Because 2400 Is Too Many
written by Jon, B, Kyle, Justin and Bill - January 16, 2026
BEHROOZ BEATS GUY TO DEATH WITH SHOVEL
SEASON 4
Behrooz was a in tight spot. On the one hand, he was indebted to his family and their way of life. On the other hand, he was a teenager in California with a hot girlfriend and an XBOX. Anyone who has to put fanatical obligation over Regular Sex is going to snap eventually, especially after finding out that the underaged tail he'd be scoring would soon be replaced by a bullet to his brain. Most kids think their parents are a drag when it's expected of them to keep a clean room. Behrooz got to spend the next six hours running from his father's henchmen, their horribly inaccurate gunshots and the police, alongside his unsettlingly creepy mother.
God, I'm so glad I was raised Catholic.
- Justin
GEORGE MASON'S FLIPPANT INDIGNANT CHILD
SEASON 2
A couple hours into season two, George Mason contracts radiation poisoning after foolishly engaging in a toxic waste Super Soaker war with some of the neighborhood terrorists. The on-site physician informs him that he's got up to a week left to live, but to not bank on living through the day. More specifically, through the next nine hours.
We then get to meet his son John, who is an uncomfortably awkward characiture of American youth. He works at one of those seaside fast food joints the cast from the O.C. frequent when they're not busy being sexy and/or having sex, flipping both burgers and his perfectly groomed sandy blonde hair out of his gorgeous baby blue eyes. He hasn't seen his dad in a while, and he shows this by making a bunch of indignant comments regarding their lack of a relationship.
George Mason: Son, I need to talk to you.
Brah: Oh yeah? Well maybe I don't want to listen, old man! Go back to the stone age with the rest of the fossils.
George Mason: Actually, son. Fossils are the petrified remaints of the dinosa-
Brah: That's just like you, dad! You never want to listen to what I've got to say!
Later in the day as George's condition has gotten noticably worse and he's had time to digest his situation, he does the only reasonable thing and has his kid arrested. Mason isn't the Worlds Greatest Pop, so he doesn't quite know how to tell his son that he's dying aside of handing him a checkbook full of dirty money. After a couple more sassy remarks, the finality of the situation sinks in, and John embraces his father. What should have been a laughably obvious change of heart is actually a really touching moment, and everyone with a functioning heart gets a little choked up.
- Justin
DAVID PALMER MANAGES TO EYE-ROLL HIS ENTIRE CABINET WITH ONE OCULAR SWOOP
SEASON 2
This is probably the only time David Palmer has ever been funny. I love the one-note thud after Palmer says "Well as it happens, I'm the only one who counts", as though the music composer was like, "I don't have much time here, but hfffffdeeeeeamn!"
I'm confused as to how 24 political loyalties work. How could a President's own hand-picked cabinet remove him from office? How could the movement to do so be started by the two closest to him, his Vice President and his Chief of Staff? How does Novick get to switch parties from Palmer's cabinet to Charles Logan's? It's almost as if this show isn't actually taking place in the real world. I've been lied to all this time.
- Jon
SHERRY GETS SUCKER-PUNCHED
SEASON 3
The first three seasons of 24 followed three primary storylines: Jack, Kim, and David Palmer. Kim's escapades are generally so ridiculous and laughable that we can't put any of them on this list with a straight face. The Palmer storylines were great in the first two seasons, but by the third season it was just a bunch of boring crap pieced together by the writers in order to give the camera something to look at while Jack was busy taking a piss or mowing the lawn. Characters would appear and disappear, neither for any good reason in particular, and it just wasn't going anywhere.
One of its few saving graces was a guy named Fox. Who is Fox? Fox is the guy who punched Sherry Palmer in her face.
Fox was hired by Palmer's Chief of Staff and brother, Wayne Palmer, to help him find a prescription bottle that proved that, blah blah blah, not important. What is important is that while ransacking Sherry's house for the bottle, she arrives home and catches them in the act. While Wayne starts stuttering like a moron, Fox gives a "eh, what the hell" sort of look, and just decks Sherry right in the jaw, living the dream of millions of fans as well as half the characters in the show. And hell, it's taped to her back. Fox's shit-eating grin is the real highlight.
And Wayne, the most bumbling burglar I've ever seen, gets to be President. You'd think that Presidents would be fairly good at robbing people.
- Jon
LOGAN IS THE MASTERMIND OF THE EVENTS OF SEASON FIVE
SEASON 5
Since being signed in, Logan has been nothing but a bumbling fool, in completely over his head. This made for a fascinating dynamic, since there are few ideas more threatening to the vitality of the United States than a man accepting the presidency who has no business whatsoever being president. One of those ideas is that of a president who is complicit in attacks on the U.S. That Greg Itzin is able to play the turn completely believably, making the remainder of season five a race to unseat a president more Nixonian than Nixon, is a testament to his brilliant acting, and that the events of season five prior to the turn still make perfect sense in retrospect is a testament to 24’s brilliant writing.
