This show reads like its entire purpose is to say "It's okay to be cruel to people you don't like, otherwise they'll win, and then you'll need to be cruel to people you do like in order to win"
LumberjackBonanza same. I've never watched it, I've only known that Jack Bauer is the lead character, and presumably the good guy. Then I watch this video and everything changes lol
@@TheSoulHarvester it's somewhat bizarre because most people know that Bauer is the protagonist just through cultural osmosis, and then you see that a lot of the violence inflicted on deuter- and tritagonists comes from Bauer himself and it gets very concerning; then it comes out that the sitting-at-the-time President of the United States and a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States enjoys the show, and Bauer in particular, and it gets nightmarish while also explaining a lot
Kyra Cook What's even better is that this statement works both ways. First you have Goliath, who wants to have the boons that come with being a David, whilst maintaining the body of a Goliath. And we also have the Post-Goliath David whose taking Goliath's place, but still wants to use the perks of being a David.
You see this all the time in sports too! It was hilarious last year watching the Vikings and the Eagles fight before the NFC Championship Game (well, their fans anyway) over who was the "real" underdog.
Honestly we all know Jon Bois is a great story teller - but this is how you know he's a confident story teller. He doesn't hit you with that music right away for the easy laughs.
This is legit fantastic. Although I think I disagree with Rajskub's comment. Rather than get dragged into the world of politics, politics itself descended into the realm of utter fantasy. She wasn't pulled in - fiction itself has absorbed our perception of reality, like a bad metaphor absorbing this paragraph.
I personally subscribe to the theory that Jack was an American soldier who died overseas shortly after 9/11, and was placed in an ultraviolent purgatory until he learned that waging a retaliatory forever war to the detriment of everything else was not an acceptable solution. This reading makes that last scene even more tragic, as he’s on the cusp of realising that everything he does is ultimately worthless. He’s nearly about to break the cycle, and then he damns himself all over again, stuck in an inescapable waking nightmare of misery and brutality.
IDK if the people that need that purgatory are the ones that actually saw any of the combat in that war. Jack never struck me as an actual soldier... He is the wankbait version of a soldier that the people who started that war imagine in the last seconds of sex with their wife they only have so they don't have lose their red (R) card.
@@discodecepticon I just finished a re-watch of the series, poisoned by inhuman advertising, having seen most of iT only once, and I think Jack is the kind of guy who thinks the world is his. He's a bit dopey and irresponsible about some of his sidelines, but he's polite and generally keeps his word. Thank you for your car, DAMMIT.
@@discodecepticon I'm sorry but this says it was posted 1 year ago which is way too long after Trump got elected in 2016 for you to still be pretending that getting a boner for War is something only Republicans do
@@discodecepticon While this is true, the point Jon's ultimately making in the video is that Jack, as an ideology of violence, a what and a how and a why, became an ideology that pervaded everything, including -- in especially horrifying ways -- the soldiers on the ground. I'm staunchly pro-veteran, and I believe that the majority of them are good, kind-hearted people who got sucked into a predatory material system and dragged across the world to kill people they'd never met. That said, there's no use in forgetting about the canoeing (tw; don't look that up if you're particularly averse to gore and violence) in Afghanistan. It only worsens the problem if we ignore the massive rape culture within even the INTERNAL RANKS of the military. And, in a sense, I don't even blame the soldiers who did it primarily. Obviously they're shitty people, but there's a reason why they're shitty and how they're able to be shitty, and that's on us as a society. Because the problem isn't 24, and it isn't Jack Bauer. It isn't Black Hawk Down. It isn't Zero Dark Thirty. It's American exceptionalism. It's neoliberal ideology at its most base, violent, and inevitable. It's white supremacy, liberal capitalism, theocratic fascism, and a good chunk of any other -ism you can think of. It's all of our politics, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian; only a handful of politicians were brave enough to have even CRITICISM of the "War on Terror" at the time, and those who did got relentlessly maligned, mocked, harassed, and even threatened and attacked. This, itself, is the thrust of neoliberalism -- ideology can drive people to ignore, propagate, or even actively commit the evils of their "nation," allowing for the state to throw money at the Mil. Indus. Complex and wage deadly wars for the sake of accumulation by dispossession. Neoliberalism, since the time of Ronald "Strategic Defense Initiative" Reagan, has been interventionist in terms of foreign policy for the sake of capital interests, funding far-right insurrectionaries in some hilariously one-sided "proxy war" with the whole middle east and just about all of central and latin america as battlefields. Among those insurrectionaries, in an objectively quite funnily-depressing scenario, were the Mujahideen and one of their "brass," Osama bin Laden. This group would go on to splinter into, among other splinters, Al Qaeda. And liberals and neoliberals alike bought into this hook, line, and sinker; you can find newspaper articles celebrating the "anti-Soviet freedom fighters" in the middle east. That's why ("allegedly") the CIA under Reagan peddled drugs, specifically rock cocaine/crack, into inner cities for the Contras in Nicaragua -- they needed the funding to prop up far right causes across the globe. Bauer's symptomatic of this huge confluence of factors, yes. But it's important to remember that so were the soldiers who killed a lot of innocent people, often quite gruesomely. It's the ideology of America and, moreover, American violence.
The main problem with 24 as narrative, the reason why it was increasingly insane and over the top, is pretty simple: it originally was meant to be the single worst day in his life. That’s why the first season ended the way it did. It was supposed to be the capstone to Jack’s Worst Day Ever. The problem came when he proceeded to have eight more of them and escalation set in. By the third season the scale was getting out of hand. The show was 33% done. No wonder we wound up with presidents being erased on soccer fields. Incidentally Berouss was by far my favorite character ever because he was exchanged back to his terrorist father...and vanished into the plot never to be seen again. That still cracks me up today.
You obviously don't own a physical copy of Season 4. If you ever get your hands on a copy, there is a deleted scene where Curtis comes in to save Behrooz in an all-out shootout. Towards the end of the season you see Behrooz back at CTU. Seems like an alternate universe hearing this information for the first time but at least you know that the writers had intentions to provide Behrooz with a happy ending.
I’ve watched this like 10 times, and I keep catching new details like the American flag of death and corpses at 2:15. One of the best videos of all time
@@donbionicle it was a speed-esque security footage hack. He was fine and then found out his daughter was assasinated by rogue chinese intelligence officials which made him remark that it was a good thing he had alzheimers because he'd soon forget the pain.
