Unofficial 24 Page "Best Of" Clips #6 -- Teri's Death
Okay, so it's the start of the new year and most sites are lazily posting things about the "year in review" or "best of '06" or things like that. Here at the Unofficial 24 Page, we strive to do as little writing as possible until the show is back on since, you know, there will be a lot of episodes to dissect between January 14 and May.
However, I know how you/we are all jonesing for some 24 goodness and so over the next two weeks leading up to Season Six, I'll be posting some of what I consider to be the best clips in series history. I don't typically like lists and countdowns because they're just so arbitrary by nature... but I think this'll be fun so we'll start at number 6 and move downward. Why six? Why not?
Wow. I just remember saying "wow" over and over again as those seconds silently clicked away to 12 midnight and Season One came to an end. As you may or may not know, this was actually filmed as the "alternate" ending to Season One, with the intended, as-scripted, ending being Jack finding Teri tied up but alive.
However, the producers decided to do something dramatic and that decision was what really began to make 24 the show that it is. We began to expect drastic results and we came to expect to be surprised by what we were seeing onscreen. This is not easy to do on a television show as so much is predictable and as a writer, you sometimes aren't sure where to cross lines and where not to. Sure, it's easy to kill off fictional characters in theory, but writers become attached to characters just like fans/viewers do and when we lose them, it sometimes feels as upsetting as a "real" death. Sure, in the end, it's just television and your life goes on. But if you've been a die-hard of this show from the beginning, seeing Tony dead had to rattle you. Just like seeing Teri dead -- and knowing she was pregnant. That's something that also added to the tragic nature of the Season One finish. Not only had Jack lost his wife but he'd also lost his future child while nearly losing Kim. In the end, he lost Kim anyway as she has been more or less estranged from him since this time (aside from her time at CTU).
How different a life might Jack Bauer have if his wife hadn't been murdered? It's an enticing topic since we actually sort of got a glimpse of the man trying to put his home life back together at the start of Season One. Could he have continued to have a semi-normal home life? Probably for a while. But as this show has demonstrated over and over, having a job like Jack's does not let one have much of a semblence of a "normal" life.
Also notable in this clip is the use of flashbacks. It's the only time in the entire series that we see anything not in real time -- granted, it's split-screened and we're to assume that these are some of the thoughts running through Jack's head. However, as I said, it's the only time we see a flashback or anything out of sequence.
In addition, this is the first appearance of the famed "silent clock," that which everyone goes berserk over with regard to its use and who "deserves" one. It's a dramatic device and its use has been sparing over the life of the series and I love how it's done. It's rare and because it's rare and isn't "given" to every character who dies, it still holds the impact of that first time back in May 2002.
Back later this week with Number 5 in the Unofficial Countdown.
However, I know how you/we are all jonesing for some 24 goodness and so over the next two weeks leading up to Season Six, I'll be posting some of what I consider to be the best clips in series history. I don't typically like lists and countdowns because they're just so arbitrary by nature... but I think this'll be fun so we'll start at number 6 and move downward. Why six? Why not?
Wow. I just remember saying "wow" over and over again as those seconds silently clicked away to 12 midnight and Season One came to an end. As you may or may not know, this was actually filmed as the "alternate" ending to Season One, with the intended, as-scripted, ending being Jack finding Teri tied up but alive.
However, the producers decided to do something dramatic and that decision was what really began to make 24 the show that it is. We began to expect drastic results and we came to expect to be surprised by what we were seeing onscreen. This is not easy to do on a television show as so much is predictable and as a writer, you sometimes aren't sure where to cross lines and where not to. Sure, it's easy to kill off fictional characters in theory, but writers become attached to characters just like fans/viewers do and when we lose them, it sometimes feels as upsetting as a "real" death. Sure, in the end, it's just television and your life goes on. But if you've been a die-hard of this show from the beginning, seeing Tony dead had to rattle you. Just like seeing Teri dead -- and knowing she was pregnant. That's something that also added to the tragic nature of the Season One finish. Not only had Jack lost his wife but he'd also lost his future child while nearly losing Kim. In the end, he lost Kim anyway as she has been more or less estranged from him since this time (aside from her time at CTU).
How different a life might Jack Bauer have if his wife hadn't been murdered? It's an enticing topic since we actually sort of got a glimpse of the man trying to put his home life back together at the start of Season One. Could he have continued to have a semi-normal home life? Probably for a while. But as this show has demonstrated over and over, having a job like Jack's does not let one have much of a semblence of a "normal" life.
Also notable in this clip is the use of flashbacks. It's the only time in the entire series that we see anything not in real time -- granted, it's split-screened and we're to assume that these are some of the thoughts running through Jack's head. However, as I said, it's the only time we see a flashback or anything out of sequence.
In addition, this is the first appearance of the famed "silent clock," that which everyone goes berserk over with regard to its use and who "deserves" one. It's a dramatic device and its use has been sparing over the life of the series and I love how it's done. It's rare and because it's rare and isn't "given" to every character who dies, it still holds the impact of that first time back in May 2002.
Back later this week with Number 5 in the Unofficial Countdown.
posted by J Money at 10:06:00 AM
5 Comments:
Hey, J -- great choice for #6: I agree, Teri's death was simply jarring, even for myself who first saw Season I while Season II was on hiatus (had to catch up . . . they had "Nina" and "Sherry" pop up with pasts I didn't know about!)
I also agree that I enjoy the rare use of the Silent Clock, but I will still claim that out of 120 hours of 24 to date, SIX Silent Clocks (a Silent Clock to Teri, George, Palmer, Chappelle, Edgar, AND Tony) would have felt overdone, even if the Silent Clock was played during back-to-back episodes.
It would have said to me that Day V was no joke and we better start beleiving it.
Wait a moment -- I still ended up feeling that way. Oh well, I would have felt MORE like that.
Continuing the debate over the silent clock, if you want to keep it's value then it still should've been used for Tony not Edgar.
It's frustrating, because blatantly the death of Tony was a last-minute decision purely for shock-value, nothing else and a great character met a poor demise.
I disagree,there has never been anything more dramatic than Terry's death. When I first saw that scene,still unaware of the next season already being aired in the US (I'm italian),I thought that those "24" were truly the last hours of Jack's wife and the ultimate meaning of the show was that you can't really cheat death.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20006667,00.html
Stephen King writes about the first 4 episodes of season six: he's so good he goes on for two pages without adding spoilers buuuuuuuut ...
spoiler
spoiler
spoiler
Something bad may happen to Chloe. Maybe.
It's worth noting that '24' set the bar for succeeding shows (like "Lost" for instance) in terms of willingness to dispatch with key or popular characters. The challenge in recent seasons has been kind of a reversal -- is there anyone left around to kill off that we still care enough about? The list is dangerously short this season: Buchanan, Wayne, Chloe, who else?
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