24: Season 2

Season two has just as much excitement and suspense as season one. Terrorists want to blow up a nuke in LA. The president turns to Jack Bauer to solve the problem. The president is helped by his own integrity but faces real problems of backbiting within his administration. CTU has the same problem. The president is great. I wish we really had leaders like this.Episode Synopses appear below:8 AM - 9 AM - Jack Bauer has left the CTU after the death of his wife. He's having a hard time coping. Things are not made any better by his estrangement from his daughter. Senator Palmer from the last season is now President Palmer. When word comes that an Arab terrorist cell has a nuclear device set to go off in Los Angeles TODAY, the president insists that Bauer be brought in on the case. He is reluctant but does so on the condition that his daughter is taken to safety outside the city. President Palmer still seems to be the honest and upstanding guy he was in the last season. He lays down the law to the suspect government without equivocation but also refuses to jump to any conclusions. Jack, on the other hand, is even grittier than before. He will do what it takes to save the city even if it means executing a child molester. The daughter, Kim, continues to further demonstrate her propensity to hook up with losers. She works as a nanny for a little girl. The husband obviously has the hots for her but is a wife beater, daughter beater and nanny beater. It's going to be another long day.9 AM - 10 AM - Kim and the girl she watches over manages to make an escape but the psychopath is after them. There is no indication that he is involved with the terrorists at this point but he's enough to ruin anyone's day. Jack makes contact with the first level of bad guys by cashing in on an old acquaintance who thinks he's another crook. They are suspicious but Jack manages to convince them in a rather unorthodox way that violates lots of civil rights. They are still suspicious. CTU has problems as well. One of the functionaries is frightened enough that she has a hard time doing her job. Worse is the guy who runs the unit. He is frightened and making a beeline to get out of the potential blast radius. That leaves CTU without an effective head. The President has his own problems. He doesn't want to panic the nation but a reporter is suspicious and about to blow up the whole thing on TV. Convincing the reporter to keep the story under wraps is not easy so he gets some civil rights violated as well. There is also a bride with problems. She is about to get married to a guy who might be one of the Middle East terrorists. The supposition is that he is using her as a cover. The bride's sister is suspicious and trying to check up on him but has no real reason to connect him to any plot.10 AM - 11 AM - The psychotic father has reported Kim Bauer as a kidnapper. Kim is still trying to get herself and the girl away from him. She finally calls her father for help but it is a bad time. He is in the car with some terrorists on their way to blow up CTU. Since he is acting weird, she freaks out and calls CTU for help; she takes a bus for CTU. Jack can't get in touch to warn CTU that they are a target because the terrorists have interrupted the phone line. So Jack calls the president to try and get a message through to evacuate the place. Since the president is in the middle of a press conference, a staffer takes the call. She wants to let the president know immediately but another staffer with his own agenda has other plans. He calls CTU to get them to pass all their data along to them. This takes them off of jobs that they need to be doing. As Mason, the cowardly director, tries to flee the blast area, he gets a call to check out a lead. He does divert to check it out and finds part of the trail but is ambushed. These terrorists seem to be of the domestic variety instead of the Arab one. The sister of the bride learns that her suspicions are well founded but is told not to tell anyone else for fear of her endangering her family and herself. She is a poor actress (in this context) and everyone wonders why she is acting so strangely.11 AM - 12 PM - The terrorist bomb got the CTU. Many are dead and others are dying. Kim was walking in right as they started to evacuate. She is alive but the little girl she is caring for starts having seizures because of the beatings from her father. Kim is now a suspect in those beatings. Jack gets the location of the next contact up the line but while doing so has to eliminate those he is with. The guys who blew up the CTU are a bunch of home grown nuts. They know nothing about the nuke and have been duped. Jack finds the guy but he is holed up in his own personal bomb shelter. When he finally believes the plot is real, he takes drastic action but not before he gives Jack one more clue that leads in an unexpected direction. Mason the cowardly leader of the Los Angeles CTU finally shows some guts. Since he has been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, he has nothing to lose and heads back to take charge and make difficult choices. The president is having trouble with those closest to him. One of his advisors is trying to keep the president in the dark and the other wants to tell him. The one who wants to block it has political and personal power motives. When the president finds out he's been kept in the