Did Kiefer Sutherland just say goodbye to '24'?

Kiefer Sutherland kicked off the Fox upfront presentation with his usual kind words to advertisers. But then he said something that caught our attention -- and made us nervous.

"24" fans know that Jack Bauer is dying -- find out his fate on tonight's season finale -- and Sutherland's contract is up next year. It has been the subject of much speculation in the industry and observers have wondered if the series will end next year.

"I don't know how many more times I'm gonna have the opportunity to say this," the actor said before calling his time on "24" as the "greatest experience I've had so far in my career and in my personal life."

Sutherland also thanked the advertisers for their role in the show's success.

"It sounds trite," he said. "But you've helped me become part of this family."

Was he saying goodbye?

-- Maria Elena Fernandez

Photo: Getty Images

As Season 7 comes to an end, here are 10 ways we loved the year.

I sing to you of "24," Fox's gloriously preposterous television show, which comes crashing to its Season 7 close tonight, proving that love means never having to say you're sorry, even for a life devoted to torture.
Never mind that the whole all-in-a-single-day conceit is old and unnecessary or that the dialogue consistently makes "Scooby-Doo" look like Tennessee Williams. Forget all the ridiculous inconsistencies.

Put aside even the absurd image of a ruthless dictator with a doomsday weapon whose only goal is to take over some crap country called Sangala. (No sacks of gold bullion? No nuclear weapons? No "I'll take all the red states and 10 lifetime passes to DisneyWorld"? My God, man, what kind of tyrant are you?) Put all these niggling matters out of your mind because "24" is terrific television, this was a great season, and here are 10 reasons why.

Read more of the '24' review

-- Mary McNamara

Photo: Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer on "24."

To spoil anything about Monday’s two-hour “24” finale is to be a bad fan.

But rest assured it’s good. Very good. Without giving anything away: Ethan and Olivia face off, Tony pulls another fast one, Kim gets back into action, and Jack, well, he’s got a few moves left before his ticker peters out.

Oh, yes, tears will be shed.

But in spite of Jack’s dire condition, details about next season – Day 8 – have already begun to emerge. When production resumes in two weeks, Cherry Jones will be back as President Allison Taylor, as will Annie Wersching as Renee, whose past will play a part in next year’s crisis. (Look for Renee to come down on a specific side of the torture debate in the finale’s last hour.) Elisha Cuthbert revealed she'd be reprising her role as Kim.

CTU also will be up and running, with Chloe on board, under the aegis of a new leader – R.I.P. Bill -- named Brian Hastings, who is being described as “an MBA type with razor sharp intellect.” Anil Kapoor (“Slumdog Millionaire”) will play a Middle Eastern leader on a peacemaking mission in the U.S.

It’d be difficult to top Jack’s hyper-personal storyline this season, but at a Tuesday screening of the finale at a packed Wadsworth Theater attended by the cast and executive producer Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland promised that next year could possibly be the show’s most grounded yet.

“One of the things that we can talk about in Season 8 is that set-up is probably the most realistic political thing I think we’ve done since the start of the show. We’ve had some seriously questionable circumstances,” he said with a laugh. “And they’ve been a lot of fun to play, but I think the new set-up, in certain aspects, is something I actually hope happens.

“I think a lot of people will feel that way. Very excited about where that could potentially go.”

Jack’s been pretty battered this season, emotionally a wreck after being held accountable for his use of torture as a method of coercion and poisoned by a biochemical weapon of mass destruction. How much could he have left in the tank?

No one’s saying. But Sutherland said having to play a dying Jack for almost half the season was part relief, part challenge.

“For the first time in the history of my experience with ’24,’ I knew where I was going,” he said. (The crowd howled.) “It was kind of reassuring.”

But seriously. “Howard and I talked about what a great opportunity [Jack’s illness] would be. He’d have the come-to-Jesus moment when he’d actually have to confront himself for what he’s done…There are certain things he could absolutely justify and there are things he could not.

“For me, it was the most dramatic [place] we’d ever been able to take the character, and it was not plot driven,” Sutherland said. “It’s one of the things I love about the ending for this season. It’s really about these characters taking a serious look at themselves.”