Not kidding when I say that this is one of my favorite videos on the internet ever. I have watched this multiple times and each time makes me equally happy and depressed at the same time
I had always watched this show under the assumption that it was a drama based on flawed assumptions of human nature and odious politics, but now that I have seen this video I realize that like with John Wick it is a slapstick comedy that communicates itself through wanton violence and destruction
You're not totally wrong. This show was originally envisioned as "Die Hard: the Series." Sutherland coming on led to the show taking a darker, less fun direction.
My dad met Kiefer Sutherland at a party once. He said he was covered in blood and vomit. Now every time I see the actor that’s the only image in my head.
GrantH I remember noticing at the time that there was a huge difference between the first season and all the subsequent ones. The first season was more like a spy story, and the stakes were relatively low when compared to the later seasons. Season one was just about trying to prevent one person from being killed, but after 9/11 happened every season became about stopping a massive terrorist attack that would kill millions of people and destroy whole cities and start entire wars.
It would be years before the right would have any idea where 9/11 came from. Not sure when the left found out, I know they knew when I found them. Trump supporters realized it was somehow the CIA's fault around 2016. Until then it could have been anyone. th-cam.com/video/ewtB8GPqWLw/w-d-xo.html had a hard time deciding to link the spy clip from Tf2 or this song. Decided on the song because more people should hear it.
Never seen a single episode of 24. I’m about to watch this video for perhaps the 6th or 7th time because I’m very depressed rn. My favorite video on TH-cam. Truly goated. Thank you, Jon.
I would actually recommend watching it. It's a fairly decent show and it's unfortunate that people's first exposure to this show is a video of somebody shitting on it.
@@ChaosTheory0 no this video is extremely accurate. The show aged like milk due to all the post 9/11 racism, and descends into a complete farce in the later seasons. It’s actually comical how bad it is, but so many millennial aged people watched it as it aired at the time and have had the same thoughts and reassessments expressed so eloquently in this video.
12:55 "Jack Bauer is not allow to die (Jack cleans his cry), his existence is hell, you not allow to die in hell." That's is the greatest line of the entire video.
I wasn't thinking, "shit, they killed a President". I was thinking, "shit, they blew up Wembley?!" I mean, ok then I thought "wow, that's one hell of an international incident", but that was after a good ten seconds.
I had seen about 13 minutes of 24 in my life. So this video basically tripled that amount. I feel like that's just about the perfect amount for one lifetime.
I like how David Palmer was President, not once, but three times. That's called dedication to the role of being Jack's President. He just keeps getting back up even when Jack keeps killing terrorists for him, for some reason.
I'm watching this, 6 years later, for the first time. I have no context, save for the fact that I love everything Jon Bois makes. I'm two minutes in, and I have no idea if this is a video on the Cubs or on the show 24. Goddamn, I love this
24, the show where the terrorists absolutely win, because holy shit, tell a terrorist that there is an alternate world where a nuke goes off in LA, the White House is taken control of, Presidents are offed, a weaponized virus is released, CTU is blow'd up, etc. and they would absolutely cream their pants.
i loved watching 24 because i was just a kid who liked watching violence. now i understand the meaning of all that death, i'm truly terrified. this was a horrror series
If I didn't know that 24 was a real show that actually aired on an American TV network and you showed me this video - I'd think this was a joke. A bunch of fake footage to make fun of TV in an over the top way. Like it was a clips from a Rick and Morty interdimensional cable episode. It's live action Ball Fondlers.
Imagining a better world doesn’t require you to be creative, or a particularly good person. They didn’t even say there were only bad choices in the world. The quote was that there are *some situations* where there are only bad choices. So, like, how do you only half listen to a quote in a video that put the quote on the screen? And then how do post that half-quote *in the comments section of the video you’re taking the quote from?*
@@ineedabetterpfp2485 well, when the situation you're talking about is a so called "battle of civilizations," (Bush administration's words, not mine) and you say there are only bad choices, maybe you are incapable of imagining a better world. Imagine you're a member of the Bush admin. You don't care about peace and the well being of man, you care about prosecuting an illegal war as contradictorily as possible to prevent yourself from being brought up at the next Nuremberg trials. That's what makes me say what I did.
@@ineedabetterpfp2485if you watch this video and do not come away with the impression that 24 was a tv show obsessed with and reverent to the idea of bad choices far beyond any commitment to realism depth or integrity you should probably rewatch the video
Holy shit I just realized the symbolism of the ending: Everything is normal. We've just seen this man get the worst deal any human being in any story has ever gotten. His lovers are dead, His career is in pieces, and he's about to be sent away for life. It is a tale of an apocalyptic America, a land devoid of hope, opportunity, happiness, or remorse. The world is in fire and there is no escape. Then, suddenly, we realize what this says about us and what we think of ourselves that we elevated such a low view of ourselves to such heights. We realize how much of our politics was shaped by those preaching at the altar of 24's unsatisfiable god, and we realize that we have all been living some distorted version of this fear; this paranoia that, fueled by the attacks on 9/11, was consuming every waking moment of American culture. Then, reflecting in all of the horror we have seen, all the anguish that we have felt by this ringing in of the apocalypse, all suffering fades back in to the only place it has ever been: normal. There is no point to handling this outro with any special care because, even in the face of such profound misery, we can't feel anything for him. Everything appears to be right in line with how things have always been. Everything is normal. This might be my favorite video of yours, and it's just stellar.
"I just realized we haven't heard you say a word this entire time." Damn, this show really did inspire The Phantom Pain, lol. Honestly, this does give me a lot more context for what MGS5 was criticizing with it's own depiction of lawless torture and the subversive moral decay of it's protagonists. I can see why they thought of Sutherland.
reason #1294 that it is extremely funny and good that Rush Limbaugh is fertilizer. that said, his family can rest knowing they all hated him anyway and are glad he's currently decomposing
I finished the new Pretty Goods on Patreon yesterday and decided i needed to rewatch the old ones. I've already rewatched this one twice because i still can't believe just how funny it is
i love jack bauer, he is the ideal american and can do no wrong. if he kicked down my door and tortured me, all i need to hear is that it was a matter of national security.
As someone who remembers 24 and its characters quite fondly from family TV time when I was 7, this was quite the fun journey and answer as to why the show never seemed to hit as hard for me as it did for my family and others. Thank you, Joh.
It's true, and when you have a character that has suffered more you can generally keep that as the line and say the ones over it are overdoing it a bit.
I'm glad I watched this all the way through. Maybe I'll watch "24" sometime... but you got the point across, especially with that bit just before the outro. Well-done, Sir.
