When Bob Cochran and Joel Surnow developed their ambitious pitch for a real-time TV series set in the world of counter-terrorism, they could have had no idea that eight weeks before the first episode was set to air, the nation would be plunged into exactly the kind of horrific turmoil the show would be exploring for the next eight years.
But that’s what happened when “24” premiered on Nov. 6, 2001.
Somehow, viewers put aside their anger and confusion over world events long enough to embrace the show’s gritty escapism, making “24,” which wraps its eight-season run Monday night with a special, two-hour finale, a cultural phenomenon and a major hit for Fox.Cochran, who left the series during Season 6, and executive producer Howard Gordon, who ran it since early in the first season, sat down with The Wrap to choose the 24 greatest moments in the “24” pantheon, presented here in chronological order.
So you’d better start reading; we’re on the clock --
Boop… beep… boop… beep… boop…
1. Voice-over
SEASON 1 | Episode 1 | Date: Nov. 6, 2001
The first episode begins with words on a screen and the low-key voice of Special Agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland): “The following takes place between midnight and 1 a.m. on the day of the California presidential primary. Events occur in real time.”
Those last four simple words signified a historic experiment in TV storytelling. Never before or since has a series taken place without cutting ahead or flashing back in time.
2. Mile-high terror
SEASON 1 | Episode 1 | Date: Nov. 6, 2001
A man and woman flirt on an international flight. We’ve been told there will be an attempt on the President’s life, and this guy looks suspicious. But it’s the seemingly airhead woman who’s the terrorist, which we find out when she steals his press card during sex in the bathroom, jabs a flight attendant in the neck with a hypodermic needle, sets off a time-bomb and ditches via parachute just before the plane blows to bits.
The scene was chosen not for its gripping suspense and cool special effects, but because it establishes a pattern of misdirection frequently seen on the show. Nothing is ever as it seems.
3. Trust no one
SEASON 1 | Episode 6 | Date: Dec. 18, 2001
Jack’s daughter Kim and her friend Janet York have been kidnapped. Janet’s father Alan has been running all over town with Jack’s wife Teri looking for them. When he finally finds the girl and gets some time alone with her, he kills her. We later learn he wasn’t really her father, a misconception we’d been laboring under for five episodes.
Cochran: “This was one of those early scenes that established a pattern right from the beginning that this show’s not going where you think.”
4. Nina, the mole
SEASON 1 | Episode23 | Date: May 14, 2002
We’ve been puzzling all season long over the identity of a traitor within CTU, the fictional Counter Terrorism Unit where Jack Bauer works.