- Kyle
CURTIS COLD-COCKS MANDY
SEASON 4
Since season one, Mandy has been a boil—albeit an unbelievably hot one—on the ass of CTU. She blows up planes, aids and abets identity theft, gives Palmer mega-leprosy or whatever, kidnaps Tony…she’s basically just a huge bitch, and CTU doesn’t even seem to know who she is, let alone how to stop her. What could be an eye roll-inducing stock black widow character becomes a silent threat whose actions CTU is incapable of predicting or preventing. She must be stopped.
And just when it looks like she’s gonna take out Tony—she can probably withstand his barrage of cross-kicks for longer than he can keep doing them—wham, in swoops Curtis, to deliver the most satisfying interracial, cross-gender KO since some dude named Fox knocked Sherry Palmer the fuck out a season earlier. FOX might as well’ve flashed an image macro on the screen that said “OWNED,” or whatever y’all Internet People are saying these days.
- Kyle
MIKE NOVICK IS A FUCK FACE
SEASON 2
Unbeknownst to President Palmer, his own Cabinet is taking measures to remove him from office. His aide, Lynne Kresge, finds out about it, but is shoved down a stairwell before she can warn him. While being loaded into an ambulance, Palmer checks in on her. She tries desperately to point out Mike Novick, the Chief of Staff who is working against Palmer.
And in an instant, the guy we kept confusing with Turtle Guy from "The Master Of Disguise" makes us all hate him at once. She struggles to indict him with Palmer standing there, and in near-panic, Novick closes his hands over hers and whispers, "It's all right. You're going to be just fine."
With that, they roll her into the ambulance, and we never see her again.
This is one of the most painful pieces of television I've ever watched. You might say I could have used some Novick-ain.
Or some Tylenol.
- Jon
HENDERSON OUTSMARTS AND ALMOST EXPLODES JACK
SEASON 5
It’s season five. Jack has prevented the assassination of a presidential candidate, a nuclear attack on American soil, biological warfare on American soil, more nuclear attacks, and a long-ass Wikipedia entry’s worth of other threats to the U.S. He is the over-man. He cannot be stopped. He cannot be outsmarted. Try to outsmart him and he’ll electrocute you with an improvised torture device, then drill a hole in your skull and poke at your brain. Make you do things. He can’t be beaten.
Then his former mentor shows up. He’s already gotten the jump on Jack once, having tasered him as he walked into the elder man’s office. Christopher Henderson has clearly taught Jack a good deal of what he knows, so it comes as some surprise that Henderson appears completely oblivious when it comes to the sinister machinations of a biological weapons development program overseen by his own company. As any 24 viewer should come to expect by now, this is because he’s not really oblivious. But for once, Jack doesn’t realize it. The remnants of trust that Jack feels towards a man he once worked under blind him to the trap Henderson is catching him in, and in an instant, that long-gone aspect of Jack’s vulnerability—the prospect of him ever not being in control of a situation—comes rushing back.
Henderson locks Jack in a server room with a bomb and detonates it. Of course, Jack survives with the help of a sturdy door and some sturdier floor panels, but that doesn’t take away the fact that, for once in years, Jack has been outsmarted.
- Kyle
LOGAN CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE
SEASON 5
The most interesting aspect to Charles Logan's character was that in no way was he ever in control of the situation he'd managed to find himself within the middle of. He'd yell and scream like a child and demand people "JUST FIX IT" or "GET IT DONE" because "HE IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES," but amidst all of his blustery ranting, there was always someone above him pulling the strings, and always someone below him just one step away from exposing him for being a fraud.
When the situation comes to a head in the middle of the night, he does the only thing he knows how and resorts to the coward's way out. Nevermind that he could have potentally come forward and helped stop Henderson, he only viewed the consequences as direct and personal. He knew that once the tape went public, it'd be the end for him, both politically and literally as the Snappy Dressed Businessmen would see to that. So, in his final act of cowardice he produces a pistol and a bottle of scotch. Of course, he's too much of a coward to go through with it, so he delays the act juuuuuuuuuuust long enough for an out to present itself. At which point he goes back to being the blustery, full of shit child we'd been wating to see implode for the past 16 hours.
- Justin
TONY RETURNS
SEASON 4
Jack and Audrey are pinned down by terrorist gunfire. Jack’s out of bullets and this time, it looks like the end: the rest of season four is just going to be a silent clock ticking over Jack’s lifeless body. But wait! Tony appears at the last second and plugs the terrorists, and look, he even has a soul patch again!
There’s an understanding that in the 24 universe, if you don’t see someone die or end a season with fewer limbs than they started it with, they’re coming back. So it hardly came as a shock that Tony would make it back to the show some day, and he did so pretty early in season four—there’s only a six episode gap between when he was last seen (in custody) in season three and when he pops back up—but the point is, he was seemingly gone from the world of CTU for good when we left off, and then he shows back up as a hero and Jack’s savior. He may not have been gone long, but that didn’t make his return any less exciting.
- Kyle
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