"Hurt" by Criticism, 24 Boss Plans to "Reinvent" Show

Jeromey Balderrama

Story I got from Digg: “It hurts to hear the criticism,” said executive producer and writer Howard Gordon, “But it’s reinvigorated our determination to reinvent the show. This year could be seen to be the last iteration of it in its current state.”

read more | digg story

Update: I meant to write about this when I posted it, but school and work got in the way.

I thought this was an interesting story, especially given my feelings about how 24 is doing this season. I fell in love with 24 almost 2 years ago, and caught up with seasons 1-4 in a matter of weeks. Throughout season 5, I hosted 24 night at my house, where a group of us gathered weekly and watched 24. We loved the show and we loved Jack Bauer. It was an awesome event, we even had a little mini-party for the season finale. It was great!

Season 6 is coming and going, and it really hasn’t lived up to it’s reputation from the last five seasons. The first four episodes were awesome, but afterwards it became a conglomerate of the same recycled plot lines and soap operas. Would it kill the show to not have a presidential struggle, or do a back-ground check on their VP candidates? The show hit a ultimate low a few weeks back when it resolved the ongoing crisis and introduced a completely unrelated plot. It’s almost literally as if the writers ran out of ideas and just picked some crap off the cutting room floor and stuck it in an episode.

The soap opera moments have been atrocious as well. We have a 24 Drinking Game that we play, and one of the drinking moments is when something “soap opera-ish” occurs. We finished our drinks in the first half of last week’s episode because of that stupid item – what gives? It was almost as if we were at Desperate Housewives night.

It pains me to say this, but 24 has become irrelevant – and I’m not sure what’s going to bring the show back. In the story I referenced the producers talk about “drastic changes” to next season to resurrect the show. I’m not going to hold my breath right now, especially as they’ve pissed away virtually every good plot-line they had: Jack escaping from the Chinese, the Bluetooth guys from last season pulling the President’s strings, Jack’s dad, the “reaction to an attack” angle – all of it was gone thanks to dull writing.

I’m not sure if they’re going to be able to bring the show back. I used to play my night around watching 24, and at this point I’m lucky to catch the new episode this week. We’ve even considered rescinding the “24 Night” declaration on the evening and calling it “Heroes Night”. Heroes is mopping up the floor with 24, directly stealing from 24’s target audience. One can’t blame 24 for being good, they had their chance when NBC decided to put all of their shows on winter vacation in February-April. 24 could have brought it’s audience back, now they’ll just be lucky if they don’t lose them forever.

How do they fix this show? I don’t know if there is a magic formula, but there are a few things I could think of:

  • Get the show out of Los Angeles – move it overseas for a season. It would be cool to see CTU conducting a mission in Europe or Russia.
  • Stop the Presidential drama and instill a strong president – David Haller was a really popular choice. Wayne Palmer had potential in the beginning of the season, but at this point he only reminds us just how much we miss David.
  • Go back in time – This way they could bring back some of the popular characters that made the show what it is. Chloe can only do so much, and the other characters seems hallow and whiney
  • Stop the Soap Operas – The show’s supposed to take place over one day, is it too much to ask that people don’t hook up and break up in the matter of a few hours? and finally…
  • REMEMBER THE SEASON TAKES PLACE OVER 1 DAY: The first season made this concept magical. The second season did a decent job of staying true to form, but over the last few seasons the concept of 24 episodes = 24 hours has deviated far too much. There have always been little continuity problems, but all of that went out the window this season. All too often car trips across town take 3 minutes, people recover from injuries in 10 minutes and things that were crucially important 2 hours ago are all but forgotten. 24 can’t be 24 without being in real-time, and make it believable!

I’m going to keep turning in. Maybe not live, maybe not with a large group of friends, but I’m not ready to completely abandon the show yet. However, season 6 has made it hard to hold on.

NBA’s ridiculous playoff scheduling screws Nuggets fans

Jeromey Balderrama

A few weeks ago I received an email from the Denver Nuggets’ mailing list, promoting a play-off ticket presale.  I was pretty stoked that there were tickets as cheap as $12 and plentiful at $28.  I sent a round of email to a group of friends and bought up 7 playoff tickets for Game 4 of the first round.

The tickets have arrived and after the Nuggets upset the Spurs this evening, I should be excited about going to the game.  However, a week out from game 4 I’m sitting here worried and pissed off at the NBA and their scheduling honks.

If you go over to the NBA scheduling page, you’ll see that all of the Game 4’s have been assigned a date and time – except for the Nuggets/Spurs and Wizards/Cav’s.  The NBA was gracious enough to schedule the game on a Monday – but yet still doesn’t have the time posted. It’s obvious they’re hedging their bets to see which series appears more competitive and will get them their prime time slots.  I understand how TV ratings work and realize they have business decisions to make – but could the NBA be any more disrespectful to their hard-working fans who have bought tickets to the game?

Personally, putting it on a Monday night complicates matters for my friends and me.  We’re trying to coordinate work and class schedules, and there are some people who simply cannot be there at the 6pm start time (the start time for the other games).  I’m not arrogant enough to expect the NBA to conform to me needs – but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to give you the freaking game time a week prior to the event.  I could cut them some slack if this was game 5-7 (those “if necessary” games), but give me a break, this game is set in stone – supposedly.

If the time doesn’t work, that’s fine – but give us time to be able to get rid of these tickets if we need to.  If I have to flush even one ticket down the toilet… that’s too much.  The NBA is arrogant enough to think every game warrants national TV coverage, resulting in 3-4 day gaps in between games.  Game 1 of the Nuggets/Spurs was Sunday, and Game 3 will take place almost a week later – for a 7-game series?!?  The length of the playoffs is just an absurd publicity grab.

None of the other major sports leagues screw their home fans during their playoffs as much as the NBA.  The NFL gets national TV coverage, but there are only 12 teams (and 4 games played in each round), and they take place on a weekend.  Major League Baseball – for it’s many faults, concedes that their first few rounds do not warrant prime-time coverage and play the games during the day.  At least they communicate dates and times to their fans.

I really want to like basketball and the NBA, but their general disrespect to the fans in their arenas make it very difficult to like these teams.