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An audio commentary is a different audio track for an episode of 24 that features key cast or crew members to that episode talking about its production or their experiences on the set.

Fourteen audio commentaries were featured on the DVD release of Season 7. They were from 24: Redemption, "Day 7: 8:00am-9:00am," "Day 7: 10:00am-11:00am," "Day 7: 12:00pm-1:00pm," "Day 7: 4:00pm-5:00pm," "Day 7: 5:00pm-6:00pm," "Day 7: 7:00pm-8:00pm," "Day 7: 8:00pm-9:00pm," "Day 7: 9:00pm-10:00pm," "Day 7: 1:00am-2:00am," "Day 7: 5:00am-6:00am," "Day 7: 6:00am-7:00am," "Day 7: 7:00am-8:00am" and the deleted scenes.

Audio commentaries[]

Episode Commentary by
24: Redemption Jon Cassar, Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland
Information gained:
"Day 7: 8:00am-9:00am" Jon Cassar, Carlos Bernard
Information gained:
  • Carlos misses the "Events occur in real time" line before every episode. This is the first time it's been used in a long while.
  • The Michael Latham kidnapping scene was added almost a year after they shot this first episode—around the time episode 18 was being filmed. People got to analyze it a bit more than usual due to all the time afforded from the strike and they decided they wanted more of an action beginning. It was first written as a home invasion, but Jon Cassar got his hands on it and sort of recreated the movie Heat. There was some debate over whether to have Tony appear in this first scene.
  • The Senate Hearing was shot in Los Angeles at an old hotel that is frequently used for movies. The courtroom in the movie Changeling was also shot in that exact room. The Senate hearing was originally to be the opening scene but there was a problem because the first scene they see Tony and Latham was where he's trying to fix the CIP device and it was never known how Tony got him.
  • This is probably the only television episode that had two shots in it that were shot a year apart.
  • It was a difficult casting process trying to find the role of Renee Walker. They needed someone tough enough to play an FBI agent yet still beautiful enough to be a possible romantic interest for Jack. It was a long process with a huge list of names. Annie Wersching had worked with Cassar on a television pilot they were doing for FOX titled Company Man which did not get picked up and she became available for this role. Cassar had originally suggested her but the problem was she played a completely different character in that pilot, a stay at home housewife that was soft and sensitive with no edge. However Wersching nailed the audition and became a completely different person and got a handle on the character right from day one.
  • Janeane Garofalo said that she could cover her star tattoo on her finger with a ring or something, but Cassar said it was okay and just shot with it. Garofalo has a ton of tattoos on her arms but the character Janis Gold wears a long sleeve blouse.
  • A shot with Sean Hillinger sitting and Janis Gold standing was done because of the extreme height difference between Rhys Coiro and Garofalo. He is over one foot taller.
  • The character of Michael Latham was named after their editor David Latham. Jon Voight's character Jonas Hodges was named after their production designer Joseph Hodges.
  • The original script had a potential love interest (that was to be completely one-sided) between Janis and Larry Moss. It just complicated things and was cut out.
  • Producers argued over whether Tony's return should be kept a secret or not. Both Cassar and Carlos wanted to try and keep it a secret, but they ultimately decided it would be too hard to pull off. It's easy to keep a secret in the finale but trying to keep a secret for months of an event that happens in the premiere episode would be difficult. And from a network standpoint it would be nearly impossible to cut a promo without showing it. Also bringing back Tony was a play to bring the audience back so they wanted to promote the fact that he was returning.
  • Joel Surnow made the choice of casting Cherry Jones after seeing the play Doubt on Broadway. They brought her into a meeting and sat down to talk with her and were impressed. She was happy to get a role as President of the United States.
  • The CIP firewall is something that actually exists. There is a firewall system in America that does the same thing and if breached can have a similar effect. It's based on reality but tailor made to fit the 24 universe. It had to be mobile in order to be carried around.