dark, he is rightfully hacked. The bridegroom continues to act suspiciously and his soon to be sister in law gets more and more paranoid. The private investigator she hired has set off some red flags and he is taken into custody by the feds.12 PM - 1 PM - The child beating father manages to intimidate both Kim and the mother to keep them from saying anything bad about him. Kim finally manages to get in touch with her father who tells her what is going on. He swears her to secrecy and makes her promise to leave town. She agrees and then promptly gets others involved in an effort to rescue the little girl from the hospital. The lead provided by Jack's previous suspect leads right to Nina, the mole from last season who killed his wife. She has information but will not say anything until she gets a presidential pardon. The president is inclined to capitulate because the options are worse. Jack learns about this and strong-arms Mason into letting him handle the interrogation. The president is also leaning on the country suspected of funding the terrorists. Against the advice of all, he agrees to an intelligence exchange. As the ambassador is leaving, though, his chopper crashes and he is killed. Meanwhile, CTU is onto the bridegroom and sends someone out to interrogate him. Naturally, the bride freaks out.1 PM - 2 PM - Jack is interrogating Nina to find out more about the plot. His strategy is to convince her that he will kill her and does not care about the consequences. It's effective but gets only limited results. Jack has to take her to meet the next person up the chain. The president is trying to keep the lid on things but having a staff that is infighting among itself proves frustrating. It is even worse when the ex-wife from hell shows up sowing more distrust (which is probably deserved) and making another power grab for herself. The plot to free the child from the hospital gets complicated. Kim is much less adept at these matters than her father but she does show some promise. The interrogation of the bridegroom seems stalled until his parents show up. Then he finally gives up the goods on someone completely unexpected. He may or may not be telling the truth but the CTU agent buys his story.2 PM - 3 PM - Jack sets Nina up to meet her contact. Nobody trusts her. She leads them to her contact but slips her leash for a brief period. The contact is wounded. The president's administration is riven by suspicion. The ex wife is just making things worse. Its to run an investigation when you think that anybody is just waiting to stab you in the back. Mason's symptoms are getting worse. He brings in his son to effect reconciliation before he dies. Kim and her boyfriend are making their escape with the little girl and everything seems to be going in their favor when they get stopped for a traffic violation. The cop is gong to let them go when he notices something dripping from the trunk. It's not ketchup.3 PM - 4 PM - Kim and her boyfriend are arrested for murder. They and the little girl are taken back towards LA. She finally gets the sheriff to get in touch with CTU and Jack. He is on his way back with Nina and one of the terrorists and is distracted by his daughter's pleas for help. He gets further distracted when Nina gets the location of the bomb and kills the terrorist. She is now in a strong bargaining position. The president's wife is worming her way deeper and deeper into intrigue. She convinces the president to let her talk to the reporter being held. The original terrorists finally put in another appearance. They are trying to get their bomb to the right site. They are having a bad day as well. Car trouble and a terrorist who is having second thoughts mess up their original plans. The sister who hired the PI to investigate the Arab groom is worried since her dad is taken into custody. She gets the PI to hack into his files in order to clear him. Instead, things get more suspicious. There is a possible explanation; Dad claims to be an agent as well. It becomes moot when unknown parties abduct the sister and the PI. All the attempts at secrecy start to fall apart when the reporter somehow gets free and goes live with a panic story. About this time, the plane with Jack and Nina starts to fall out of the air.4 PM - 5 PM - Recordings show that the president's ex wife was not the one who let the reporter go. It was a fired staffer. This seemingly clears the wife but don't be too sure about that. The plane with Jack and Nina has crashed. They are both alive and search and rescue is on the way. Some well armed soldiers show up first and they are trouble. The only thing that might save Jack and Nina is his Special Forces background. This gives Nina a chance to get the drop on Jack and make more demands. She wants a pardon for the murder of Jack in return for information on the location of the bomb. The sister and her PI have been abducted by the head honcho terrorist. They want to know what they found in her father's files and torture IS an option. The only thing that might be in her favor is that the address given up by Nina might be the one where she is being held. The father of the bride is looking more and more guilty and the Arab groom is looking more and more innocent. That makes the bride believe that her fiancé has turned on her dad. It is a no win situation for grooms. At least the beaten little girl seems to be getting to