I’m going to write something, because… I fear having a picture of Cam in a wetsuit on the top of this page for too long.

So I know Marshall’s not a huge 24 fan, but Cam and I are. I haven’t heard his reaction to Janeane Garofalo joining the cast of ‘24′ next season. I’m sure that at least part of his reaction will be wondering why, of all radio talk show hosts, Garofalo was the one chosen…

I understand the creators wanted to put Jack Bauer on overseas covert mission in Africa next year, and Fox shot it down because it was going to cost too much. I find the idea intriguing:

“He was at a humanitarian work project, but he was merely visiting a friend of his who had made his life there,” explains Gordon. “Jack was wandering and finding where he belongs in the world. On one level, his friend says, ‘If you think you’re going to find penance here, you’re not going to find it.’ Jack actually has been there for a couple of months, and we learn he has been wandering the world basically trying to find a place to belong and looking for penance and realizes he’s not going to find it anywhere, so he gets caught up in a coup and has a BLACK HAWK DOWN kind of moment.” 

I salute the creators for thinking outside the box. I think that in seasons two through six, we all feel like we’ve seen Jack trying to find the bomb in Los Angeles before it explodes one time too many. There’s other talk of setting much of the season in Washington, and talk of a twelve hour gap during the day.

Change setting: Judging from previous seasons of ‘24′, the city of Los Angeles is not only the world’s top terrorist target (with the rest of the country pretty much ignored by the bad guys) but it has an endless array of abandoned warehouses, run down factories, industrial parks, parking garages… It’s practically the Rust Belt. After a while, it all starts to look the same. Did Jack ever go downtown? Beverly Hills? Any ethnic neighborhoods? (I may be forgetting…) Jack’s spent six days in L.A., and it all looks like Gary, Indiana.

At the very least, keep the President and his folks in Washington. And the menace, whatever it is, should threaten the President in some way. One of the things that made season one work was seeing the assassination threat through the eyes of the target, how he dealt with it, how his family dealt with it. While the Secret Service is good (Bring back Aaron Pierce again!), they can’t guarantee the safety of the president in a world where Air Force One was shot out of the sky (season four) where a former president was assassinated (season five), another was severely injured, if not killed by his own wife (season six) and where another was, it seems likely, forced to step down for health reasons (didn’t look like Wayne Palmer was going to come back after season six).

Here’s a crazy idea: The new president has a loyal vice president who doesn’t completely disagree on every issue and isn’t secretly plotting to depose the president, we establish this character as a heroic figure, cool-headed in a crisis, helpful to the administration and the country in every way. Then the bad guys kill him, of course.

Bring back familiar faces: Other than Joss Whedon’s Buffy/Angel shows, no other show has killed off so many popular characters - George Mason, Nina Myers, David Palmer, Tony, Michelle, Ryan Chappelle, Milo… The replacement characters just haven’t been as interesting. So who’s left? Well, they could bring back Mandy, the recurring assassin. I’ve mentioned Aaron Pierce. One-handed Chase? Mike Novick? Daniel Dae-Kim’s Agent Baker? If the new president is a Democrat (unlikely, unless the president played by Cherry Jones somehow took over for Powers Boothe’s Noah Daniels), did Lynne Kresge ever recover from her injuries and return to politics? If the new president is a Republican, is former Vice President Hal Gardner playing any role in the administraton?

Big non-terror event: I’m thinking of the California presidential primary that David Palmer won in season one, it was one other major event demanding the characters’ attention throughout the day. It could be the Super Bowl, it could be the Dali Lama or Pope visiting, some environmental circumstance (presuming it’s L.A., wildfires? earthquake? mudslides?)… One of the great things about the early seasons was the sense that everything represented a complication or potential problem for Jack & company. Then you put a terrorist plot on top of it. Think of Jack getting stuck in traffic… and on that point

More public reactions: They had some of this every few seasons, including the ethnically diverse insomniac gang of anti-Muslim rednecks in season two, but let’s face it, getting around a city that has had a terrorist attack is a huge problem. It gives an excuse to have Jack and one sidekick taking on a whole gang of foes - the CTU backup team hit bumper-to-bumper traffic the moment they left the parking lot…

If you’re gonna give us a storyline with civilians - like the wedding in season two, or the Muslim neighbor last season - give us some connection to the characters we care about. Give us Morris’ brother that was mentioned, or Chloe’s parents. Imagine how we would have felt if we had known Edgar’s mother before she became a plot device. Let us see the crisis through their eyes, if we need a few scenes of “ordinary folk” reacting to some terrible terrorist attack…

A quick way to avoid Muslim or Arab bad guys, if there’s a feeling it’s getting cliche, even though it’s accurate: In season two, Second Wave (al-Qaeda wannabes) hired Timothy McVeigh Michigan militia types to blow up CTU. In real life, we’ve seen Jose Padilla, Adam Gadahn types working with al-Qaeda, along with Islamist groups in the Philippines and Indonesia, the Islamist Courts Union in Somalia, etc. They used Russian-looking and sounding Chechnians in season five, and a Russian mastermind i season six. With two lines of dialogue by the badguys —  ”We’re working with them? They don’t look Muslim.” “They converted.” — you can use any type of badguys.

CTU’s internal history: We’ve seen six or seven heads of CTU Los Angeles in the seasons we’ve watched, and nobody ever mentions it. At least have some internal grumbling about how the office is cursed, or have some guy — the late Milo Pressman would have been perfect — saying, “Hey, I’ve been analyzing code since back when Nina Myers was on our side and George Mason was calling the shots, pal, I think I know what I’m doing.”

Secondly, acknowledge the characters’ histories. Whoever’s running CTU this year should ask, in response to the latest crisis, “Hey, has Jack gone rogue yet, or is that scheduled for later today?”

On a similar point, somebody could or should refer to the fact that Valencia California and a portion of the Mohave desert are radioactive.

Other random ideas: Jack attending the firing squad execution of Cheng, his Chinese tormentor… Chloe’s baby, obviously, the most likely candidate for kidnapping since Lindbergh’s kid… Josh Bauer, the blonde nephew with the occasional odd instinct for ass-kicking that no one thinks came from the bald man who claimed to be his father… Whatever happened to the Caspian Sea oil interest guys who were helping Second Wave back in season two? … Even if whatshername blondie isn’t willing to reappear on the show, at least depict Jack keeping an eye on her, and/or calling her and leaving messages…