User:BauerPhillip24/How Realistic is 24

Non-belivable, annoying and unrealistic things about 24

 * Teri Bauer getting amnesia in Season 1. Huh?
 * Season 1: The writers of 24 played Metal Gear Solid when they filmed Jack's one-man assault on Gaines' compound. After a while, Jack decides that just driving around L.A. and talking on the phone isn't the best way to handle things, so he heads in and takes out an entire garrison of heavily armed mercenaries with his SIG Sauer P228 and a useless punk with an Uzi.
 * I don't like how the show is so willing to portray the Russians and Chinese as bad guys but whenever some Middle Eastern country is implicated in terrorism, it is never given a name.But I suppose it is a pretty politically charged show to some people, so I guess the screenwriters don't want to inflame any sensitivities.
 * What kind of name is Kaukistan? Apparently, Bierko and his seperatists are from this country, which is a breeding ground for anti-Russian terrorists. Why couldn't the screenwriters stick with Chechnya? Would have made perfect sense...
 * Operation Nightfall:Apparently, David Palmer, a Senator, authorizes a covert operation. But only the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff are involved in that kind of decisionmaking. Besides, the objective of US and NATO military operations in the Balkans was to capture these war criminals and bring them to justice.Assassinating them would do no good at all.
 * Let's be honest, Counter Terrorist Unit is a pretty dumb, unrealistic name for a federal agency. 24 could have very easily just made Jack and all other CTU personnel FBI agents. It would have worked out nicely.
 * If CTU is a domestic unit, what the hell is Marcus Holt doing within the Chinese government? That would be a CIA operation. Besides, despite what Hollywood thinks, a CIA "agent" is a foreign national operating for the CIA against a foreign government.Of course Holt would be accused of being a spy; he's a white dude in China.
 * Season 5: US government implicated in terrorist attacks. WHY do they do this? To increase the value of their oil interests. Yeah, pretty realistic, right? I know some say that could happen, but I'm afraid I will have to label you a crazy conspiracy theorist.
 * Mitch Anderson. Yeah, so, apparently, some Turkish jihadists manage to convince an oath-bound American air force officer to steal a stealth fighter from a secure base and shoot down Air Force One.Oh, well, that could happen in real life, right...?
 * Anderson flies a stealth bomber that can fire air-to-air missiles. Yeah, right.
 * Iran is the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism and enjoys sticking it to the Great Satan, America. It would have been pretty cool if the screenwriters could have come up with a plot in which Iran's tools (Revolutionary Guard, Quods Force, Hezbollah, or Hamas) try to attack America to be foiled by Jack Bauer.
 * 24 should have included the National Security Council's national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism, as well as a more active National Security Advisor.
 * Sometimes, 24 has sloppy plots, 2D characters, over-the-top narrative and a feeling of going through the motions.By its eighth season, it got kind of more like science fiction than drama.
 * Cell phones always work, even in elevators and bunkers.
 * Cell phones are even allowed inside secure facilities.
 * Staking out a terrorist hideout and using a cell phone.
 * Jack was in a cargo plane in the air and calling Chloe at the same time.
 * Season 3:Jack is in a secure MI6 facility and picks a lock with a switchblade in five seconds.
 * CTU has a more high-tech facelift every season, but doesn't have the time or money to work on security measures to keep terrrorists out of the building.
 * How do Marwan's terrorists crack the codes of the nuclear football and almost nuke L.A.? Besides, in the event of an attack on the President, the football would have been inactivated. Then the other football carried by the Vice President would be activated.Then Marwan rips a page out of the football's notebook, informing his Midwest minions of the location of a warhead in transit. The football's contents, in reality, are the Single Integrated Options Plan and authentication mechanisms to alert the Pentagon. It does not concern itself with the day-to-day movements of anything, and does not have specific information needed to unlock a nuke.
 * The Dobson Override would not work because there is no central system that controls every nuclear plant in the country.