  • They had tried the same storyline with a different friend from Jack Bauer's past being the villain but it was just flat. When they plugged the character of Tony Almeida into the storyline it gave it a whole new dimension. The story had been done before (with Christopher Henderson), but the audience had never seen the other guy on-screen before. In this case the fans lived years of it and were already familiar with the character.
  • Green screen trickery was involved to make a hallway in the White House seem very long. They flipped the actors on both sides to make it appear twice the length it actually is. The Oval Office on 24 was built exactly from specifications and blueprints but the outside was different.
  • There was a bigger storyline that took place on the airplane. A gentleman that appears in a split screen had a whole storyline where he ran on the plane late so it appeared as if he possibly had a bomb.
  • Carlos was disappointed that a fight scene between Tony and Jack in the next episode was severely trimmed and got "chopped almost in half". It was much more of a fair fight between Almeida and Jack originally, but most of Tony's side of the fight got cut out.
  • Cassar worked with Colm Feore in the past many years ago. The role of Henry Taylor was another difficult one to cast and play as they didn't want him to be too strong and take away from the President nor did they want him to be too weak, it had to be some place in-between.
  • When they actually wrote and shot this episode Roger Taylor was just a picture on the mantle, all in the past. Thanks to 24: Redemption they were able to show the setup of what potentially happened to his character.
  • Joel Surnow was responsible for casting Janeane, even though they "couldn't be further on the other side of the fence" politically. Surnow doesn't let that get in the way.
  • The original idea of 24 that Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran came up with was for it to be 24 hours during the day of a wedding. It was planned as a comedy. Someone later did exactly the same idea and it didn't get past the pilot stage.
  • An idea floating around early on for Season 2 was to have the same group of actors play completely different roles in a different story, a repertoire idea.
  • A small scene of dialogue between Renee and Jack just before entering Gabriel Schector's apartment was tweaked reshot more than a year later.
  • Viewers think that Tommy Flanagan is going to appear in several episodes yet he's killed in his very first scene. Carlos remembers Michael O'Neill being killed in the second episode of Season 1 and that just blew his mind.
  • It was important that Annie be able to take down Ari and do it really well. Annie Wersching was able to learn the choreography really quickly due to her past as a dancer.
  • The airline set was built in a corner of the old CTU Los Angeles set. If you look closely at the walls in the room it's the same walls from the old CTU. Joseph Hodges wanted to disguise them but Cassar said that wouldn't be necessary.
  • The ending of this episode was actually a scene from the next episode and they pulled it into this one.
"Day 7: 10:00am-11:00am" Brannon Braga, Carlos Bernard, Manny Coto
Information gained:
  • This is Brannon Braga's first episode writing for 24. It was an exciting one to write because it contained a pivotal scene of the season where Jack interrogates Tony and the reversal comes. Carlos Bernard says this is one of his favorite episodes ever in the entire series and that it has all the basic vintage 24 elements.
  • The original conception (which Manny still thinks was a lot of fun) was ending Season 6 with Jack on the cliff and he hears a voice from behind and it's Tony who basically stops Jack from jumping off the edge. Carlos was called at that time but it didn't work out and no one was crazy for the idea of him returning at the very end. Carlos ran into Coto at Peter Weller's party over the summer and told him that they're still toying with the idea of bringing Tony back.
  • The writers went through so many incarnations at the beginning of the season. It was originally an old friend of Jack's that was doing all the CIP stuff, they were discussing Gary Oldman or some other big name actor. But there was no emotional resonance with a new character like there was with Tony Almeida. It was a "double whammy" that Tony is alive and marshaling terrorist actions.
  • With Janis Gold being embarrassed while lifting Tony's shirt, they were thinking maybe there was some strange crush on Tony that would develop into something weird.
  • Carlos had gotten food poisoning the day before the interrogation scene and was throwing up all night. Shooting started at 6:30 in the morning and he had no sleep at all. In-between takes he'd go out in the hallway and vomit.
  • They had no idea who was a mole and who wasn't at that point in the story. Because the writers were unaware and the actors were unaware, it legitimizes it.
