What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

smitten · 2007-06-04 19:06:01

I've ventured here into the spoiler section now season 6 is finished.

My question is this: putting aside any info/misinformation we read about what is to come, what do we *want*? What do we not want?

For myself I'd like to see more physically able women characters, not necessarily villains. I think that would be interesting and different, and would make for an interesting dynamic with Jack. Not so much more women that need to be saved (we've had enough of them), but someone who would lay down cover fire for Jack, or better yet, bark at Jack to cover her.

And if we must see Chloe in labour I don't want to see her on her back, or anyone yelling at her to push.

Torture/threats of violence at the level of season 1 would be OK by me.

And more swimming for Jack. I want to see him wet again!

Steph24 · 2007-06-05 03:28:05

A good plot? I'd like to see something focused on the next season. The whole season was just everywhere, not very enjoyable!

If for the good, Tom Lennox.

No more CTU Moles, or those fake ones.

LOL! Jack swimming, hmm, that was sorta hot

hardy24 · 2007-06-05 09:30:05

I want a return to the feeling that the season is "one story", and the feeling that the writers know what's going on, that they know the whole plot, and are slowly revealing it, and that we're not learning it along with the writers.

Also, a reviewer I read recently made a good point, that lately we've been "told the plot", instead of "experiencing the plot" like we did in S1.

Thats all I got.

Steph24 · 2007-06-06 02:14:37

hardy24 wrote:

Also, a reviewer I read recently made a good point, that lately we've been "told the plot", instead of "experiencing the plot" like we did in S1.

That's an interesting way of saying it! I'm for it too! I just want a better plot!

J_A · 2007-06-07 09:48:57

hardy24 wrote:

Also, a reviewer I read recently made a good point, that lately we've been "told the plot", instead of "experiencing the plot" like we did in S1.

thanks for saying that. it's exactly what I've been feeling. it simply failed to involve me emotionally which is a big pity. the earlier seasons never did fail to do that. you need to care about characters, you need to be taken for a ride. you don't want to sit on the sidewalk and observe what's going on on the highway. you want to be ON that highway. I haven't had that feeling since the second half of season 4, or maybe certain parts of season 5.

on a very side note, it's also a crucial rule for writing: SHOW THE STORY, don't tell it. unfortunately, it is what they've been doing.

smitten · 2007-06-07 20:32:02

jack_addict wrote:

on a very side note, it's also a crucial rule for writing: SHOW THE STORY, don't tell it. unfortunately, it is what they've been doing.

I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean when intel is pulled like a rabbit out of a hat?

For example: "What's that Lassie? You say the mine has collapsed? And the children are trapped in there? They only have enough air to last 5 hours? And you can lead us there now?" - is this what you mean by only telling the story?

hardy24 · 2007-06-07 21:03:50

Yeah, effectively getting all the exposition and important information second hand.

The best examples of this in the show are any scene where one character in CTU is telling another agent out in the field something along the lines of, "you can't fail, if you do, russia will take it as an act of war/millions will die/ etc etc.". It really died sometime in day 3, when CTU would tell all it's key personel to stop what they were doing, and meet, always at the start of the hour, to brief everyone on the key development that happened at around 59 minutes past the previous hour.

J_A · 2007-06-07 21:08:09

smitten wrote:

is this what you mean by only telling the story?

no. in terms of 24, dan is right (he wrote his post while I was working on mine) but what I mean is related to writing. but they both actually mean the same thing. being "told" instead of "shown" the story is just that. in writing, I'd explain it like this.

on the one hand, imagine you're reading a book. on the other, imagine you're watching a movie. what is the most obvious difference between the two?
the book is written on paper, the movie is shown to you on screen. so for the book, you have to imagine the screen before your eyes.

now, if you think of your favorite fiction book, and think about why you loved it, it's probably going to be because the writing involved you, because it tickled your imagination, made you experience the storyline, care for the characters, and see the events before your eyes as they happened. the two crucial words here would be *experience* and *see*.

writing ideally should take the reader for a ride, so you can't put the book down. if you're only "told" the events, it's like writing a report, is uninvolving and can be boring. here's telling:

While waiting for the phonecall, he was nervous.

to use the word "nervous" here is telling. it doesn't show anything to the reader, it doesn't create a picture before his eyes. it's simply providing you with the information that the character is nervous but doesn't make you involved.

the same can be conveyed in a quite different way. off the top of my head, this is how it could be done:

He was sitting at his [mahogany conference] table, drumming his fingers on the [hardwood] tabletop. He was staring at the phone as if willpower alone could make it ring. Suddenly, he grabbed his [silver] pen from the [ivory] pencil holder, twiddled it in his hand a few times, then set it on the table and rubbed his sweaty palms together. Standing up, he began to pace the room, loosening his tie as he approached the bookshelf. etc etc.

nowhere in this paragraph are you told that the character is nervous or that he's waiting for a phonecall. he's given nervous actions and you can understand from his "attempt" to make it ring by willpower that he's waiting for an important phonecall. the same can be accomplished just by giving him one nervous action, like the drumming of the fingers on the desk, but to illustrate what showing means, I expanded it a bit. if you read the paragraph, you can actually see the guy and you begin to wonder what the phonecall that he's waiting for is about. if it's done well, you begin to be interested, you begin to care. that's where the difference lies.
the words I put in square brackets are "particularity". if you're given precise details it also helps show instead of tell. so showing - if it's good - makes you feel like you're in the middle of a movie and not reading words on a page. .

smitten · 2007-06-08 14:29:50

jack_addict wrote:

He was sitting at his [mahogany conference] table, drumming his fingers on the [hardwood] tabletop. He was staring at the phone as if willpower alone could make it ring. Suddenly, he grabbed his [silver] pen from the [ivory] pencil holder, twiddled it in his hand a few times, then set it on the table and rubbed his sweaty palms together. Standing up, he began to pace the room, loosening his tie as he approached the bookshelf. etc etc.
.