-- Denise Martin

Photo credit: Associated Press

Taking time off has done Jack Bauer some good, it seems. After a creatively shaky sixth season and a writers-strike-disrupted seventh season, the long delayed "24" has come roaring back this year. And with just a few hours left to go, fans and producers are already looking ahead to what's next.

According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, the eighth season will see Jack and company changing coasts with a move to New York City and the restoration of CTU, as well as the return of President Taylor (Cherry Jones).

Also returning will be Jack's potential love interest, FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), whose past will reportedly play a big part in next season's storyline. Jack's chances with her just went up 100% now that Walker's boyfriend, Larry Moss, was -- SPOILER ALERT -- killed by double-double agent Tony Almeida. (Seriously, this guy just needs to pick a side and stick with it.)

-- Patrick Kevin Day

Tony Almeida may have come back from the dead, but he's not coming back from this.

We could deal with Resurrected Tony's shaved head, that questionable patch of chin hair, his temporary alliance with the baddies who revived him. But you don't snuff out the good guys and live to tell about it on "24." (When Jack Bauer killed CTU director Ryan Chappelle – his upstanding if insufferable boss – in Season 3, his hand was forced by a terrorist.)

No, in tonight's episode, Tony not only made off with a WMD of his very own, he murdered FBI agent Larry Moss to get it. Larry, who was finally getting behind Jack's effective if unorthodox ways. Larry, whose eyes bugged out in terror as he was choked to death by Tony the Traitor. It was almost as bad as watching Edgar's pitiful demise.

For now, Tony's moves are suspect. Even in Jack's weakened state, we all know he's Tony's match. Jack tazes phones, knives sources who won't give him answers and bulldozes his enemies. Literally, not figuratively. We try to pry more information out of actor Carlos Bernard about Tony's about-face and whether he’ll live to see Day 8. Unfortunately, Bernard is a formidable opponent:

After tonight's episode, Tony is dead to me ... but I still want to know what his deal is.
Um, well, I can’t really tell you what’s ultimately behind his actions.

Still pissed at the government for Michelle's death, I presume? 
I think he’s motivated by still being stuck in a place of anger and resentment. He still feels betrayed by the government.

So this has all been one big setup? The whole time he was just playing poor (now dead) Bill Buchanan?
Yeah, this has been his plan.

That's pretty evil. Did you know Tony would turn out this way when the producers told you they were bringing him back to life?
We knew it was going to go in this direction, yeah. How it was actually going to play out, you never know. It’s such a complex show to write. They’ll map out where they think a character is going to go and see if it actually plays with the story. But it was always in the back of our minds that this is where he was going. It was just a matter of how he was going to get there over the season.

Did that make sense to you? Jack Bauer’s wife was killed too and you don't see him taking it out on America with biochemical weapons.
It felt very organic, oddly enough. (Laughs) As an actor, you can’t judge your character. The only way I have to go about it is to put myself in the situation of the character and the circumstance of what he’s been through and play it. Is he a good guy or bad guy? That’s up to the audience. But for me? If I were to judge? It made perfect sense.

Spoiler alert: If Monday's episode of "24" is waiting on your DVR, unwatched, do not read any further. The following contains spoilers regarding the departure of a regular character.

As far as deaths on "24" go, Bill Buchanan's on Monday night was fairly quick and painless.

At least it was for actor James Morrison, who has played Jack Bauer's coolheaded boss for the past four years. But longtime fans of the Fox action drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland, still might have been a little shellshocked. 

Buchanan goes out on his own terms -- he blows himself up alongside a group of terrorists who have overtaken the White House. The character's death ends a three-season run for the actor, who was supposed to be a  one-appearance  guest star who soon became the ongoing source of pushback for Jack.

"The moment you step aboard '24' you're taught to expect that you're going to bite it," Morrison, 54, said in an interview Friday. "In this solar system you have one sun. The rest of us are just planets that are invited to orbit, and sometimes we're just yanked out of the sky."

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

Review: '24'

As Season 7 comes to an end, here are 10 ways we loved the year.

I sing to you of "24," Fox's gloriously preposterous television show, which comes crashing to its Season 7 close tonight, proving that love means never having to say you're sorry, even for a life devoted to torture.
Never mind that the whole all-in-a-single-day conceit is old and unnecessary or that the dialogue consistently makes "Scooby-Doo" look like Tennessee Williams. Forget all the ridiculous inconsistencies.

