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*Season 8* information and HoGo's view of season 7

In this article from tonyalmeidajunkie spoiler site, the interview originally posted by iF magazine, Howard Gordon announces that CTU will be back in play for Season 8, discusses the circumstances of Elisha Cuthbert's return to season 7, and promises

a big game changer.

for this week's episode of 24 in the US (read: episode 18). What I don't like is the sound of the paragraph in question, and that Jonas Hodges's storyline seems to be nearing an end already?? I'd assumed he was the last main villain for this season... anyway, without further ado:

Monday, April 13, 2009
CTU coming back in Season 8, but not in L.A.

Exclusive Interview: TIME IS RUNNING OUT AS '24' EXECUTIVE PRODUCER HOWARD GORDON TALKS SEASON 7 AND SEASON 8

iF gets the scoop on where the rest of the season is going, and gets a big surprise about what's happening in Season 8

Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) may have moved his base of operations from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. for the seventh season of Fox’s series 24 (which airs Monday's at 9:00 p.m.), but it still hasn’t kept the aggressive (and unorthodox) do-gooder from getting into all sorts of trouble.

From being investigated by a Senate committee for his unethical torture techniques, going rogue in order to escape the F.B.I. to save the lives of millions, to thwarting the bad guys who took the White House under siege, Bauer is back and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Did we mention he put his life on the line to prevent a bio-weapon from being leaked into the atmosphere – only to be contaminated himself?

With 24 easing into its last seven episodes, iF felt it was time to catch up with executive producer Howard Gordon about where things are going for the rest of the season and a little tease about what to expect in Season 8.

*

Where is the season going in the last seven episodes particularly with baddie Jon Voight?
This week is a big game changer. The Jonas Hodges [Jon Voight] story takes an unexpected turn as we’re growing toward the conclusion of the Hodges story, although there is more to come. In terms of the immediate threat he’s leveled against the country, that story gets resolved and spins off into something else entirely, which is really fun and intriguing. All I can say, this week is bound to make some noise.

How do you feel about this season as a whole now that’s it’s in the home stretch?
My expectations were low. I was more interested in surviving than thriving. We had such a rocky beginning, I was never able to get my head around how successful it was, because it was very difficult to get through. The time and effort we put into it has really shown. Honestly, you get so attached to the first of these episodes, that it’s not until you see it air in its entirety that you appreciate it. I think I was able to appreciate it for the first time when I watched it with my wife and son, and watching it through their eyes. My own estimation of the season has been elevated because of their reaction. And that reaction is matched by friends and acquaintances and critically people have responded positively to the show this year. The few times I’ve been on the message boards, there has been a debate of where this falls within other seasons and it’s up there at the top as the one, two or three on many people’s list – so that’s very gratifying.

What came to the fore watching the episodes sequentially?
I always knew Annie Wersching had a very challenging role [as F.B.I. Agent Renee Walker] and she’s made it very nuanced and it's required a lot of her. It didn’t have a lot of these conventional emotional hooks that make that kind of part easier to play. There was something a little abstract than emotional about the part. We don’t really know who this character is. We haven’t located her with a conventional locator such as a daughter, a wife or a girlfriend. She’s an F.B.I. agent, and the intimation with a relationship with Larry Moss [Jeffrey Nordling], but we really don’t know much about her and Annie has made her a three-dimensional character. Cherry Jones is amazing as President Taylor, and I guess, what I really think, some things I was concerned about like the invasion of the White House, a cyber terror weapon -- these are things I held my breath about, but I think came off really, really well.

I really enjoyed the back and forth Jack and Larry have had for Renee’s soul this season.
We are always looking for opportunities to ground the character and to have them respond. All the kineticness and action doesn’t mean anything unless you understand the emotional impact that the action is having on the characters. We’re very, very cautious of tracking the emotional lives of the characters, so revisited some of these beats that we introduced at the beginning of the show. Particularly the triangle between Larry, Jack and Renee. It’s emotional on one level, but it’s intellectual on another and has kind of more rhetorical points of views than emotional points of views. Jack is a guy who represents this, and Larry is a guy who represents that and Renee is someone who is caught in between those two world views. It goes back to this awareness we had in the beginning of the year. Jack is essentially a fixed object. We had to be very careful when you’re dealing with contrition and regret on Jack’s part, because we could find ourselves having Jack renounce the past six years and the last thing you want to do is have Jack realize, “wait a minute, my moral compass has changed.” It was identifying the price Jack has paid emotionally and his soul for the things he’s done. He’s very stubborn about having no regrets and how much he doesn’t appreciate being used as a political tool in the Senate hearings.

