…and today is the longest day of my life.
It’s been a banner year for 24, considering that its latest season was delayed due to the writer’s strike. The show creators have been working hard to make sure that we don’t forget about Jack. It turns out that T.V. viewers are fickle. Plot-driven shows with an overarching storyline lost viewership in buckets after the strike, and 24′s highly serialistic nature wouldn’t have suited a mid-season breakup. Suits wisely decided to delay the show until next year, keeping the conceit of the show intact.
But how to keep people interested? Why, a T.V. movie, of course!
The November 23rd two-hour prequel isn’t exactly news anymore; the scoop first surfaced on blogs late last year. Filmed on location in Africa, it will explain what’s happened in the two-year gap between Seasons 6 and 7. Luckily for us, FOX has released a BULLETIN full of CAPITALIZED NAMES explaining the plot. (If you’ve managed to escape news of which “dead” friend will return, scroll quickly past this bit.)
Set in Washington, DC, “Day 7″ finds CTU dismantled and Jack Bauer on trial. Bauer’s day takes an unexpected turn when former colleague TONY ALMEIDA (Carlos Bernard) returns. Meanwhile, President ALLISON TAYLOR (Cherry Jones) leads the country alongside White House Chief of Staff ETHAN KANIN (Bob Gunton) and First Gentleman HENRY TAYLOR (Colm Feore).
A national security crisis prompts an investigation by a team of FBI agents including Agent JANIS GOLD (Janeane Garofalo), Agent RENEE WALKER (Annie Wersching), Agent LARRY MOSS (Jeffrey Nordling), Agent SEAN HILLINGER (Rhys Coiro) and security specialist MICHAEL LATHAM (John Billingsley). Although CTU is no longer, CHLOE O’BRIAN (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and BILL BUCHANAN (James Morrison) are back for another momentous day of shocking events.
So they found a way to shoehorn Chloe into the action, huh? Thank God. She brings much-needed comic relief to a show that’s often relentless and self-important. Cherry Jones as president sounds very weird to me, since I mostly know her as the rough-talking lady cop from M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. If she can work around the chain-smoking undertone in her voice, it might work.
Since then, more casting news has surfaced, including names like Robert Carlyle. Carlyle is hit or miss, certainly, with his lackluster performance in The World is Not Enough dwarfed by his painfully realistic role in 28 Weeks Later.
And what of Kiefer Sutherland, our star? His divorce with Elizabeth Kelly Winn is finalized, after five years of legal negotiations. Line up, ladies!
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