Put aside even the absurd image of a ruthless dictator with a doomsday weapon whose only goal is to take over some crap country called Sangala. (No sacks of gold bullion? No nuclear weapons? No "I'll take all the red states and 10 lifetime passes to DisneyWorld"? My God, man, what kind of tyrant are you?) Put all these niggling matters out of your mind because "24" is terrific television, this was a great season, and here are 10 reasons why.

Read more of the '24' review

-- Mary McNamara

Photo: Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer on "24."

To spoil anything about Monday’s two-hour “24” finale is to be a bad fan.

But rest assured it’s good. Very good. Without giving anything away: Ethan and Olivia face off, Tony pulls another fast one, Kim gets back into action, and Jack, well, he’s got a few moves left before his ticker peters out.

Oh, yes, tears will be shed.

But in spite of Jack’s dire condition, details about next season – Day 8 – have already begun to emerge. When production resumes in two weeks, Cherry Jones will be back as President Allison Taylor, as will Annie Wersching as Renee, whose past will play a part in next year’s crisis. (Look for Renee to come down on a specific side of the torture debate in the finale’s last hour.) Elisha Cuthbert revealed she'd be reprising her role as Kim.

CTU also will be up and running, with Chloe on board, under the aegis of a new leader – R.I.P. Bill -- named Brian Hastings, who is being described as “an MBA type with razor sharp intellect.” Anil Kapoor (“Slumdog Millionaire”) will play a Middle Eastern leader on a peacemaking mission in the U.S.

It’d be difficult to top Jack’s hyper-personal storyline this season, but at a Tuesday screening of the finale at a packed Wadsworth Theater attended by the cast and executive producer Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland promised that next year could possibly be the show’s most grounded yet.

“One of the things that we can talk about in Season 8 is that set-up is probably the most realistic political thing I think we’ve done since the start of the show. We’ve had some seriously questionable circumstances,” he said with a laugh. “And they’ve been a lot of fun to play, but I think the new set-up, in certain aspects, is something I actually hope happens.

“I think a lot of people will feel that way. Very excited about where that could potentially go.”

Jack’s been pretty battered this season, emotionally a wreck after being held accountable for his use of torture as a method of coercion and poisoned by a biochemical weapon of mass destruction. How much could he have left in the tank?

No one’s saying. But Sutherland said having to play a dying Jack for almost half the season was part relief, part challenge.

“For the first time in the history of my experience with ’24,’ I knew where I was going,” he said. (The crowd howled.) “It was kind of reassuring.”

But seriously. “Howard and I talked about what a great opportunity [Jack’s illness] would be. He’d have the come-to-Jesus moment when he’d actually have to confront himself for what he’s done…There are certain things he could absolutely justify and there are things he could not.

“For me, it was the most dramatic [place] we’d ever been able to take the character, and it was not plot driven,” Sutherland said. “It’s one of the things I love about the ending for this season. It’s really about these characters taking a serious look at themselves.”

-- Denise Martin

Photo credit: Associated Press

Taking time off has done Jack Bauer some good, it seems. After a creatively shaky sixth season and a writers-strike-disrupted seventh season, the long delayed "24" has come roaring back this year. And with just a few hours left to go, fans and producers are already looking ahead to what's next.

According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, the eighth season will see Jack and company changing coasts with a move to New York City and the restoration of CTU, as well as the return of President Taylor (Cherry Jones).

Also returning will be Jack's potential love interest, FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), whose past will reportedly play a big part in next season's storyline. Jack's chances with her just went up 100% now that Walker's boyfriend, Larry Moss, was -- SPOILER ALERT -- killed by double-double agent Tony Almeida. (Seriously, this guy just needs to pick a side and stick with it.)

-- Patrick Kevin Day

Tony Almeida may have come back from the dead, but he's not coming back from this.

We could deal with Resurrected Tony's shaved head, that questionable patch of chin hair, his temporary alliance with the baddies who revived him. But you don't snuff out the good guys and live to tell about it on "24." (When Jack Bauer killed CTU director Ryan Chappelle – his upstanding if insufferable boss – in Season 3, his hand was forced by a terrorist.)