 * When David Weiss stops the interrogation of Joe Prado. You can't just walk into court and make the accusation of torture and spring someone.
 * Then Bill Buchanan says the PATRIOT Act authorizes Prado's detention.Huh? The Act's expansions of the government's detention powers don't extend to American citizens.
 * Anyway, Jack solves these problems by crossing vast expanses of L.A., D.C., or New York in a few minutes, never having to shit, piss, eat, or drink.
 * Also, the countless conspirators of 24 endlessly discuss their conspiracies, in specific language, over cell-phones!
 * In the final two episodes of season 8, Jack kills five Russian bodyguards with single shots. Whenever they fire, they miss. Plus lots of shots were fired in a fancy hotel and the NYPD does nothing.
 * Also, the UN Secretary General, at the treaty signing, says, "By signing, you commit your prospective countries to abide by the terms therein." In the U.S. treaties only acquire force once ratified by the Senate.
 * The government employs traitors and moles exclusively—like a hiring requirement.
 * Terrorists always set up their HQs within a two-hour drive of CTU Headquarters.
 * Chloe's code-cracking technique:pressing ten keys.
 * And of course, when does anyone eat, drink, or go to the bathroom?People get around L.A., Washington D.C., and New York pretty quickly.
 * Hamri Al-Assad. Apparently, this guy is a terrorist who wants to negotiate a "peace treaty" between America and Islamist terrorist groups. First of all, al-Assad is a terrorist, not a head of state; the US would never legitimize him by recognizing him as an international actor, which such a treaty would do. That's just stupid.
 * Jack capturing the president and interrogating him...how entertaining.
 * When Alex Hewitt stabs Sherry Palmer. What the hell? Sherry wasn't seriously harmed because she was such a superficial character that once the knife got past her skin, there wasn't really anywhere else for it to go. It's funny because there was absolutely no reason for Alex to stab her. He could have just ducked into the hole.
 * Season 1: Why is Teri Bauer allowed to just walk around CTU and yell at George Mason?
 * Season 2: Apparently, Syed Ali couldn't find a guy as short as him in time. Jack sees the corpse's pants are three inches too short, spends a second reviewing Ali's dossier in his head and concludes that Ali is probably sneaking around the mosque with no clothes.Did Jack ever beat Kim at chess?
 * Jack could have easily killed Chase Edmunds. He wasn't particularly likeable, didn't get much done and was kind of an idiot.
 * Season 5, when Jack gives the unconscious air marshal a pillow. No doubt the flight crew know who the air marshal is,so you'd expect them to be like "Oh, well, here's our guardian asleep, but whatever, I have to offer drinks to the passengers."
 * Tony Almeida. First he gets a broken ankle. Next year he's shot in the neck. A couple years later he gets half his face blown off.
 * In one of the show's finest word salads, the CTU SAC instructs her staff to "double-source all intel through Homeland Security and CIA", which is sublimely meaningless.
 * Nina Myers kills Mamud Rasheed Faheen with...what?A gift card?OK...
 * Season 1:How the hell did Jack know there was a bomb in that cell phone? Oh, yeah, because Drazen told him,like, "Palmer can't talk on ANY other phone you hear me?!"
 * Habib Marwan films his terorist messages in the back room of a trendy nightclub, while a terrorist cell stands ready to overwhelm a military convoy carrying a nuclear warhead at a moment's notice.
 * While Dina Araz tells CTU that the terrorist cells din't communicate with one another, Marwan checks in with everyone constantly.
 * Season 3, the Delta Force operators. They would not go into action with only fatigues and a beret. Also check out this picture. That is not the Delta Force unit insignia.
 * George Mason's son, John. This was kind of funny, but it's how most American kids are. Mason contracts cancer after foolishly engaging in a uranium super soaker war with the neighborhood terrorists.

Mason:"Son I need to talk to you."

John:"Oh, yeah? Well, maybe I don't want to listen, old man! Go back to the stone age with the rest of the fossils."

Mason:"Actually, son, fossils are the petrified remains of dino-"

John:"That's just like you. You never want to listen to what I have to say!"

Later, Mason's condition gets worse and he does the only reasonable thing and has John arrested, later giving him a checkbook of money.

Anyway...thanks for listening to my whining, er, comments.

Oh, and it's funny whenever Victor Drazen says "Jack Bauer." Like "Zhaak Bhhhaaahhhrrr."