24 - Season Premiere

So last night I stayed up until after midnight to finish the edits on Her Irish Lover. Why so late? Because 24 was on! Priorities, people. But the book is done, it’s e-mailed to my editor’s desk, and those of you who obsess over enjoy 24 as much as I do can join me in a discussion.

We begin with Jack Bauer being in a Chinese prison camp (ala Pierce Brosnan imprisoned in North Korea in the “Die Another Day” James Bond movie). Jack is being all heroic, but honestly, we know he won’t die. He’s Jack Bauer. When the evil Fayed dude with the bad accent takes Jack in for some serious torture, we’re just waiting for Jack to become Houdini and escape. But holy vampire, Batman! :batman: I wasn’t QUITE expecting Jack to get rid of the bad guys in quite that way. Ick. Biting the carotid artery? That one was a bit high in the squick factor.

And then we had Kumar/Ahhhh med who will likely kill off the high school nerd boy. The part that cracked me up was when Jack was interrogating the traitor terrorist and just couldn’t get any information out of the man. Then the Big Bad Reformed Terrorist takes care of business. Jack is dumbfounded, questioning whether he can “do this anymore.”
“Don’t worry,” says Big Bad Reformed Terrorist. “You’ll remember.”

What, there’s a school for this? Torture 101? What on earth would the syllabus look like? Week one: Ways to interrogate using sharp pointy objects. Week two: How to endure stabbing with aforementioned sharp pointy objects and still run around like a superhero.

Can’t wait for tonight’s episode. I imagine we’ll see someone set up a perimeter. Because every time CTU sets up a perimeter, it just doesn’t work. The bad guys always escape. Somehow the show manages to pull this off, and it’s good campy fun. What I do like about “24″ is that you truly can’t predict what will happen. No one is safe, especially not secondary characters. And speaking of which, how much do you want to bet that Fayed isn’t truly behind the attacks?

Now that book #2 is turned in (and please God, I hope my editor likes it), it’s onto book three: The Book Which Must Be Written. I’m 100 pages in, and I’m now at the point where I need to start setting up the secondary storyline. I have a few different directions I could go, but I’m going to do a little research, brainstorm a bit, and see what would work best. I like this raw stage, where virtually anything can happen. It’s scary, but fun, too.