No, in tonight's episode, Tony not only made off with a WMD of his very own, he murdered FBI agent Larry Moss to get it. Larry, who was finally getting behind Jack's effective if unorthodox ways. Larry, whose eyes bugged out in terror as he was choked to death by Tony the Traitor. It was almost as bad as watching Edgar's pitiful demise.

For now, Tony's moves are suspect. Even in Jack's weakened state, we all know he's Tony's match. Jack tazes phones, knives sources who won't give him answers and bulldozes his enemies. Literally, not figuratively. We try to pry more information out of actor Carlos Bernard about Tony's about-face and whether he’ll live to see Day 8. Unfortunately, Bernard is a formidable opponent:

After tonight's episode, Tony is dead to me ... but I still want to know what his deal is.
Um, well, I can’t really tell you what’s ultimately behind his actions.

Still pissed at the government for Michelle's death, I presume? 
I think he’s motivated by still being stuck in a place of anger and resentment. He still feels betrayed by the government.

So this has all been one big setup? The whole time he was just playing poor (now dead) Bill Buchanan?
Yeah, this has been his plan.

That's pretty evil. Did you know Tony would turn out this way when the producers told you they were bringing him back to life?
We knew it was going to go in this direction, yeah. How it was actually going to play out, you never know. It’s such a complex show to write. They’ll map out where they think a character is going to go and see if it actually plays with the story. But it was always in the back of our minds that this is where he was going. It was just a matter of how he was going to get there over the season.

Did that make sense to you? Jack Bauer’s wife was killed too and you don't see him taking it out on America with biochemical weapons.
It felt very organic, oddly enough. (Laughs) As an actor, you can’t judge your character. The only way I have to go about it is to put myself in the situation of the character and the circumstance of what he’s been through and play it. Is he a good guy or bad guy? That’s up to the audience. But for me? If I were to judge? It made perfect sense.

Spoiler alert: If Monday's episode of "24" is waiting on your DVR, unwatched, do not read any further. The following contains spoilers regarding the departure of a regular character.

As far as deaths on "24" go, Bill Buchanan's on Monday night was fairly quick and painless.

At least it was for actor James Morrison, who has played Jack Bauer's coolheaded boss for the past four years. But longtime fans of the Fox action drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland, still might have been a little shellshocked. 

Buchanan goes out on his own terms -- he blows himself up alongside a group of terrorists who have overtaken the White House. The character's death ends a three-season run for the actor, who was supposed to be a  one-appearance  guest star who soon became the ongoing source of pushback for Jack.

"The moment you step aboard '24' you're taught to expect that you're going to bite it," Morrison, 54, said in an interview Friday. "In this solar system you have one sun. The rest of us are just planets that are invited to orbit, and sometimes we're just yanked out of the sky."

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

Kiefer Sutherland talks Jack Bauer's deathbed and what's next on '24'

To spoil anything about Monday’s two-hour “24” finale is to be a bad fan.

But rest assured it’s good. Very good. Without giving anything away: Ethan and Olivia face off, Tony pulls another fast one, Kim gets back into action, and Jack, well, he’s got a few moves left before his ticker peters out.

Oh, yes, tears will be shed.

But in spite of Jack’s dire condition, details about next season – Day 8 – have already begun to emerge. When production resumes in two weeks, Cherry Jones will be back as President Allison Taylor, as will Annie Wersching as Renee, whose past will play a part in next year’s crisis. (Look for Renee to come down on a specific side of the torture debate in the finale’s last hour.) Elisha Cuthbert revealed she'd be reprising her role as Kim.

CTU also will be up and running, with Chloe on board, under the aegis of a new leader – R.I.P. Bill -- named Brian Hastings, who is being described as “an MBA type with razor sharp intellect.” Anil Kapoor (“Slumdog Millionaire”) will play a Middle Eastern leader on a peacemaking mission in the U.S.

It’d be difficult to top Jack’s hyper-personal storyline this season, but at a Tuesday screening of the finale at a packed Wadsworth Theater attended by the cast and executive producer Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland promised that next year could possibly be the show’s most grounded yet.