  • There was a lot of arguments and it was "really agonizing" on how to get Jack in the room believably and would Larry allow Jack to interrogate Tony. At one point Larry interrogated Tony first and couldn't get anything out of him - they kept the scene but shuffled it around.
  • For a while there wasn't a code and Tony was going to somehow escape on his own, or Bill Buchanan would simply call Jack. Robert Cochran said Tony should give Jack a code. Brannon Braga remembers sitting in a room for about 45 minutes just thinking up a code word that didn't sound stupid.
  • Manny Coto showed the first three episodes to Rush Limbaugh and some of his friends. They watched the first two and then when the "Deep Sky" moment happened someone burst into applause over the fact that Tony wasn't bad and Buchanan and Chloe were involved in this secret clandestine sting operation.
  • There was a lot of reversals in this episode. Another one was pointed out when Henry Taylor learns he's on the right track. Braga wrote the Samantha Roth conversation.
  • All of these earlier episodes were written before the 24: Redemption prequel. The writers were relying on all of this stuff landing without any sort of preamble or setup so they were very grateful that the Writers Strike happened which allowed them to do the prequel. They were at first planning to just air the season alone and the audience may not have been able to absorb all this. Now they get to meet the First Son, watch Sangala fall apart, and establish Jon Voight's character.
  • It was a tough season to birth with a lot of creative problems trying to figure out how to start the season and what the story was going to be. There was many arguments followed by the strike which led them to think it was cursed.
  • Coto spoke about fan reaction on the internet and noticed that many fans seem to think it was a wrong decision on President Taylor's part to not withdraw—that she was putting African lives ahead of American lives which was something that never occurred to Coto while writing it. He thought it was an interesting dilemma where some fans thought it was no dilemma at all and to just pull out.
  • They knew all along that pitting Chloe against Janis was something they wanted to do. The dialogue was kind of dry techno-dialogue and really needed the two actresses to pull it off. Some fans dubbed the exchange as "Mac vs. PC" as the FBI was using PC's and Chloe was on an Apple.
  • The scene with Bill driving towards the FBI was something added later. Carlos sarcastically joked that it's tough to track a neon blue van in the city and that they should've decorated it with Christmas lights to make it more discrete.
  • It was a challenge writing how to believably stage an escape from the FBI without making them look like buffoons. The script was in preparation and the whole sequence ended with Jack and Tony simply running through the parking lot and meeting Bill's van. The director Brad Turner said this feels a little flat and anticlimactic, so they added the whole shootout and car sequence.
  • They did some additional shooting for the FBI escape sequence as it felt a little too easy the first time around. During one time in the script writing process they had Jack and Tony breaking into an office occupied with FBI workers inside and having them getting taken hostage by Jack and Tony, but that was going too far.
  • The scene where Jack breaks the window with a fire extinguisher and escapes was filmed in the LA Times Building at an office filled with people that were all fans of 24. Carlos laughed that they were in the middle of a work day and the 24 crew came there for about 20 minutes to smash their window and escape out of their office.
  • At one point they were discussing having everyone be a mole, an idea reminiscent of Murder on the Orient Express. The entire principle cast (Larry, Janis, Sean) aside from Renee were to all be in on it. They even went so far as to recut a scene between Janis and Sean to accommodate that because it was so clear they weren't in on it together.
  • A stunt guy performed Tony's long jump onto the vehicle while Carlos did the two other shorter ones. They pulled the blue van right behind Carlos and he was remarking at how close it came to him.
  • Jack's line of "This is gonna hurt" right before landing the car was improvised by Kiefer. Producers debated on whether that line was a little too Lethal Weapon-ish but people loved it.
"Day 7: 12:00pm-1:00pm" Jon Cassar, Annie Wersching
Information gained:
  • Annie was cast so last minute that she only had a week to prepare before filming began. While they started shooting she read a couple of books about female FBI agents trying to make their way in the male world. Jeffrey Nordling and her also visited the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the "real CTU". They said the FBI above all other departments is adamant that things are down by the law. One guy showed Annie his briefcase and pulled out a little mini Bill of Rights that they carry with them in the field.