Awesome video man. Just a quick audio heads up - that mic looks like an AT2020 but even if it isn't, I think it's a side-address mic, so you'll get better audio from it if you speak into the side of it (there's a front and a back), not the top.
No worries, hope it helps. Honestly, you've got awesome content down; that's the hard part. The little audio tech bits are small potatoes compared to that, so don't sweat it. Looking forward to more videos!
Someday, when you're world famous, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has a giant inflatable balloon with your mug plastered on it, will you remember us little people? 6:34 I love that he didn't even go all the way into "the desert." Those look the Mormon Rocks. The city of Fontana, with a quarter million people, is like ten minutes from there. That's probably the I-15 corridor in the background, which is the main freeway from CA to Vegas.
18:10 "more than 100,000 civilians... are dead" oooooh boy, I wish the number was anywhere near that low :( The IBC is literally the go to source to get the lowest estimate possible.
Have you ever considered that president Bush connected with 24 for human reasons, and not evil bad guy reasons? His life was invaded by a literal cult whose signature move is suicide bomb. I think this video is more than a little unfair.
Of course. That is the whole problem, manipulation of media as propaganda is nothing new and not that notable... it's much more concerning that the president connected with such a morally twisted show, for example the same president who defended and radically increased American torture programs around the world connected with a fictional show where the "good guys" use torture all the time and it saves the day through ruthless brutality and cruelty... That is the concerning bit.
you forgot the time jack was gaslit into incarnating a legendary mercenary leader, starting shit from his offshore rig and abducting countless unaware soldiers
I watched this before ever watching 24 and I started watching about a week ago. You're 100% right lol The example that stuck out most to me: Kim and Janet go out. Kim and Janet get kidnapped. Kim gets sent to a camp and is eventually saved. Meanwhile...... Janet gets roofeed. Janet gets her arm broken by a crowbar. Janet gets injected with heroine. Janet gets hit by a car. Janet gets suffocated by her fake dad in the hospital. They were so mad they couldn't kill Kim that they decided to drag Janet through the mud and give her 1 of the worst nights anyone has ever had lol
But seriously, that's the intended effect. Why does the Pentagon fund all those war movies? Why does rightwing Hollywood produce all the trigger-happy law enforcement stuff? So we're indoctrinated right from the cradle. We're consuming these stories and base our moral systems on them.
Nice to see a show that understands the true power of democracy, if the president dies you can keep electing new ones until you run out of people, you will never run out of presidents!
Aw man. I remember first watching 24 in its 8th season, which at the time was supposed to be its last. Absolutely apeshit from beginning to end, and my family ate it up. Even friends from my church were talking about it. It wasn’t until I was older when the new season in London dropped that I realized how insane Jack really was. Graphic torture was an afterthought in regards to the overall mission. Betrayal was a given. People on this show really just died and came back ALL the time. What I didn’t know was how much support it was getting from the actual government, and that scares me more than anything on that show.
You know I really wish Jon would touch more on political things but I get the feeling that with Secret Base there would be a lot of people very unhappy that Mr funny sports man is actually an anti American commie
To me this is still the best video I've ever watched on here. The storystelling and pacing are perfect, and it is an excellent commentary on the show. Still amazing.
I cant help but wonder if the people of power you described as liking the show liked it because it was to there real world stresses and showed absurd and simple solutions.
i think that is how they choose to see the world - an absurd place with no logic or reasoning and 50% murder rate - to validate their racism, militarism and straight up murders
I mean, Jon himself said that he liked it and that it was one of his favorite shows of all time. Does that mean he's a psychopath who loved death and torture?
Amazing! This was the first TV show I ever binged watched. My dad bought the DVDs one at a time and we would go through episodes at a time. Most of those deaths I can still remember, its crazy to think that there were so many with shows like GOT now.
Mission Impossible: It's like Tom Cruise watched 24 and said "not on my watch" so he reversed it: the conspiracies always get crazier, the stakes higher, the stunts dumber, but nobody dies, nobody loses anyone, everything is fine, and athough Tom Cruise can't die either he doesn't want to, because he is always rewarded with happiness. Most of the time he doesn't even try to kill the bad guy, and when he does he's "forced to". I remember he once gave plutonium warheads to a super group of elite terrorist super spies rogue shadow secret service agents to save ONE of his friends and they didn't blow up anything with them. Dude lives in a barbie world
I remember just finding out about 24 a few years ago and completely binge watched the whole first season. I thought it was the coolest show ever and was recommending it to everyone. It completely caught me off guard with all the twists, turns, and cliffhangers throughout each episode. It wasn't until the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th season I was really getting tired of it. With each season it just felt the same: there would be some world/country ending threat that would result in Jack putting everything on the line, and in the process innocent and almost all the good people of that season would be killed, I would scream at my screen because sometimes the whole plot could've been avoided if someone just opted to speak up, do the right thing, or hell just stick around for 1 more episode to uncover everything. It became boring with the amount of people they would kill off for no reason other than shock value, to where I could begin predicting who will live and who won't based on the amount of attention they get. Then the fact that some characters would "quit" the job for good then flip flop and come back just 1 season later like bruh make up your fucking mind. It was a great show when it started, always keeping me on the edge of my seat, but with every season, every new life felt meaningless and stopped me from caring about the characters altogether, almost like I was just waiting for them to die rather than rooting for them. When you've lost my love for the characters, you don't have a show.
Doubly weird to know that Kiefer Sutherland is decendent of Tommy Douglas, a Canadian socialist politician regarded as the architect of Canadian welfare state.
Just to follow up on this ancient thread, the cartoonishly horrible premier of Ontario has recently been comparing himself and his (extremely regressive) policies to Tommy Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland called him out and said, "you are no Tommy Douglas. Stop using his name to promote yourself."
I can no longer watch this video without reciting “debbies corpse your favorite song is the music from sim city 2000? debbies corpse you are such a nerrrrrcorpse”
Just found your channel a few hours ago and have been watching your videos very intently.. wonderful prose and delivery, and fantastic visuals.. almost cried when i saw your last upload was 3 years ago. Excited to go through the back log now though !! Until next time
I binged all of 24 after watching like 3/4 of this video a few years ago, still the best procedural with a drawn out side plot by far, but so oddly traumatic lol
They do, but they're harder to find and often more expensive. And most often (in my anecdotal experience) 'left-handed' scissors are right-handed scissors with left-handed grips (the moulding of the grips isn't the problem). That said, your average adult doesn't need to use scissors that often, and when they do it's most often something trivial like cutting tape or string or something where using the scissors in your non-dominant hand or using righty scissors left-handedly or whatever hardly matters.