“One of the things that we can talk about in Season 8 is that set-up is probably the most realistic political thing I think we’ve done since the start of the show. We’ve had some seriously questionable circumstances,” he said with a laugh. “And they’ve been a lot of fun to play, but I think the new set-up, in certain aspects, is something I actually hope happens.

“I think a lot of people will feel that way. Very excited about where that could potentially go.”

Jack’s been pretty battered this season, emotionally a wreck after being held accountable for his use of torture as a method of coercion and poisoned by a biochemical weapon of mass destruction. How much could he have left in the tank?

No one’s saying. But Sutherland said having to play a dying Jack for almost half the season was part relief, part challenge.

“For the first time in the history of my experience with ’24,’ I knew where I was going,” he said. (The crowd howled.) “It was kind of reassuring.”

But seriously. “Howard and I talked about what a great opportunity [Jack’s illness] would be. He’d have the come-to-Jesus moment when he’d actually have to confront himself for what he’s done…There are certain things he could absolutely justify and there are things he could not.

“For me, it was the most dramatic [place] we’d ever been able to take the character, and it was not plot driven,” Sutherland said. “It’s one of the things I love about the ending for this season. It’s really about these characters taking a serious look at themselves.”

-- Denise Martin

Photo credit: Associated Press

Taking time off has done Jack Bauer some good, it seems. After a creatively shaky sixth season and a writers-strike-disrupted seventh season, the long delayed "24" has come roaring back this year. And with just a few hours left to go, fans and producers are already looking ahead to what's next.

According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, the eighth season will see Jack and company changing coasts with a move to New York City and the restoration of CTU, as well as the return of President Taylor (Cherry Jones).

Also returning will be Jack's potential love interest, FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), whose past will reportedly play a big part in next season's storyline. Jack's chances with her just went up 100% now that Walker's boyfriend, Larry Moss, was -- SPOILER ALERT -- killed by double-double agent Tony Almeida. (Seriously, this guy just needs to pick a side and stick with it.)

-- Patrick Kevin Day

Tony Almeida may have come back from the dead, but he's not coming back from this.

We could deal with Resurrected Tony's shaved head, that questionable patch of chin hair, his temporary alliance with the baddies who revived him. But you don't snuff out the good guys and live to tell about it on "24." (When Jack Bauer killed CTU director Ryan Chappelle – his upstanding if insufferable boss – in Season 3, his hand was forced by a terrorist.)

No, in tonight's episode, Tony not only made off with a WMD of his very own, he murdered FBI agent Larry Moss to get it. Larry, who was finally getting behind Jack's effective if unorthodox ways. Larry, whose eyes bugged out in terror as he was choked to death by Tony the Traitor. It was almost as bad as watching Edgar's pitiful demise.

For now, Tony's moves are suspect. Even in Jack's weakened state, we all know he's Tony's match. Jack tazes phones, knives sources who won't give him answers and bulldozes his enemies. Literally, not figuratively. We try to pry more information out of actor Carlos Bernard about Tony's about-face and whether he’ll live to see Day 8. Unfortunately, Bernard is a formidable opponent:

After tonight's episode, Tony is dead to me ... but I still want to know what his deal is.
Um, well, I can’t really tell you what’s ultimately behind his actions.

Still pissed at the government for Michelle's death, I presume? 
I think he’s motivated by still being stuck in a place of anger and resentment. He still feels betrayed by the government.

So this has all been one big setup? The whole time he was just playing poor (now dead) Bill Buchanan?
Yeah, this has been his plan.

That's pretty evil. Did you know Tony would turn out this way when the producers told you they were bringing him back to life?
We knew it was going to go in this direction, yeah. How it was actually going to play out, you never know. It’s such a complex show to write. They’ll map out where they think a character is going to go and see if it actually plays with the story. But it was always in the back of our minds that this is where he was going. It was just a matter of how he was going to get there over the season.

Did that make sense to you? Jack Bauer’s wife was killed too and you don't see him taking it out on America with biochemical weapons.
It felt very organic, oddly enough. (Laughs) As an actor, you can’t judge your character. The only way I have to go about it is to put myself in the situation of the character and the circumstance of what he’s been through and play it. Is he a good guy or bad guy? That’s up to the audience. But for me? If I were to judge? It made perfect sense.