The relationship between Jack and Renee is different than just a “love interest.”
Again, I think what’s interesting, it’s two people having an affect on each other. Renee is humanizing Jack and allowing him to take that step back into humanity, that he hasn’t taken in at last two seasons. Even though Jack sort of went back to Sangala and lived his life, he’s still keeping everyone at arm’s length and won’t let anyone in. This year has been an opportunity for Jack to re-enter the human race. And it’s been a two-season process and now that he’s facing his own mortality, that becomes an even more important question for him to feel it.

Is that the reason for bringing back his daughter Kim [Elisha Cuthbert] on tonight's episode?
Kim really does represent that part of Jack’s life that has not been repaired and oddly enough, Kim who has always been a challenging character, gets to come back in a way that is unequivocally not only carrying his body, but his soul.

What other things will carry over during the last seven?
It’s a very exciting next few weeks. I’d be spoiling some of it, if I say more than that, but I hope people like it as much as we do.

Everyone has been saying that the President’s daughter [Sprague Grayden] is this big villain, but I haven’t seen a big villainess as of yet.
I think she is a complex character. Because her motives are so complex, she’s really interesting and Sprague is a really good actress and there is a great chemistry between her and her mom on the show. It was one of those things, the story kept giving more than we expected. When we started this season, we had no idea President Taylor even had a daughter. In many ways, it’s made Taylor a far more human character, giving her something to care about and suddenly it made the death of [her son] Roger Taylor a lot more significant. It made her vulnerable in a way we haven’t seen and it’s fun to see her vulnerability get in the way of her better judgement and that's what we’re all waiting to see. Clearly, she’s a formidable character and we’ll see what happens.

You change your cast every season and by the time a season is over, you feel very warm to these new people and it feels very comfortable, whereas other shows that try to do the same thing, it usually doesn’t work.
Part of it, I think, I’m only speculating, I think there is something about the format that is so intimate. The idea of creating these characters and these situations in the course of a day in real time, gives you a level of nuance and detail and observations, and you’re seeing them in such intimacy, that you develop a real understanding for them. And because of that, the reality is heightened. I think it’s something soap operas tend to do as well and people tend to cling to these characters because they meet them in such intimate circumstances.

It is cool, because now Renee, Moss and President Taylor are a very important part of the 24 family whereas they were strangers four months ago.
I completely agree, the fact we’re able to reinvent the show every year is very satisfying. Every year demands the beginning, middle and end – and it’s a very long middle. I think this year, has been a particularly great example of this. It’s a challenge to keep all these plates spinning for that much story. This show consumes so much story and then it ends, and it has the deep satisfaction of an end. It’s like reading a long novel, it has that satisfaction unlike any other show, that doesn’t have a story that ends in the course of one season that is dramatic and compelling as 24. You really feel you’ve experienced the most important day of these people lives. Hopefully it's compelling writing and good casting and a combination of all these things that really make you know these characters and love them that other shows can’t do or won’t do.

Do you think you could do a whole season without having any moles in it?
I think it’s like saying can NYPD BLUE do a season without a murder. Moles are about betrayals, and murder. It’s a broad definition. We really traffic in betrayal and hidden identities.

Have you figured out the broad strokes of Season 8?
Yes we have a direction and we have a first script we like, and we’ll see. The big news about next year is we’re reconstituting CTU and that requires some explanation. Here’s the thing, I think we found something that is taking the story forward that we’ve told so far this year, so we’re satisfied with the direction we’ve chosen for Season 8, which is a hell of a lot better than last year, or two years ago when we started Season 7.

Will CTU be in Los Angeles?
No, but we haven’t announced yet where it will be just yet.

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the paragraph mentioning "some noise" makes my stomach churn with fear... are they going to make tony a real bad guy? when he first arrived at hodges' compound, there were a lot of looks between him and some of hodges' men - I started to be scared then... and now I'm terrified. surely, that, too, would make for a big drama by the end of the season... tony turning into THE baddie, jack kicking himself for trusting him, etc etc etc... might be a great turn, but it'd renounce everything tony had ever stood for...

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"Yeah, I didn't wanna believe Tony Almeida was a terrorist either, but at some point we just have to deal with the facts. Not with what we want to believe is true."

You need to start living in the real world! Because every second you help the government you're spittin' on Teri's grave!