Years later Kiefer Sutherland would go on to play Tom Kirkman in Designated Survivor. Tom is an architect, and before being brought on to the fictional president's cabinet as Housing and Development Secretary, was in academia. By all accounts, a family man who loved his wife, son and daughter very much. Then a conspiracy did a decapitation strike on the entire government as we know it by blowing up the Capitol during the State of the Union address, killing functionally every member of government there was. Only days or a week earlier, Tom Kirkman was named designated survivor, a backup in the presidential line of succession that is never where any other government officials are to ensure his safety at all times. I think Kiefer Sutherland took the role of Tom Kirkman as penance for playing Jack Bauer. There's still a calm rage in the character of Tom Kirkman if you ever threaten his family or his country, but generally speaking he is a compassionate and good man with the nation's interests at heart. As if to remind him that he can never escape being Jack Bauer, Tom Kirkman's wife, Alex Kirkman (played by Natasha McElhone) is killed by a drunk truck driver in the second season.
Awesome work! Nice breakdowns & info graphics on such an awful slough of a tv show! I never would've thought to have been so pleased of being reminded of it's very existence. Looking forward to seeing more future episodes of _Pretty Good_!!
What's crazy is that the show actually came out in 2001, and it was crazy from the get go. While 911 probably caused the general pessimism that made it so popular, it couldn't have been the reason the writers made the show so nuts
This show reads like its entire purpose is to say "It's okay to be cruel to people you don't like, otherwise they'll win, and then you'll need to be cruel to people you do like in order to win"
Makes sense why the government loved it so much.
As someone who's never seen 24, I couldn't stop losing my shit when I learned who Jack was murdering in those clips.
LumberjackBonanza same. I've never watched it, I've only known that Jack Bauer is the lead character, and presumably the good guy. Then I watch this video and everything changes lol
I was laughing like a hyena when that president was killed by a *_DRONE STRIKE_* in the middle of a soccer field.
I watched every episode of 24 & I cannot even imagine how this video must seem to ppl who have never watched it at all.
@@TheSoulHarvester it's somewhat bizarre because most people know that Bauer is the protagonist just through cultural osmosis, and then you see that a lot of the violence inflicted on deuter- and tritagonists comes from Bauer himself and it gets very concerning; then it comes out that the sitting-at-the-time President of the United States and a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States enjoys the show, and Bauer in particular, and it gets nightmarish while also explaining a lot
@@IncoherentMoron You can trace the entire last decade, at least, of right-wing American politics in 24. It's like the Rosetta Stone of neoliberalism.
R.I.P Jos. Gone but never forgotten.
Albert Arendt who?
We'll never forget you Josh.
FR tho rip jah
Rip Jeff
Wait did the dude who mades these videos really die?
"The thing about Goliaths is that they always wanna be David" might be the best line and the best section of any video I've ever seen just saying
Kyra Cook
What's even better is that this statement works both ways.
First you have Goliath, who wants to have the boons that come with being a David, whilst maintaining the body of a Goliath.
And we also have the Post-Goliath David whose taking Goliath's place, but still wants to use the perks of being a David.
The grass is always greener
You see this all the time in sports too! It was hilarious last year watching the Vikings and the Eagles fight before the NFC Championship Game (well, their fans anyway) over who was the "real" underdog.
Ben Rall truth
If you know hear any Chinese talk about their military you'll witness a serious case of this.
president walkin around middle of a soccer field
nyoom
PYOSHHHHHHHHHHH
*maniacal laughing*
The build-up to, and the payoff of, the Calvin and Hobbes connection is _always_ my favorite part of this video whenever I rewatch it.
*drawn out, depressing scene with no words spoken for some time*
**sudden loud jazz**
*PRETTY GOOD*
TwinSpinner f
Glad someone else noticed it. Fucking annoying having to move the volume slider every time horrible jazz music blares out of the speakers.
Honestly we all know Jon Bois is a great story teller - but this is how you know he's a confident story teller. He doesn't hit you with that music right away for the easy laughs.
@@nathanl7018 I don't think he dislikes the jazz. Youre agreeing with noone
I love that smokey jazz riff... makes me want to go out and get checked for syphilis. (don't ask... it's complicated).
This is legit fantastic.
Although I think I disagree with Rajskub's comment. Rather than get dragged into the world of politics, politics itself descended into the realm of utter fantasy. She wasn't pulled in - fiction itself has absorbed our perception of reality, like a bad metaphor absorbing this paragraph.
+hbomberguy I'm so glad you also watch Pretty Good.
+hbomberguy Never thought I'd see you here but I just wanted you to know that you make some of the best posts in CineD.
peace.
Oh shit, wasn't expecting to see you here! :D
huh yeah didnt expect hbomberguy on here
Anyone mind filling me in on the context to this comment?
I get the feeling I've missed something.
I personally subscribe to the theory that Jack was an American soldier who died overseas shortly after 9/11, and was placed in an ultraviolent purgatory until he learned that waging a retaliatory forever war to the detriment of everything else was not an acceptable solution.
This reading makes that last scene even more tragic, as he’s on the cusp of realising that everything he does is ultimately worthless. He’s nearly about to break the cycle, and then he damns himself all over again, stuck in an inescapable waking nightmare of misery and brutality.
IDK if the people that need that purgatory are the ones that actually saw any of the combat in that war. Jack never struck me as an actual soldier... He is the wankbait version of a soldier that the people who started that war imagine in the last seconds of sex with their wife they only have so they don't have lose their red (R) card.
@@discodecepticon I just finished a re-watch of the series, poisoned by inhuman advertising, having seen most of iT only once, and I think Jack is the kind of guy who thinks the world is his. He's a bit dopey and irresponsible about some of his sidelines, but he's polite and generally keeps his word. Thank you for your car, DAMMIT.