Spoiler alert: If Monday's episode of "24" is waiting on your DVR, unwatched, do not read any further. The following contains spoilers regarding the departure of a regular character.

As far as deaths on "24" go, Bill Buchanan's on Monday night was fairly quick and painless.

At least it was for actor James Morrison, who has played Jack Bauer's coolheaded boss for the past four years. But longtime fans of the Fox action drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland, still might have been a little shellshocked. 

Buchanan goes out on his own terms -- he blows himself up alongside a group of terrorists who have overtaken the White House. The character's death ends a three-season run for the actor, who was supposed to be a  one-appearance  guest star who soon became the ongoing source of pushback for Jack.

"The moment you step aboard '24' you're taught to expect that you're going to bite it," Morrison, 54, said in an interview Friday. "In this solar system you have one sun. The rest of us are just planets that are invited to orbit, and sometimes we're just yanked out of the sky."

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

The eighth season of '24' is coming together

Taking time off has done Jack Bauer some good, it seems. After a creatively shaky sixth season and a writers-strike-disrupted seventh season, the long delayed "24" has come roaring back this year. And with just a few hours left to go, fans and producers are already looking ahead to what's next.

According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, the eighth season will see Jack and company changing coasts with a move to New York City and the restoration of CTU, as well as the return of President Taylor (Cherry Jones).

Also returning will be Jack's potential love interest, FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), whose past will reportedly play a big part in next season's storyline. Jack's chances with her just went up 100% now that Walker's boyfriend, Larry Moss, was -- SPOILER ALERT -- killed by double-double agent Tony Almeida. (Seriously, this guy just needs to pick a side and stick with it.)

-- Patrick Kevin Day

Tony Almeida may have come back from the dead, but he's not coming back from this.

We could deal with Resurrected Tony's shaved head, that questionable patch of chin hair, his temporary alliance with the baddies who revived him. But you don't snuff out the good guys and live to tell about it on "24." (When Jack Bauer killed CTU director Ryan Chappelle – his upstanding if insufferable boss – in Season 3, his hand was forced by a terrorist.)

No, in tonight's episode, Tony not only made off with a WMD of his very own, he murdered FBI agent Larry Moss to get it. Larry, who was finally getting behind Jack's effective if unorthodox ways. Larry, whose eyes bugged out in terror as he was choked to death by Tony the Traitor. It was almost as bad as watching Edgar's pitiful demise.

For now, Tony's moves are suspect. Even in Jack's weakened state, we all know he's Tony's match. Jack tazes phones, knives sources who won't give him answers and bulldozes his enemies. Literally, not figuratively. We try to pry more information out of actor Carlos Bernard about Tony's about-face and whether he’ll live to see Day 8. Unfortunately, Bernard is a formidable opponent:

After tonight's episode, Tony is dead to me ... but I still want to know what his deal is.
Um, well, I can’t really tell you what’s ultimately behind his actions.

Still pissed at the government for Michelle's death, I presume? 
I think he’s motivated by still being stuck in a place of anger and resentment. He still feels betrayed by the government.

So this has all been one big setup? The whole time he was just playing poor (now dead) Bill Buchanan?
Yeah, this has been his plan.

That's pretty evil. Did you know Tony would turn out this way when the producers told you they were bringing him back to life?
We knew it was going to go in this direction, yeah. How it was actually going to play out, you never know. It’s such a complex show to write. They’ll map out where they think a character is going to go and see if it actually plays with the story. But it was always in the back of our minds that this is where he was going. It was just a matter of how he was going to get there over the season.

Did that make sense to you? Jack Bauer’s wife was killed too and you don't see him taking it out on America with biochemical weapons.
It felt very organic, oddly enough. (Laughs) As an actor, you can’t judge your character. The only way I have to go about it is to put myself in the situation of the character and the circumstance of what he’s been through and play it. Is he a good guy or bad guy? That’s up to the audience. But for me? If I were to judge? It made perfect sense.

Spoiler alert: If Monday's episode of "24" is waiting on your DVR, unwatched, do not read any further. The following contains spoilers regarding the departure of a regular character.

As far as deaths on "24" go, Bill Buchanan's on Monday night was fairly quick and painless.

