A few months ago my sister and I decided for old times sake, and because wanted to give my heart a work out, to revisit 24 with the hopes of watching a season in a day. We never really managed to pull this off however a braver friend of mine and I tried it with season 5 last week, rather unsuccessfully as we also didn't manage to complete it, lately I get tired at 11 and wake up at 6 so I am not surprised I couldn't match my marathon skills of my university days in my current condition. Watching it was quite a lot of fun as it just never stopped with the suspense, major plot twists and stupid actions of Kim that ended up causing everyone a ton of trouble. I find that as I have been going through the seasons I have learnt some very useful lessons from the show.
**Edit: I recently finished watching all the seasons. I started this post ages ago but was distracted and recently I was reminded of it because they were filming parts of Season 9 in London.**
Things I have learnt from 24
- As President you probably need to be more worried about people in your own administration than the terrorists.
- As a terrorist, you will get away with pretty much everything, albeit by the skin of your teeth, until the small hours of the morning of your big attack. Then things will probably get a little shitty. (This rule applies less the lower down the food chain you go.. I'm looking at you Henchman 1).
- If you decide to switch sides and help Jack with his investigation you will die.
- If someone starts acting out of character, one of their loved ones has been held hostage and you are about to be ambushed.
- If someone holds one of your loved ones hostage and threatens you, unless you tell Jack Bauer immediately, you will die.
- The President and Cabinet will not understand the scale of a nuclear attack on Los Angeles until a stick man graph is presented to them.
- If you think someone looks shady on first impression then they probably are.
- There is always a mole.
- If you are caught, just talk because Jack Bauer tortures everyone, even the President got tortured by Jack Bauer.
- No body believes Jack until he has already basically done everything to stop the attack himself .
- Everything that you try and cover up will come back to bite you in the ass.
- Terrorists never pay for anything properly, If you perform a service for them you will probably die.
- You can never trust your family, they will screw you over or show up at the most inappropriate time to bug you, freak out, mug you, become a hostage, try to kill you.
- Dating Jack Bauer will almost certainly land you as a hostage at some point.
- If Jack tells you to do something just do it. Or you will probably die.
- If Jack tells you not to do something don't to it for the same reason as above.
- If you go on a mission with Jack you are quite likely to die.
- If you are caught and questioned come clean immediately. They will find out one way or another.
- The entire Whitehouse staff is waiting to cry incompetence and fire the President.
- Jack has to get fired every season for a while to get the dirty bits of his job done.
- Never run away from the Chinese.
- No matter how shitty your phone is you can still view live satellite imagery and use complicated tracking programs.
- Jack can come back from the worst situations.. Torture, gunshot wounds, deadly viruses, death.
- If there is trouble Kim will find it.
- A CTU car boot has everything you need to launch a minor assault on any establishment.
- If Jack needs you passed out for whatever reason 'don't fight it'.