I mean in this universe, without waging that war America would cease to exist. That’s not true in the real world however
@@discodecepticon I'm sorry but this says it was posted 1 year ago which is way too long after Trump got elected in 2016 for you to still be pretending that getting a boner for War is something only Republicans do
@@discodecepticon While this is true, the point Jon's ultimately making in the video is that Jack, as an ideology of violence, a what and a how and a why, became an ideology that pervaded everything, including -- in especially horrifying ways -- the soldiers on the ground. I'm staunchly pro-veteran, and I believe that the majority of them are good, kind-hearted people who got sucked into a predatory material system and dragged across the world to kill people they'd never met. That said, there's no use in forgetting about the canoeing (tw; don't look that up if you're particularly averse to gore and violence) in Afghanistan. It only worsens the problem if we ignore the massive rape culture within even the INTERNAL RANKS of the military. And, in a sense, I don't even blame the soldiers who did it primarily. Obviously they're shitty people, but there's a reason why they're shitty and how they're able to be shitty, and that's on us as a society. Because the problem isn't 24, and it isn't Jack Bauer. It isn't Black Hawk Down. It isn't Zero Dark Thirty. It's American exceptionalism. It's neoliberal ideology at its most base, violent, and inevitable. It's white supremacy, liberal capitalism, theocratic fascism, and a good chunk of any other -ism you can think of. It's all of our politics, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian; only a handful of politicians were brave enough to have even CRITICISM of the "War on Terror" at the time, and those who did got relentlessly maligned, mocked, harassed, and even threatened and attacked. This, itself, is the thrust of neoliberalism -- ideology can drive people to ignore, propagate, or even actively commit the evils of their "nation," allowing for the state to throw money at the Mil. Indus. Complex and wage deadly wars for the sake of accumulation by dispossession. Neoliberalism, since the time of Ronald "Strategic Defense Initiative" Reagan, has been interventionist in terms of foreign policy for the sake of capital interests, funding far-right insurrectionaries in some hilariously one-sided "proxy war" with the whole middle east and just about all of central and latin america as battlefields. Among those insurrectionaries, in an objectively quite funnily-depressing scenario, were the Mujahideen and one of their "brass," Osama bin Laden. This group would go on to splinter into, among other splinters, Al Qaeda. And liberals and neoliberals alike bought into this hook, line, and sinker; you can find newspaper articles celebrating the "anti-Soviet freedom fighters" in the middle east. That's why ("allegedly") the CIA under Reagan peddled drugs, specifically rock cocaine/crack, into inner cities for the Contras in Nicaragua -- they needed the funding to prop up far right causes across the globe. Bauer's symptomatic of this huge confluence of factors, yes. But it's important to remember that so were the soldiers who killed a lot of innocent people, often quite gruesomely. It's the ideology of America and, moreover, American violence.
If they can spell John without an H, they can spell Josh without an H.
Your entire name doesn't require those H's
False, Jon and John are essentially the same name. Jos and josh are not
TheJos
@@aidankeo wow what a callback, bravo
jos is a shortened form of joseph, apparently
"You're favorite song is the music of Sim City 2000?" made me fall off my bed laughing.
To be honest, the Sim City games have badass soundtracks. Just sayin.........
In her defense, the Sims series has a bangin' soundtrack.
She had great taste. It's no Starcraft Broodwar but it's still up there!
Such a nerd corpse.
DEBBIE'S CORPSE YOU ARE A NEEEERRRRRRD corpse
The main problem with 24 as narrative, the reason why it was increasingly insane and over the top, is pretty simple: it originally was meant to be the single worst day in his life. That’s why the first season ended the way it did. It was supposed to be the capstone to Jack’s Worst Day Ever.
The problem came when he proceeded to have eight more of them and escalation set in. By the third season the scale was getting out of hand. The show was 33% done. No wonder we wound up with presidents being erased on soccer fields.
Incidentally Berouss was by far my favorite character ever because he was exchanged back to his terrorist father...and vanished into the plot never to be seen again. That still cracks me up today.
You obviously don't own a physical copy of Season 4. If you ever get your hands on a copy, there is a deleted scene where Curtis comes in to save Behrooz in an all-out shootout. Towards the end of the season you see Behrooz back at CTU. Seems like an alternate universe hearing this information for the first time but at least you know that the writers had intentions to provide Behrooz with a happy ending.
I’ve watched this like 10 times, and I keep catching new details like the American flag of death and corpses at 2:15. One of the best videos of all time
“The thing about Goliaths is that they always want to be David”
Love that quote
throwing food at the president had me weak.
BOOOOOOOOOOOO
stab 'im
I made it to the final president death in the soccer field before laughing
He didn't die tho
Best scene in the video lmao
@@uniboy13 he *what*
@@donbionicle it was a speed-esque security footage hack. He was fine and then found out his daughter was assasinated by rogue chinese intelligence officials which made him remark that it was a good thing he had alzheimers because he'd soon forget the pain.
@@Stairmaster9068 that's exactly what happened to Beau Biden
Not kidding when I say that this is one of my favorite videos on the internet ever. I have watched this multiple times and each time makes me equally happy and depressed at the same time
It’s so fucking good
Watch the other pretty good episodes. They are all amazivg
I had always watched this show under the assumption that it was a drama based on flawed assumptions of human nature and odious politics, but now that I have seen this video I realize that like with John Wick it is a slapstick comedy that communicates itself through wanton violence and destruction
You're not totally wrong. This show was originally envisioned as "Die Hard: the Series." Sutherland coming on led to the show taking a darker, less fun direction.
Except John Wick is actually good
@@grantreill1966 yeah but this is pretty good
@@SamAronow wonder who they'd get to play McClane if Willis fucked off to not make good movies
@@WTFisTingispingispresumably no one after they found out about his deteriorating mental health
This isn't 24 hours long wtf
Now Keither Sutherland is in a show that 5 minutes in a president dies
i hope he's having fun
The only way "jack bauer" can avoid having the president die is to become the president, as he is not allowed to die.
@@MAD22324 good thought
My dad met Kiefer Sutherland at a party once. He said he was covered in blood and vomit. Now every time I see the actor that’s the only image in my head.
@@danielmoran3578 whose blood was it?
24 is post 9/11 paranoia personified
Production began before 9/11 though. That's the weird thing.
GrantH that must be the real conspiracie behind 9/11 it was all a promotion stunt :O
GrantH I remember noticing at the time that there was a huge difference between the first season and all the subsequent ones. The first season was more like a spy story, and the stakes were relatively low when compared to the later seasons. Season one was just about trying to prevent one person from being killed, but after 9/11 happened every season became about stopping a massive terrorist attack that would kill millions of people and destroy whole cities and start entire wars.
It would be years before the right would have any idea where 9/11 came from. Not sure when the left found out, I know they knew when I found them. Trump supporters realized it was somehow the CIA's fault around 2016. Until then it could have been anyone. th-cam.com/video/ewtB8GPqWLw/w-d-xo.html had a hard time deciding to link the spy clip from Tf2 or this song. Decided on the song because more people should hear it.
Tom Hill ok
Never seen a single episode of 24. I’m about to watch this video for perhaps the 6th or 7th time because I’m very depressed rn. My favorite video on TH-cam. Truly goated. Thank you, Jon.