At least it was for actor James Morrison, who has played Jack Bauer's coolheaded boss for the past four years. But longtime fans of the Fox action drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland, still might have been a little shellshocked. 

Buchanan goes out on his own terms -- he blows himself up alongside a group of terrorists who have overtaken the White House. The character's death ends a three-season run for the actor, who was supposed to be a  one-appearance  guest star who soon became the ongoing source of pushback for Jack.

"The moment you step aboard '24' you're taught to expect that you're going to bite it," Morrison, 54, said in an interview Friday. "In this solar system you have one sun. The rest of us are just planets that are invited to orbit, and sometimes we're just yanked out of the sky."

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

'24': Carlos Bernard talks about Tony Almeida's turn for the worse

Tony Almeida may have come back from the dead, but he's not coming back from this.

We could deal with Resurrected Tony's shaved head, that questionable patch of chin hair, his temporary alliance with the baddies who revived him. But you don't snuff out the good guys and live to tell about it on "24." (When Jack Bauer killed CTU director Ryan Chappelle – his upstanding if insufferable boss – in Season 3, his hand was forced by a terrorist.)

No, in tonight's episode, Tony not only made off with a WMD of his very own, he murdered FBI agent Larry Moss to get it. Larry, who was finally getting behind Jack's effective if unorthodox ways. Larry, whose eyes bugged out in terror as he was choked to death by Tony the Traitor. It was almost as bad as watching Edgar's pitiful demise.

For now, Tony's moves are suspect. Even in Jack's weakened state, we all know he's Tony's match. Jack tazes phones, knives sources who won't give him answers and bulldozes his enemies. Literally, not figuratively. We try to pry more information out of actor Carlos Bernard about Tony's about-face and whether he’ll live to see Day 8. Unfortunately, Bernard is a formidable opponent:

After tonight's episode, Tony is dead to me ... but I still want to know what his deal is.
Um, well, I can’t really tell you what’s ultimately behind his actions.

Still pissed at the government for Michelle's death, I presume? 
I think he’s motivated by still being stuck in a place of anger and resentment. He still feels betrayed by the government.

So this has all been one big setup? The whole time he was just playing poor (now dead) Bill Buchanan?
Yeah, this has been his plan.

That's pretty evil. Did you know Tony would turn out this way when the producers told you they were bringing him back to life?
We knew it was going to go in this direction, yeah. How it was actually going to play out, you never know. It’s such a complex show to write. They’ll map out where they think a character is going to go and see if it actually plays with the story. But it was always in the back of our minds that this is where he was going. It was just a matter of how he was going to get there over the season.

Did that make sense to you? Jack Bauer’s wife was killed too and you don't see him taking it out on America with biochemical weapons.
It felt very organic, oddly enough. (Laughs) As an actor, you can’t judge your character. The only way I have to go about it is to put myself in the situation of the character and the circumstance of what he’s been through and play it. Is he a good guy or bad guy? That’s up to the audience. But for me? If I were to judge? It made perfect sense.

Spoiler alert: If Monday's episode of "24" is waiting on your DVR, unwatched, do not read any further. The following contains spoilers regarding the departure of a regular character.

As far as deaths on "24" go, Bill Buchanan's on Monday night was fairly quick and painless.

At least it was for actor James Morrison, who has played Jack Bauer's coolheaded boss for the past four years. But longtime fans of the Fox action drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland, still might have been a little shellshocked. 

Buchanan goes out on his own terms -- he blows himself up alongside a group of terrorists who have overtaken the White House. The character's death ends a three-season run for the actor, who was supposed to be a  one-appearance  guest star who soon became the ongoing source of pushback for Jack.

"The moment you step aboard '24' you're taught to expect that you're going to bite it," Morrison, 54, said in an interview Friday. "In this solar system you have one sun. The rest of us are just planets that are invited to orbit, and sometimes we're just yanked out of the sky."

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

Death takes a familiar '24' figure

Spoiler alert: If Monday's episode of "24" is waiting on your DVR, unwatched, do not read any further. The following contains spoilers regarding the departure of a regular character.

As far as deaths on "24" go, Bill Buchanan's on Monday night was fairly quick and painless.

