How the 24 finale should have ended

So 24’s done, at least until someone comes out with a movie, and just like with Lost, I’m OK with the ending.

But.

I really think the Seinfeld route would have been more appropriate:

When Seinfeld ended after (to lazy to Google) seasons, the characters were judged for their past actions and put away for a really long time.  Let’s take a moment to judge 24 and the Counter Terrorist Unit over their eight years of operation:

Moles within CTU: 3

Times CTU was attacked: 5

Nuclear explosions on their watch: 2

To be fair, I think they stopped at least two other nuclear explosions, so that’s something.  Also, those stats are on an “at least” basis, because I used IMDB’s episode list to pull them together.  To their credit, IMDB is at least a little aware of the concept of spoilers, with some entries coming in like this:

Yeah, I didn’t bother to make a count of how many times that happened.  I also skipped counting “Jack kills a guy,” though others have done that homework already…

So… Lots of disasters averted, but lots of disasters altogether as well.  I’m really curious what we’re all going to be afraid of now that the show’s gone.  But let’s take a moment to figure out at least one point of failure.

24: a case study in sleep deprivation

Here are the time periods of 24, by season:

Season one: midnight to midnight

Season two: 8AM to 8AM

Season three: 1PM to 1PM

Season four: 7AM to 7AM

Season five: 7AM to 7AM

Season six: 6AM to 6AM

Season seven: 7AM to 7AM

Season eight: 4PM to 4PM

I’ll be honest, I thought more of these seasons started later in the day, but in the cases where it did (seasons 1, 3, and 8) you’ve got people up for most of the day already, and then staying up for 24 hours.  Staying up all night isn’t fun in any event, and back in 2000, before the series even began, we knew that staying up just 17 to 19 hours was the mental equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of .05.

By the way, why do we never see CTU agents slurping down coffee?  Do they get special government “go pills” instead?

So, builders of CTU 2.0: consider working in shifts.  Maybe add a nap room.  And then see if you don’t get blowed up quite as much.

(And thanks for 8 years of me getting to yell at the television.)