I would actually recommend watching it. It's a fairly decent show and it's unfortunate that people's first exposure to this show is a video of somebody shitting on it.
@@ChaosTheory0 no this video is extremely accurate.
The show aged like milk due to all the post 9/11 racism, and descends into a complete farce in the later seasons.
It’s actually comical how bad it is, but so many millennial aged people watched it as it aired at the time and have had the same thoughts and reassessments expressed so eloquently in this video.
The jumpcut from Calvin to Jack Bauer is fucking art
"Jack Bauer has suffered more than anyone in fiction." You're so lucky Ted has no mouth or he would be screaming about that.
12:55 "Jack Bauer is not allow to die (Jack cleans his cry), his existence is hell, you not allow to die in hell." That's is the greatest line of the entire video.
16:25 thank you jon for revisiting 24's thrilling depiction of WORLD CUP ACTION
"AHHH HAHAHAHAHA OHH GOD!!!"
I wasn't thinking, "shit, they killed a President". I was thinking, "shit, they blew up Wembley?!"
I mean, ok then I thought "wow, that's one hell of an international incident", but that was after a good ten seconds.
@@DDHowellUK they didn't kill anybody then, he survived
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
MrQwefty Hahahahahaha this made my day
Well played sir!
I dont know why i never watched this series. Im 11 minutes into this video and it seems like jack is the most gangster person in tv history
Most underrated comment in TH-cam history
"Fox promotes second season of 24, U.S. promotes second Gulf War"
never change Jon Bois
I had seen about 13 minutes of 24 in my life. So this video basically tripled that amount.
I feel like that's just about the perfect amount for one lifetime.
RoadCrewWorker do you not know how to do math, half of 7 is 3.5
Gage Brooker goddamn it i was about to say something to that effect. "actually 27 is 3.5 times 13 so yeah..."
Gage Brooker You are the dumbest boy alive........
Y'all are dumb as fuck, you don't count the number you start counting at
I mean, I get that, but it’s a really good Soap Opera. Remove yourself from the politics of it and you can easily be entertained.
I like how David Palmer was President, not once, but three times. That's called dedication to the role of being Jack's President. He just keeps getting back up even when Jack keeps killing terrorists for him, for some reason.
Top ten most tragic anime deaths, #1 Jos
I'm watching this, 6 years later, for the first time. I have no context, save for the fact that I love everything Jon Bois makes. I'm two minutes in, and I have no idea if this is a video on the Cubs or on the show 24. Goddamn, I love this
24, the show where the terrorists absolutely win, because holy shit, tell a terrorist that there is an alternate world where a nuke goes off in LA, the White House is taken control of, Presidents are offed, a weaponized virus is released, CTU is blow'd up, etc. and they would absolutely cream their pants.
Yeah I imagine the public in this world are the most paranoid, terrified masses ever knowing a terrorist can appear out of nowhere and shoot them.
As a huge 24 and Jon Bois fan, this might be the greatest video to ever surface for me.
i loved watching 24 because i was just a kid who liked watching violence. now i understand the meaning of all that death, i'm truly terrified. this was a horrror series
If I didn't know that 24 was a real show that actually aired on an American TV network and you showed me this video - I'd think this was a joke. A bunch of fake footage to make fun of TV in an over the top way. Like it was a clips from a Rick and Morty interdimensional cable episode. It's live action Ball Fondlers.
@@aguycalled80 ball fondlers?
@@Thomaas551 th-cam.com/video/qeoA4oe5Vmc/w-d-xo.html
"there are only bad choices" is a great way to say "I am not creative or good enough to imagine a better world"
Imagining a better world doesn’t require you to be creative, or a particularly good person. They didn’t even say there were only bad choices in the world. The quote was that there are *some situations* where there are only bad choices.
So, like, how do you only half listen to a quote in a video that put the quote on the screen? And then how do post that half-quote *in the comments section of the video you’re taking the quote from?*
@@ineedabetterpfp2485 well, when the situation you're talking about is a so called "battle of civilizations," (Bush administration's words, not mine) and you say there are only bad choices, maybe you are incapable of imagining a better world. Imagine you're a member of the Bush admin. You don't care about peace and the well being of man, you care about prosecuting an illegal war as contradictorily as possible to prevent yourself from being brought up at the next Nuremberg trials. That's what makes me say what I did.
@@ineedabetterpfp2485if you watch this video and do not come away with the impression that 24 was a tv show obsessed with and reverent to the idea of bad choices far beyond any commitment to realism depth or integrity you should probably rewatch the video
The smooth jazz is a lovely touch
The rocket in the soccer field had me in tears omg
Just surprised you didn’t bring up the time he gutted a guy while he was alive to get the SIM card out of his stomach
woah it’s you
Wow. It's like a Jigsaw trap.
Literally thought that Jon was using clips from a Saw movie at first; I completely forgot about this show
Nah the guy had just died
Holy shit I just realized the symbolism of the ending:
Everything is normal.
We've just seen this man get the worst deal any human being in any story has ever gotten. His lovers are dead, His career is in pieces, and he's about to be sent away for life. It is a tale of an apocalyptic America, a land devoid of hope, opportunity, happiness, or remorse. The world is in fire and there is no escape. Then, suddenly, we realize what this says about us and what we think of ourselves that we elevated such a low view of ourselves to such heights. We realize how much of our politics was shaped by those preaching at the altar of 24's unsatisfiable god, and we realize that we have all been living some distorted version of this fear; this paranoia that, fueled by the attacks on 9/11, was consuming every waking moment of American culture. Then, reflecting in all of the horror we have seen, all the anguish that we have felt by this ringing in of the apocalypse, all suffering fades back in to the only place it has ever been: normal. There is no point to handling this outro with any special care because, even in the face of such profound misery, we can't feel anything for him. Everything appears to be right in line with how things have always been.
Everything is normal.
This might be my favorite video of yours, and it's just stellar.
Very well said
"The funniest death cult on television" is not a phrase I could ever have anticipated.
"I just realized we haven't heard you say a word this entire time."
Damn, this show really did inspire The Phantom Pain, lol.
Honestly, this does give me a lot more context for what MGS5 was criticizing with it's own depiction of lawless torture and the subversive moral decay of it's protagonists. I can see why they thought of Sutherland.
FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt.
The dream for US politicians.
Yeah until it gets their head chopped off. There was a lot of those things in France during the revolution.