safety. The same cannot be said of Kim and her boyfriend.5 PM - 6 PM - The distrust in the president's cabinet is raised even higher when Jack reports that he was attacked by US troops from a unit run by the NSA. The president is inclined to arrest the director but his ex wife persuades him to wait until he has more proof. She is making herself more and more valuable but the snake is not to be trusted. Kim and her boyfriend are being transported to the LA jail but manage to stage an attempt to get away. She does but others are not so lucky. Jack takes down the address given to him by Nina with a rescue squad. He manages to rescue the sister of the bride but the bad guy swallows a cyanide capsule and that source of information is lost. The big bad guy is still at large. Things start coming together but they are confusing. The bride has a big surprise for everyone, especially the groom.6 PM - 7 PM - The blushing bride is up to her eyeballs in the nuclear plot. Presumably her father is as well. There is also some suspicion about the sister but Jack thinks she is clean. The ex wife of the president is up to her eyeballs in the plot against the president's administration. She gets the head of the NSA, one of her cohorts, arrested. The president knows something is fishy. He authorizes some unsavory and extra legal methods to get information. An assault on a mosque known to have the head terrorist winds up without the quarry. Meanwhile, the bad sister (bride) manages to get the nuclear triggers. Kim doesn't get very far in her bid to get away. She finds a large cat who considers her to be a tasty and nutritious way to end the day.7 PM - 8 PM - The terrorist does not get away, as seemed would happen and Jack uses the same interrogation philosophy used by the president but his methods are even uglier. The bride's sister finds out that the bride has been implicated in the murder of the groom and the terrorist plot. She doesn't want to believe it but agrees to set up a cell phone trace. Dad doesn't want to believe it either but fills in some information about her past. Just when things don't seem to be able to get any uglier, Jack gets the information he needs. The bomb is at an airport. Evidence begins to mount that the rat in his office is his ex wife. That further ratchets up the tension. A rescuer finds Kim and likes what he sees.8 PM - 9 PM - The corrupt head of the NSA finally breaks under interrogation and confirms the location of the bomb. He also reveals the existence of a rogue US paramilitary force that will kill anyone who gets in the way of their getting the bomb. Jack finds them but they are dead. They have been executed by somebody. Kim's rescuer turns out to be a nut in his own right. He's a survivalist and has is own personal bomb shelter with quite an arms cache. He's been looking forward to a bomb burst for some time. Getting Kim into his bomb shelter raises expectations. Bureaucrats from CTU are worried about the bombed out base of operations and want to move things up to their office. George Mason, the irradiated head of the local office, steps forward and won't let them do it. They have too many operations in play at the moment. The higher ups have heard that he is no longer able to run things but he puts on a good face. He is failing fast, though. The NSA director, while being confronted lets slip that there is one more commando unaccounted for but fails to let them know that the ex wife is part of the plot. Jack and his team manage to stop the plane with the bomb but it is a decoy. The bomb is still in play. When the NSA director learns about this, he does point the finger.9 PM - 10 PM - CTU has the pilot of the plane but he claims that he was doing it for his family. They were to be paid when he blew himself up. He claims not to know about the bomb being a dummy or about the location of the real one. The sister of the bride has proven most helpful thus far but she is naïve. When she sees her sister, she runs to find her and try to get things "straightened out". She does not count on her sister being willing to kill her to get her badge. Luckily, Jack is not naïve. The president confronts his ex wife and, reluctantly, she admits that she has been plotting but she claims not to know about how the plans have unraveled. She might even be telling the truth but her track record is against her. Kim's rescuer gets more and more exited. He is looking forward to repopulating the world which doesn't need populating. His lies begin to unravel and she gets suspicious. George Mason comes to the point where he knows he can't do the job any more because of the radiation sickness. He bows out and turns things over to Tony and is a real class act. The episode ends with them finding the bomb. At least that is what we are supposed to believe. With this series, though, all we can be sure of is that everyone is probably wrong.10 PM - 11 PM - The bomb has a little less than an hour before it goes off. Jack decides to fly it as far from LA as possible. There are two options. One is to head out to sea and the other is to head for the desert. Each has drawbacks. The desert is chosen. It is a suicide run. Jack is planning on flying it himself but he has a stowaway. Because of that, he may survive after all. CTU has a diplomatic problem. They are cracking information on a terrorist hard drive which implicate three foreign governments. Many