  • Marci Michelle was reading Larry's lines in the scene in which Renee is driving and talking on the phone. Marci was lying down in the back seat hiding so she wouldn't be seen on the camera.
  • A scene where Christina Hillinger was talking to her husband on the phone in the airport was shot on a green-screen. Little scenes like that are tough in television production because you can't afford to send the crew to an airport to film a single phone call. One camera man was sent out to shoot the airport luggage carousel and people waiting for their luggage and inserted into the green-screen.
  • Wersching was a huge fan of the show and watched every episode on television as it aired, not even waiting for the DVD's. During the audition process she was supposed to have read with Kiefer a few times but that never ended up happening. The scene in Renee's office where she's showing Jack that Tony Almeida was alive was the first time Wersching and Sutherland met and the first scene of the season they shot. Cassar also said that Kim Raver's first scene was a love scene with Kiefer in the Season 4 Prequel.
  • Annie would go into the hair and makeup trailer because they usually get the script a day or two before the actors do (in order to prepare). She would secretly try and thumb through the script to see about her character. It was a good thing that this episode and the next were shot together, so she knew her character would survive at the end of this.
  • They make up all the chemical names and ensure no labels are shown so that people aren't in their kitchens trying to concoct these chemicals.
  • The exterior of 167 Foxhall Road was a nice part of Los Angeles that looked like Washington DC. The saferoom interior and the little room outside of the saferoom was a set, while the kitchen and exterior were a real place. Kitchens are said to be the hardest and most expensive thing to build so they try to avoid that if they can.
  • There was a combination of real smoke and computer generated smoke in order to keep the smoke consistent. Cassar points out a FIJI water case visible in the saferoom which was product placement but was realistic and inoffensive.
  • They only had a certain amount of prop phones, and they broke two in rehearsal so they had to glue one together. It was a real phone that was cracked in half.
  • Cassar jokes about the bad guys taking off in the big yellow van, and earlier in the season the good guys escaped in a big blue van. Annie joked that it was like reverse psychology, "Why would the bad guy possibly be in an easy to spot van?". The inside of the "moving truck" was actually a set. One of the walls could move out so they could fit cameras inside, otherwise it was too tight to film in. The camera guys moved a little bit and Stan Blackwell along with the effects guys jerked the truck around a little bit in order to simulate a moving vehicle. Those scenes took about a day to film.
  • One of the great things about how Cherry Jones plays President Allison Taylor is that you could actually see her listening, see the wheels turning and her analyzing every point of view before she makes her decision.
  • The set for Nichols was comprised of things left over from previous years. The big round green lights on the ceiling were from a plane set, all the servers were from the old CTU Los Angeles set. There was even set-pieces from the FOX television pilot Company Man that Cassar and Annie shot together prior to starting Season 7 - there was a scientific set on that show and they ended up inheriting it here.
  • The blonde girl in the background with her dog on the leash waiting for the elevator was Post Production Supervisor Amanda Howell.
  • Samantha Roth's apartment was a loft in downtown Los Angeles, it was completely empty. Everything in the shot was brought in there by set decorator Cloudia Rebar. A fake wall was added to make it smaller as it was already too big of a place for a single woman. This episode was shot before the prequel and it didn't matter what Samantha's boyfriend looked like since he didn't have any scenes, so it was originally just one of the guys in the office. After Roger Taylor appeared in 24: Redemption however, they had to go back and reshoot all the pictures to have Eric Lively in them.
  • This was the third or fourth year they tried to cast Colm Feore and have their schedules match. He was an old friend of Jon Cassar's from back in Canada. Feore is one of the hardest working people in Hollywood.
  • The bullet graze and blood on Renee's neck was a computer generated effect.