I honestly disagree.
reason #1294 that it is extremely funny and good that Rush Limbaugh is fertilizer. that said, his family can rest knowing they all hated him anyway and are glad he's currently decomposing
I finished the new Pretty Goods on Patreon yesterday and decided i needed to rewatch the old ones. I've already rewatched this one twice because i still can't believe just how funny it is
i love jack bauer, he is the ideal american and can do no wrong. if he kicked down my door and tortured me, all i need to hear is that it was a matter of national security.
As someone who remembers 24 and its characters quite fondly from family TV time when I was 7, this was quite the fun journey and answer as to why the show never seemed to hit as hard for me as it did for my family and others. Thank you, Joh.
That laugh at "So you want to be Jack's sidekick" is infectious!
You are 100% right about the David and Goliath thing
RIP Jos
The Rush Limbaugh part eeeeeeeuugh
"Suffered the most in fiction" someone hasn't read Berserk
It's true, and when you have a character that has suffered more you can generally keep that as the line and say the ones over it are overdoing it a bit.
RIP Miura
;_;
"'24' reimagined America as a sort of hell on Earth."
That must have been a real challenge. /s
I don't even like sports. Very glad I decided to stumble across your videos anyway, what a goldmine
Jedi Master Joe thanks Sherlock
I'm glad I watched this all the way through. Maybe I'll watch "24" sometime... but you got the point across, especially with that bit just before the outro. Well-done, Sir.
Awesome video man. Just a quick audio heads up - that mic looks like an AT2020 but even if it isn't, I think it's a side-address mic, so you'll get better audio from it if you speak into the side of it (there's a front and a back), not the top.
+Kevin B i honestly did not know this, thank you
No worries, hope it helps. Honestly, you've got awesome content down; that's the hard part. The little audio tech bits are small potatoes compared to that, so don't sweat it. Looking forward to more videos!
the best channel i watch, and almost as immersive as some good acid -please keep it up
Oh my god I'm glad someone said this
Someday, when you're world famous, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has a giant inflatable balloon with your mug plastered on it, will you remember us little people?
6:34 I love that he didn't even go all the way into "the desert." Those look the Mormon Rocks.
The city of Fontana, with a quarter million people, is like ten minutes from there. That's probably the I-15 corridor in the background, which is the main freeway from CA to Vegas.
Couldn't even make it 15 more minutes to dump the body in Victorville. Just lazy.
as a left-hander, I can relate to the sissors one
18:10 "more than 100,000 civilians... are dead"
oooooh boy, I wish the number was anywhere near that low :(
The IBC is literally the go to source to get the lowest estimate possible.
At first I thought you were talking about the 800,000 dead Americans from Covid.
I liked this video, but the Calvin and Hobbes reference just makes me want to like it more than once
Loved the video. 24 used to be my favourite show. Great analysis, I forgot how depressing it was. Thanks for the remainder 😊
Fuck reminder
Came for the 24 nostalgia. Stayed for the smooth jazz
The fetishation that some had of this show was just... yeah.
Have you ever considered that president Bush connected with 24 for human reasons, and not evil bad guy reasons? His life was invaded by a literal cult whose signature move is suicide bomb. I think this video is more than a little unfair.
Of course. That is the whole problem, manipulation of media as propaganda is nothing new and not that notable... it's much more concerning that the president connected with such a morally twisted show, for example the same president who defended and radically increased American torture programs around the world connected with a fictional show where the "good guys" use torture all the time and it saves the day through ruthless brutality and cruelty... That is the concerning bit.
just say fetishation 3 times, extremely fast
@@shoopoop21 Bush was a piece of shit. But I'm more concerned about the million he murdered then his love of 24.
@@tomhill3248 you call Bush a piece of shit, is that scale low enough to get Obama on it?
"I wouldn't wanna be president in 24 either" aged PERFECTLY
you forgot the time jack was gaslit into incarnating a legendary mercenary leader, starting shit from his offshore rig and abducting countless unaware soldiers
I watched this before ever watching 24 and I started watching about a week ago. You're 100% right lol
The example that stuck out most to me:
Kim and Janet go out. Kim and Janet get kidnapped. Kim gets sent to a camp and is eventually saved. Meanwhile...... Janet gets roofeed. Janet gets her arm broken by a crowbar. Janet gets injected with heroine. Janet gets hit by a car. Janet gets suffocated by her fake dad in the hospital.
They were so mad they couldn't kill Kim that they decided to drag Janet through the mud and give her 1 of the worst nights anyone has ever had lol
I used to love this show, the weird thing is I was 8 and watched it as a family bonding kinda thing
I always remember this being such a happy show
But seriously, that's the intended effect. Why does the Pentagon fund all those war movies? Why does rightwing Hollywood produce all the trigger-happy law enforcement stuff? So we're indoctrinated right from the cradle. We're consuming these stories and base our moral systems on them.
Doyle Harken "rightwing Hollywood" lol
Opposite for me, I hated the time it took away from my dad spending time with me.
Same here. My mom and I used to watch it together when I was younger and we both loved it. I still like it, great show
Nice to see a show that understands the true power of democracy, if the president dies you can keep electing new ones until you run out of people, you will never run out of presidents!
Did you know that being the US President is actually the deadliest profession in American history??
"The President, supposedly the most dignified American..."
LOL
he wasn’t ready
This video essay needs to win a Hugo or some shit. Jon bois is unimaginable
Aw man. I remember first watching 24 in its 8th season, which at the time was supposed to be its last. Absolutely apeshit from beginning to end, and my family ate it up. Even friends from my church were talking about it. It wasn’t until I was older when the new season in London dropped that I realized how insane Jack really was. Graphic torture was an afterthought in regards to the overall mission. Betrayal was a given. People on this show really just died and came back ALL the time.
What I didn’t know was how much support it was getting from the actual government, and that scares me more than anything on that show.
Using this video as inspiration for a college paper. Gotta be the 15th time I’ve watched it. Thanks Jon.
Jon Bois. Your videos are just delightful man. I want a whole TV show with Chart Parties and Pretty Good stuff!
“it killed the good and the evil, but it took special joy in devouring the unassuming innocent.” if that doesn’t sum up america idk what does
You know I really wish Jon would touch more on political things but I get the feeling that with Secret Base there would be a lot of people very unhappy that Mr funny sports man is actually an anti American commie
I have a feeling they kinda already know that.
The amount of work that goes into these videos is astounding!
Started by searching "Kim Bauer at CTU, WTF?", ended up on this video. A fine piece of craftsmanship sir. Love all the death stats.
