up for security but that is simply retarded. When you have an active terror attack going on, how is it logical that it is safer to take the warheads from the safety of the silo to the open road with clearly inadequate protection. And where did the terrorist get such a formidable fighting force that they could easily overwhelm a United States military transport of a nuclear frakking weapon? How did the terrorist even get his forces mobilised? He didn’t know where the weapon was going to be? Did he have units stationed all across the country so they were ready to strike wherever?

And it sure if fortunate for him that when CTU arrived at that power station where the football was being held that they didn’t do anything to disable his unattended vehicles. It is also fortunate for him that CTU never learnt their lesson about blocking off escapes by subsurface means since that was his escape plan every time. Isn’t it also fortunate that whenever they assaulted his position, they didn’t use any tear gas? They could have caught him from the chopper if they’d done that. Damn CTU was retarded in that season.

As far as which season I liked best, if I could take the first 13 episodes of Season 1, that would be it (The first 13 were intended to be a complete story in-case the series wasn’t renewed). But yea, that Teri amnesia plot rivals the Cougar in stupidity. So I guess I would say Season 5, because it brought us one of the best villains of 24.

Almost the whole second half of the season was tense and especially gripping in moments like when Taylor was about to sign the treaty. Those episodes are 24 at its best.

I really liked the final scene of the finale with Chloe and Jack. If the writers can come up with episodes like the ones in the second half of the season, I would actually like to see it keep going. At least we have a movie on the way.

As for the best season, I’d probably give that award to Season 1. Although certainly flawed (as every season of 24 was in some way), I felt it had the best ‘charge’ of all the seasons. The first three seasons were all pretty fun though. 4 and 5 were also decent, although I preferred the first three more. Season 6 was just terrible. I actually really liked Season 7 (and Renee Walker at that point) and felt it was a return to form. Season 8 ended decently, although I agree it started off pretty poorly.

All in all, a fun show, but one I don’t plan on rewatching any time soon, if ever.