Season 1

Season 1 of 24 began in November of 2001 on the Fox Network. It was created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, who were also executive producers along with Brian Grazer, Tom Krantz, Howard Gordon and Stephen Hopkins.

Fox initially ordered half a season of the show to try it out. The successful rescue at the end of the first half of the season was planned as a series finale in case the show was not picked up for the rest of the season.

24: Season One was released on DVD in North America on September 17, 2002.

Season Overview
The first season (2001–2002) revolves around an assassination attempt on Senator David Palmer, an African American candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, on the day of the California primary election. The central character is Jack Bauer, a former Delta Force operator who is the Special Agent in Charge of the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles. CTU and Jack lead the investigation on the Palmer threat, and Jack becomes personally involved when his wife, Teri, and daughter, Kim, are kidnapped by the people behind the assassination attempt.

The season, like others, is essentially divided into three acts:

1. In the first act, a mercenary group tries to force Jack Bauer to kill Senator Palmer by kidnapping his wife and daughter. Jack works to rescue his family and keep Senator Palmer out of harm's way.

2. A second wave of assassins are discovered, as CTU tracks their activity, Jack learns why they are being targeted.

3. The final act reveals the true mastermind of the days events and he initiates his contingency plan to eliminate Jack and the Senator.

Major subplots

 * A mole at CTU Los Angeles is sabotaging efforts to stop the assassination.
 * Political scandals, centered around Senator Palmer's son, who is accused of killing his sister's rapist in the past, threaten to erupt.
 * The members of the Bauer family are struggling to rebuild relationships after Jack and Teri's separation.
 * Romantic conflicts between Jack's girlfriend while he and Teri were separated, Agent Nina Meyers, and her new boyfriend, Agent Tony Almeida.
 * A member of Senator Palmer's staff is unknowingly involved with the terrorists trying to bring down Palmer.
 * Jack's personal conflict to choose between helping his family and protecting Senator Palmer.

Summary
CTU Los Angeles learns of a potential assassination attempt aimed at Senator David Palmer. As Jack and CTU investigate the threat, Jack's daughter Kim runs away but ends up being held against her will when the guys she's with kidnap her under orders from Ira Gaines. Jack's wife searches for Kim and later becomes kidnapped too. Gaines uses Teri and Kim in an effort to force Jack to assassinate Senator Palmer and take the fall for his death. Jack eventually finds and rescues his wife and daughter and takes down Gaines' terrorist cell in the process. He learns about a second group of terrorists that hired the first cell. The second cell is led by the men who are ultimately responsible for the day's events: Andre Drazen and Alexis Drazen.

The Drazen's motives are revealed after we discover that years prior to this day, Jack Bauer was sent as part of a classified team to Kosovo on the orders of a secret Congressional panel headed by David Palmer to kill their father, Victor Drazen. In order to keep the operation totally secret, the panel never met nor knew the team of operatives, and vice versa, meaning David Palmer and Jack never knew about each other's involvement. The Drazens found out about both David Palmer's and Jack's role in their father's death and sought revenge on both of them. Because Jack was thought to be the only surviving member of the special ops team, he was targeted to carry out the assassination plot. The Drazens hoped that by the end of the day, Senator Palmer would be dead, Jack would be imprisoned for the assassination, and Jack's family would be killed.

While following up on a lead in the investigation, Jack discovers that Victor Drazen is actually alive and being held in a top secret underground holding facility under classified security. The Drazens' ultimate goal is to free Victor Drazen and kill Senator Palmer and Jack and his family. They storm the holding facility and free their father, capturing Jack in the process. They also abduct Kim again and use her for leverage to force Jack to contact Senator Palmer in person and have their famliy assets unfrozen. After a cell phone rigged to explode detonates in Senator Palmer's hotel suite, Senator Palmer goes along with a story that he was killed in the blast in order to fool the Drazens and save Kim. Andre Drazen tells Kim that his mother and sister were killed by Jack years earlier, but Kim does not believe him. She formulates a plan to escape, and when a guard allows her to get a cup of coffee, she scalds him and runs outside. She's being held at the Port of Los Angeles, and hides on the docks. Jack confesses to CTU that Senator Palmer's death was faked, and a mole inside CTU calls the Drazens to tell them that Senator Palmer is still alive. Victor Drazen knows that Jack is coming to trade himself for Kim, but fears that Jack won't show himself he sees Kim. Drazen instructs his mole at CTU to lie to Jack and tell him that the Coast Guard found Kim's body in the harbor. Jack is devastated when he hears the news, and the Drazens wait for him to show up and avenge Kim's death. When Jack arrives at the harbor, he charges the dock and kills everyone. After a backup team arrived, including members of the Coast Guard, Jack requested that he be allowed to claim his Kim's body. The Coast Guard informs Bauer that they found no body that night. Jack realizes that someone at CTU was working for the Drazens, and that the mole is the person who told him Kim had died. He calls the Director of CTU and tells him to order a lockdown.

Meanwhile, at CTU, the mole was preparing for exfiltration by erasing all of her incriminating information. Teri Bauer, who was at CTU waiting for Kim and Jack to return, stumbled upon the mole and was tied up to prevent her from hindering the escape. Jack returned to CTU and caught the mole in the parking garage, then went inside to be with his family. He discovered a dead security guard in a hallway and started a panicked search for Teri. He found Teri hidden in an IT room, tied to a chair and facing the wall. He spun her chair around and saw that she had been shot in the stomach. He untied her and checked for a pulse, but she was dead. Jack held her in his arms and cried as the final clock ticked to 12:00am.

Although it is not clear what year the series is set in, some fans have assumed it is for the 2004 election and therefore, the date would be Tuesday, March 2nd 2004. However this is incorrect, since, during Season 1, Jack Bauer explicitly said that he took part in a covert operation against Milošević's government two years before. Since Milošević was ousted from office four years before 2004, Season 1 could not have taken place at that time.

The season has a dramatic and unexpected ending: the death of Teri Bauer. Many fans were dismayed by this sudden plot twist, while others applauded 24's genre-defying willingness to kill major characters with little warning. The producers also filmed an alternate ending in which Teri, Kim, and Jack are reunited, and another in which Teri is shot, but survives. However, they eventually decided to go with the death of Teri Bauer as the climax of season one. The first alternate ending is available on the Season 1 DVD boxed set, although it is noticeably less dramatic than the eventual ending that was aired.

Main Cast

 * Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer
 * Leslie Hope as Teri Bauer
 * Sarah Clarke as Nina Myers
 * Elisha Cuthbert as Kimberly Bauer
 * and Dennis Haysbert as David Palmer