people are urging the president to prepare for war but there is the possibility that the allegations are false. Only time will tell and time is running out. Time does run out on the bomb with the inevitable consequences.11 PM - 12 AM - The bomb has gone off and Jack is alive. The big problem at present is that there is some belief that three foreign governments were part of the plot. Strangely enough, there is reason to believe him but there is much evidence to contradict him. There is the distinct possibility that the governments are being framed. CTU assessment gets garbled when it gets passed to the president and it looks like the US is going to war. Jack is asked to further interrogate the prime suspect to determine if he is lying and he agrees to do so but he is distracted by concern for his daughter. He gets an answer but the terrorist is assassinated moments later. Could this be the last member of the rogue US team? Whoever it is, he is offering Jack evidence that the recordings implicating the foreign governments are is faked. The price is breaking the bride's sister out of CTU. Kim thinks her dad is dead and she is trying to figure out what to do. She goes into a closed store to use the bathroom and the craziness is just beginning. People are trying to rob the store and the chaos factor grows.12 AM - 1 AM - Jack breaks Kate out of CTU in order to try and find out about the possibility of the evidence against the unnamed middle eastern countries being fabricated. This makes Jack a suspicious character in CTU's eyes. The cabinet is pushing for war but the president will not back down from his insistence that they must get this right. This makes others think he is losing his nerve and the plotting begins to thicken. Jack finds the missing 7th member of the strike team. He wants Kate as a hostage to ensure his getaway. He says he has evidence that a business cartel arranged the plot. Jack sees no choice but to make the transfer. All seems to go well then all are ambushed by parties unknown. The situation at the convenience store has gotten out of hand. A man has been killed and Kim is being held hostage until the police take the wife of the killer a safe distance from the city.1 AM - 2 AM - Getting out of the ambush set of for Jack and his source takes a lot of effort. He requires the help from inside CTU but his source is under suspicion. They manage to get away but the head guy is shot in the escape. Only he can tell where the information is and he refuses to go to a hospital. Eventually he realizes he is dying and starts to tell Jack where the information is hidden but he waits too long. Kim still thinks her dad is dead and has been taken into custody by the LA county sheriff's office. Now with events the way they are, the authorities are inclined to believe her earlier story but she is still in trouble for some of the escape attempt. The president is dealing with problems as well. His cabinet is being less than fully supportive and is second guessing him. The military is unsatisfied with the way things are being done and rioting is beginning to break out in the east. Shootings by the National Guard only make matters worse.2 AM - 3 AM - Jack finds a tracking device in the chip with the evidence. He sends the evidence with Kate and the foreign agent to get back to CTU. He takes the tracker himself to decoy the hostiles in a different direction. His distraction works but he gets caught. That sets up another torture scenario with Jack on the receiving end. The hidden powers want the evidence suppressed and a great deal of money rides on it. Things at CTU are starting to fall apart. Personal agendas and family relations are tearing working relationships apart. The president's cabinet has been summoned to a secret meeting. It looks like the Vice President is staging a coup.3 AM - 4 AM - The torture keeps getting worse for Bauer and he still refuses to give up the information the terrorists want. He does manage to get free and get a name for the higher ups. Kate and the foreign intelligence officer are about to head to CTU when they get caught by some hysterical people looking to kill Arabs. The guy gets a beating and robbed and the thugs get the chip. Kate offers them money if she can get the chip back and they take her to her house for the payoff. The president's loyal advisor is critically injured as she tries to escape the custody one of those holding her. The president is suspicious but unaware that his NSA director is at the heart of the plot. The vice president is as bad as the ex wife about being a power hungry @$$4 AM - 5 AM - Jack gets the chip and tries to transmit the data but the chip is damaged. He tries to get some CTU types to clean up the data but there is a power grab in process by some types working with the vice president. The president also has problems. He is on trial by his cabinet. The VP is going for broke and has perjured testimony ready. The vote is ugly. The results are uglier. The one slim hope is to find the guy who actually did the forgery work. Jack heads that way. What he finds is the ugliest thing yet.5 AM - 6 AM - The president is relieved and the VP takes over. Planes are on the way and the beginning of the war is imminent. Power struggles within the cabinet leave enough uncertainty for the president to get a Secret Service agent working on his side. Power struggles within CTU also hang things