At least it was for actor James Morrison, who has played Jack Bauer's coolheaded boss for the past four years. But longtime fans of the Fox action drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland, still might have been a little shellshocked. 

Buchanan goes out on his own terms -- he blows himself up alongside a group of terrorists who have overtaken the White House. The character's death ends a three-season run for the actor, who was supposed to be a  one-appearance  guest star who soon became the ongoing source of pushback for Jack.

"The moment you step aboard '24' you're taught to expect that you're going to bite it," Morrison, 54, said in an interview Friday. "In this solar system you have one sun. The rest of us are just planets that are invited to orbit, and sometimes we're just yanked out of the sky."

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

'24': Five questions with fallen FBI agent Rhys Coiro

And by fallen we mean compromised.

As one of Col. Dubaku's midlevel FBI moles, Sean Hillinger probably wasn't destined to go the daylong distance on Fox series "24." But actor Rhys Coiro, best known for playing the cocky "art-film" director Billy Walsh on "Entourage," says that at least in going bad Sean got to be really bad, killing his co-worker and mistress Erika (Ever Carradine) during a final lip lock.

When did you find out Sean was compromised?
It was after the writers strike. We stopped filming right before Sean turned. So then there was a big several-month break where I had no idea what his fate was or even what the show’s fate was. I mean, naturally, I had my suspicions, as does every actor on the show. But there had been some intimations. Janeane Garofalo and I, well, let’s just say there was talk of a conspiracy with us, but then it, uh, turned out to be only me!

Did you feel Sean‘s personal ticking clock kick in then? "24" has never had a problem offing characters. (As of tonight's episode, seven characters integral to the story have been killed.)
Well, we all knew that some twists were going to get even more twisted. It’s funny, I remember first starting out and Sean was something of a blank slate. But watching the show, he does seem like a suspicious fellow from hour one. I think he started out as sort of a red-herring character, and then he turned out to be, you know, the actual herring. I was actually driving in my car the other day through Hollywood and some guy pulled up next to me and was like, “Hey, you’re the bad guy on ‘24’! I thought it was gonna be you at first, but it was too obvious. I didn’t think it could be you.”

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

'24' pushed to 2009

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs.

A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

From the Associated Press

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

Tony comes back to '24,' despite being dead

Perhaps it’s the “Ugly Betty” influence on television. Or maybe the producers of “24” just couldn’t get enough of Laura Spencer’s brief return to “General Hospital” last year.

When “24” has its seventh season premiere on Jan. 13, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) will somehow be miraculously resurrected. We use the term “miraculously” because, even though executive producer Howard Gordon declared in a Fox news release today that Tony’s fate was “uncertain,” we’re pretty certain we saw Tony taking his last breath in Jack Bauer’s arms in Season 5.

This belief was further reinforced when we interviewed Gordon, Bernard and star Kiefer Sutherland, and they all expressed how sad they were that Jack no longer had his running buddy. But they all agreed that it was in the service of telling a good story.

What could that good story be now? According to Fox, the season opens with Jack on trial in Washington, D.C., for his actions in the pursuit of justice. CTU no longer exists and there is a woman, played by Cherry Jones, running the White House. The only thing stated about Tony’s return is that it is “shocking.”

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.

'24': Jack calls it a day

Who could have predicted, with "Lost's" myriad mysteries still unexplained and "Heroes" just beginning to uncover the extent of its mythology, that the series with the most head-scratching moments this season would end up being "24"?

But that's how it ended up playing out, right up to the final ambiguous seconds of Monday night's two-hour season finale, with Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) standing alone on a Malibu cliff and staring off into the surf, possibly considering suicide, but considering Fox has renewed the series for two more years, probably not willing to act on it.

There's an argument to be made that Jack's closing stance was the perfect embodiment of the mental state of the writers at the end of "Day Six" -- lost, confused, unable to turn back yet unsure of how to proceed. Coming off the show's most uneven and critically condemned season yet, it's understandable they'd be a little shaken. This was the year that all the old tricks stopped working, when the show's reliance on torture came under attack from the media and co-creator Joel Surnow's conservative credentials were scrutinized. It's also the first season the series' basic 24-hour structure seemed to fail, when the writers decided to end the main storyline with six episodes to go, and grabbed at a few unresolved story threads from last year to fill the hours.