These videos are so hilarious!!😂
I REALLY wish Jon would continue to upload more videos to his channel!!
To me this is still the best video I've ever watched on here.
The storystelling and pacing are perfect, and it is an excellent commentary on the show.
Still amazing.
I cant help but wonder if the people of power you described as liking the show liked it because it was to there real world stresses and showed absurd and simple solutions.
Nope. It's 'cause they are psychopaths and illustrated what they love most: death, torture, and breeding more terrorists to keep the cycle alive.
i think that is how they choose to see the world - an absurd place with no logic or reasoning and 50% murder rate - to validate their racism, militarism and straight up murders
I mean, Jon himself said that he liked it and that it was one of his favorite shows of all time. Does that mean he's a psychopath who loved death and torture?
@@CyrogenicNation nope, because he is notably Not A War Criminal. jon likes the show because it's the most hilarious and traumatic procedural possible
16:22 onward is the best! President, middle of the soccer field, walk around.... neeew... *explosion* lmao!
Amazing! This was the first TV show I ever binged watched. My dad bought the DVDs one at a time and we would go through episodes at a time. Most of those deaths I can still remember, its crazy to think that there were so many with shows like GOT now.
"go find something else to do" nope, I'm on the Pretty Good playlist, you can't stop me
Honestly Jos ate getting killed like that. Iconic.
Considering that Jack Bauer is an all-American hero and all, it’s kinda ironic that he’s played by a British-born Canadian guy.
Mission Impossible: It's like Tom Cruise watched 24 and said "not on my watch" so he reversed it: the conspiracies always get crazier, the stakes higher, the stunts dumber, but nobody dies, nobody loses anyone, everything is fine, and athough Tom Cruise can't die either he doesn't want to, because he is always rewarded with happiness. Most of the time he doesn't even try to kill the bad guy, and when he does he's "forced to". I remember he once gave plutonium warheads to a super group of elite terrorist super spies rogue shadow secret service agents to save ONE of his friends and they didn't blow up anything with them. Dude lives in a barbie world
The title literally gives it away. You know what your getting
I remember just finding out about 24 a few years ago and completely binge watched the whole first season. I thought it was the coolest show ever and was recommending it to everyone. It completely caught me off guard with all the twists, turns, and cliffhangers throughout each episode. It wasn't until the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th season I was really getting tired of it. With each season it just felt the same: there would be some world/country ending threat that would result in Jack putting everything on the line, and in the process innocent and almost all the good people of that season would be killed, I would scream at my screen because sometimes the whole plot could've been avoided if someone just opted to speak up, do the right thing, or hell just stick around for 1 more episode to uncover everything. It became boring with the amount of people they would kill off for no reason other than shock value, to where I could begin predicting who will live and who won't based on the amount of attention they get. Then the fact that some characters would "quit" the job for good then flip flop and come back just 1 season later like bruh make up your fucking mind. It was a great show when it started, always keeping me on the edge of my seat, but with every season, every new life felt meaningless and stopped me from caring about the characters altogether, almost like I was just waiting for them to die rather than rooting for them. When you've lost my love for the characters, you don't have a show.
Doubly weird to know that Kiefer Sutherland is decendent of Tommy Douglas, a Canadian socialist politician regarded as the architect of Canadian welfare state.
if by "canadian welfare state" you mean "universal healthcare" and that's it
Just to follow up on this ancient thread, the cartoonishly horrible premier of Ontario has recently been comparing himself and his (extremely regressive) policies to Tommy Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland called him out and said, "you are no Tommy Douglas. Stop using his name to promote yourself."
@@waylandsmith He's handling Coronavirus really well though
I can no longer watch this video without reciting
“debbies corpse your favorite song is the music from sim city 2000? debbies corpse you are such a nerrrrrcorpse”
I have never seen an episode of 24 in my life, but this is the best interpretation of it.
Just found your channel a few hours ago and have been watching your videos very intently.. wonderful prose and delivery, and fantastic visuals.. almost cried when i saw your last upload was 3 years ago. Excited to go through the back log now though !! Until next time
he still works with SB nation but unfortunately it's only sports stuff rather than goofy shit like this
check out secret base if you havent, he still continues chart party and he made some new series
This is honestly one of the best videos I have ever seen. Incredible job dude keep up the amazing work
I binged all of 24 after watching like 3/4 of this video a few years ago, still the best procedural with a drawn out side plot by far, but so oddly traumatic lol
The perfect TH-cam video doesn’t exi................
Watching this video having not known anything about 24 aside from the *pinball table* (yes there is an official 24 pinball table) was sure a trip
This is the most chaotic video I've seen since Lonnie Smith.
P R E T T Y G O O D
Don't they make scissors for people who are left-handed?
yeah but they suck
@@theunwelcome Exactly why I became a righty when it comes to cutting with scissors.
They do, but they're harder to find and often more expensive. And most often (in my anecdotal experience) 'left-handed' scissors are right-handed scissors with left-handed grips (the moulding of the grips isn't the problem).
That said, your average adult doesn't need to use scissors that often, and when they do it's most often something trivial like cutting tape or string or something where using the scissors in your non-dominant hand or using righty scissors left-handedly or whatever hardly matters.
Years later Kiefer Sutherland would go on to play Tom Kirkman in Designated Survivor. Tom is an architect, and before being brought on to the fictional president's cabinet as Housing and Development Secretary, was in academia. By all accounts, a family man who loved his wife, son and daughter very much. Then a conspiracy did a decapitation strike on the entire government as we know it by blowing up the Capitol during the State of the Union address, killing functionally every member of government there was. Only days or a week earlier, Tom Kirkman was named designated survivor, a backup in the presidential line of succession that is never where any other government officials are to ensure his safety at all times.
I think Kiefer Sutherland took the role of Tom Kirkman as penance for playing Jack Bauer. There's still a calm rage in the character of Tom Kirkman if you ever threaten his family or his country, but generally speaking he is a compassionate and good man with the nation's interests at heart.
As if to remind him that he can never escape being Jack Bauer, Tom Kirkman's wife, Alex Kirkman (played by Natasha McElhone) is killed by a drunk truck driver in the second season.
Awesome work! Nice breakdowns & info graphics on such an awful slough of a tv show!
I never would've thought to have been so pleased of being reminded of it's very existence.
Looking forward to seeing more future episodes of _Pretty Good_!!
What's crazy is that the show actually came out in 2001, and it was crazy from the get go. While 911 probably caused the general pessimism that made it so popular, it couldn't have been the reason the writers made the show so nuts