up. Jack's only source of help is relieved of duty. Jack has found not only the guy who doctored the tapes but the BIGGEST TRAITOR OF ALL. The traitor is still trying to wheel and deal and the geek is worried about the future. He doesn't want to go to jail and is frightened. He doesn't know whether to trust Jack or the traitor. He gives the traitor a knife and Jack the slip. Kim Bauer finally makes another significant part of the story line. She is laboring under the delusion that everything will now be fine and the bits and pieces are being mopped up. A deputy takes her to her former employer's house to pick up her things. The wife beater is hiding out there. Kim learns that sometimes life is nasty and survival is nastier.6 AM - 7 AM - Jack catches up with the fleeing computer geek but not before he manages to critically hurt himself. CTU sends a chopper to pick him up but the political types call it off before the pickup can be made. This has severe health consequences for the geek. That means that Jack has to rely on the traitor. He wants the rat to set up a meet with the big guys to try and get evidence. Jacks biggest problem besides being stuck with a traitor, and needing to stop a war is that he has been damaged by the torture. That lowers his effectiveness and he has to trust the least trustworthy person in the entire series. The VP's government needs a deal too. Some of the bombers have been spotted and the Turks want to talk to Palmer personally. The VP needs him to pretend like he is still the president. That is the only way to save the American aircrews. After showing a bit of spunk, Kim is now in shock over shooting the guy that wanted to kill her. Jack sends Kate to pick her up but Kim doesn't know or trust Kate.7 AM - 8 AM - The president's lawyer finds some corroborating evidence. This makes the president's chief of staff have second thoughts. He orders CTU to help Bauer. That gets Bauer's associates off the hook but Bauer is struggling to get to the meet and he thinks he is unsupported. When he finally makes contact, time is running out. He has to trust the arch traitor to wear a wire. Kim and Kate make it to CTU. Jack the traitor goes through with the meet live and on the air. They get the evidence but who knows whether the VP wants to accept it. That's a political problem. Jack's problem is that the stress causes problems with his heart. All of the goals seem to be met but things are set up for further trouble. The ending is the real surprise.

We have watched this series since maybe 2002, about four times now and still enjoy the show. Bought the DVD series years ago but the HD looks so much better on my awesome Samsung OLED 55-inch TV.

I've seen and re-seen all the seasons of 24 -- and am currently collecting the hours of Day8 (which I really wish was already over so I could watch them back to back!) -- and I think that this may be the best. Even when it's not necessarily my personal favorite, I think that it's objectively the best.The reason is that it has so much in common with the stock blockbuster disaster thriller (e.g., Armageddon, Independence Day), namely in the way it goes from all these disparate groups of people who are brought together by the potential disastrous event; and it also is the most, as it were, "Clancyesque" of the seasons. I always note how most action movies start right here, where the ex-agent has suffered some great loss before now, which is alluded to but we do not actually see -- yet in the case of 24, we have seen it, and thus does Day1 function as a sort of prequel -- and is the reason why he retired, yet he is called back in For This One Assignment, because no one else can. And Jack Bauer's role in this is just so much more "Leader of the Pack" rather than his later adventures, which often remind me of Die Hard (viz., after Day3) -- not that they are worse or better on that account (I love Die Hard(s)), but just different.I've also noticed that Sean Callery's music, something about the way he arranges it in this particular season, is way more intense than most seasons. There are certain sequences that I have not heard on either of the official soundtracks.

I thought Season 1 of "24" was an incredibly intense, superbly written thriller.And, indeed, it was!I did not think it possible, but Season 2 has actually FAR exceeded the writing and acting qualities, intensity and stress levels, and the perfect casting of the various characters over and above Season 1. As of this writing, I have two Episodes remaining to watch of Season 2. I did not watch this Series when it was first aired. All of my viewing of it has either been here on Amazon's Prime Video, or its popular competitor which no longer streams the Series. Way back when, a co-worked asked me ONCE, if I were watching it, but he never even hinted as to how incredibly good it was. Series like this are so rare, in that here is top notch, text book quality in EVERY facet of its production.I love it (and I hate it at the same time) for mercilessly reaching out of my Flatscreen TV, and grabbing me by the throat, and then not letting me move from my chair. "Binge watching" helps relieve some of the stress. I am somewhat glad that I didn't watch it and get hooked when it originally aired: I could not stand to wait a week for the next episode.My hat is off to the writers, cast and crew for this phenomenal, superbly-crafted Series.