Haven't been able to stop laughing all day! Tell me, what was the phone call about?

I see what you're saying more when it comes to books than TV. Maybe that's because with books you have to make that mental leap from page to imagination, whereas with TV the image is there for you, so the imagination tends to work a bit less anyway. Maybe it's because at school we did literature and not TV. Anyway, between you and Dan, I think I get the general idea.

J_A · 2007-06-08 15:43:13

smitten wrote:

Haven't been able to stop laughing all day! Tell me, what was the phone call about?
I see what you're saying more when it comes to books than TV. Maybe that's because with books you have to make that mental leap from page to imagination, whereas with TV the image is there for you, so the imagination tends to work a bit less anyway. Maybe it's because at school we did literature and not TV. Anyway, between you and Dan, I think I get the general idea.

lol. why? it wasn't meant to be a joke

my explanation was related to books, that's what I said above... and that's what I meant when I said, show, not tell. as far as 24 goes, I also said it's what dan explained. being told about what happened rather than seeing it for yourself

but when you think about it - I mean REALLY think - you'll see it's in fact the very same thing as with books. whether I - in a book tell you that "he was nervous" or show it to you in a scene is the same damn thing as character X telling character Y that something happened vs. the actual scene being shown to the viewer. there really IS no difference.

Steveb · 2007-06-22 17:15:49

For me, I want less to happen. One of the big complaints from s6 on TV.com was that too many episodes had "nothing happening". To my mind the people who complain about that are idiots. The genius of season one as I'm seeing all over again in the rewatch is that nothing can happen for three hours but that doesn't matter, because when the build-u reaches critical the pay-off is superb.

The last three seasons (or the second trilogy if you will) is full of too much and much of the time it's unnecessary. If they are completely revamping the show then perhaps they can go back to the tension of monotony.

24nut · 2007-06-22 20:19:30

hardy24 wrote:

I want a return to the feeling that the season is "one story", and the feeling that the writers know what's going on, that they know the whole plot, and are slowly revealing it, and that we're not learning it along with the writers.
Also, a reviewer I read recently made a good point, that lately we've been "told the plot", instead of "experiencing the plot" like we did in S1.
Thats all I got.

i couldn't agree more, thats what a lot of us have been saying about 24 over the past 3 seasons.

J_A · 2007-06-22 21:37:53

Steveb wrote:

The last three seasons (or the second trilogy if you will) is full of too much and much of the time it's unnecessary. If they are completely revamping the show then perhaps they can go back to the tension of monotony.

yeah, i couldn't agree more. s1 had "nothing happening" often, and yet it never felt like stalling - but in s4 at least to me, stalling felt like waiting and stretching it to get to the 24h quite a few times. I don't know what happened inbetween that made this transition but I think (off the top of my head, by no means a complete list) IF:

they plan out the whole story for the 24 eps from the beginning => they know where they're going and slowly unravel & unpack the story
there's ONE large intricately connected story instead of episodical block-building storylines on top of each other
they build up the tension - like steve well explained - and show the story instead of telling it
and give us characters we start caring about AND baddies that are more then merely badly behaved
rely more on emotion, tension, suspense and good storytelling as opposed to the shock value of blood lust

then the new 24 could be what they're promising.

smitten · 2007-07-08 19:06:31

OK - here's an idea. Remember the agent in season 4 whose face was explosed in the Chinese embassy attack, who then ratted out Jack (under threat of life-imprisonment)? His name escapes me. Lets assume he was honourably discharged from CTU, and is making a life for himself in some other field. So, Jack could easily come across him in some other context, lets say, saving the world, be forced by circumstance to rely on him, and to need to decide whether or not he can forgive him. That would be a new twist because we more often see Jack in need of forgiveness, than in a position to forgive.

J_A · 2007-07-08 19:56:58

honorably discharged after ratting out on a fellow agent? oh no no no. at least dishonorably. maybe that would be feasible cause we don't really know much about that guy, so it would be a possibility to create that character with more depth if they wanted to.

just as long as they never bring Henderson or Hammond back and force jack to "forgive them".

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#1 2007-06-04 19:06:01

What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#2 2007-06-05 03:28:05

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#3 2007-06-05 09:30:05

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#4 2007-06-06 02:14:37

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#5 2007-06-07 09:48:57

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#6 2007-06-07 20:32:02

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#7 2007-06-07 21:03:50

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#8 2007-06-07 21:08:09

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#9 2007-06-08 14:29:50

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#10 2007-06-08 15:43:13

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#11 2007-06-22 17:15:49

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#12 2007-06-22 20:19:30

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#13 2007-06-22 21:37:53

Re: What would you like to see/not to see in another season?

#14 2007-07-08 19:06:31

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#15 2007-07-08 19:56:58

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