  • They faked a death before on the show and knew they had to do something that would top it and that's where the burial idea came in, to have her buried alive. They ran out of light that day and had to recreate the hole and mound of dirt on stage weeks later. The crew made it safe as possible for Annie Wersching by weaving a little tube of air in there so she could continue breathing, but the first time shooting the scene Annie breathed in the plastic and it went in her mouth (along with the weight of dirt on top of it) and there wasn't any space to get the plastic back out of her mouth, so it was a very scary time for her.
  • There was some interesting talk on why Renee opened her eyes and wasn't playing dead to Tony while he was shoveling dirt on her. At that point in the storyline her character didn't know Tony was on her side.
"Day 7: 4:00pm-5:00pm" David Fury, Hakeem Kae-Kazim
Information gained:
  • There was six months between the time the writers started talking about this episode and the time it was shot. It's the first episode after the very long writers strike and was treated almost like a new season premiere for them. It was very important to get back on their feet and get the momentum back.
  • The story of Marika Donoso was a very early idea that was abandoned when the initial Africa story was thrown out when first starting this season. They found a new place for it here. Marika was to be a Hispanic girlfriend at first but the decision came later that it made more sense to be African American and that there's less of a backstory that needed to be told that way.
  • Several scenes from this episode and the next one were shot on the Universal Studios backlot including a scene where Dubaku meets Marika at the back entrance of her diner and a phone conversation between Ryan Burnett and Sean Hillinger.
  • Fury suggested to Howard Gordon that the role of Prescott O'Brian can go to his young son, Cap Gordon. They had wanted to explain Chloe's presence in Washington and there was several aborted attempts to explain where her husband Morris and the baby were until this episode.
  • Actress Mary Lynn Rajskub was very pregnant at this point and they tried a lot of things to mask her pregnancy. She's wearing a coat, holding things in front of her, and sitting down at her desk.
  • The actresses that portrayed Marika and Rosa Donoso were auditioned together as the relationship between the sisters was really important. Hakeem Kae-Kazim also read with them too to help with the casting process, something that is not usually done.
  • The name of surgeon Lee Schulman came from a charity auction where someone bid to have their name used in a 24 episode. It was mentioned several times so the fan got his moneys worth.
  • While recording the commentary, David Fury couldn't remember Ryan Burnett's name, even though Fury himself wrote the episode.
  • The hotel that Ryan Burnett and Ike Dubaku meet at in this episode was shot in the historic Biltmore Hotel at downtown Los Angeles, widely known for being the last known location of Elizabeth Short (aka the "Black Dahlia") which was a huge unsolved murder case. The director Milan Cheylov and crew were displeased as it was very hard to control the set and stop people from walking onto it.
  • Aaron Pierce has appeared in every season of 24, the only other character to do so other than Jack Bauer. The writers didn't feel they brought Aaron back to good use in Season 6 and Fury was a pest about bringing Pierce back. This was the perfect opportunity after what happened in the storyline, with them needing someone trustworthy.
  • Now was also the time to also introduce the First Daughter Olivia Taylor, which would provide the writers with so many more stories in the White House. They'd talked about a character like that previously and moved away from it. It went right to the wire with that scene and Fury allowed himself to play the role since he felt he earned it - the only reason that was there was because he campaigned for it so hugely.
  • Dubaku was on the move to take out Rosa because she was causing problems for him. That story went away over the six month break and wasn't used.
  • Janeane Garofalo ad-libbed the line where Janis calls Sean a "little bitch" back as a retort. In the script she just said something to the effect of "thank you" (after receiving the item from Sean) and walked away.
  • It was tricky to try and fool viewers into thinking Janis Gold was the mole, it couldn't be too subtle or too obvious. They had set up glances around and her going through Chloe's stuff and then inside the system which pointed to her being the mole, right before Sean was revealed as one.
  • The scene in which Jack and Renee Walker are arrested was clearly filmed in Los Angeles - there are big blue street signs in the shots that are clearly LA street signs.
  • Kae-Kazim mentions that Janis says Dubaku's first name wrong at the end of the episode when talking to Sean, calling him "Okadu" instead of "Iké" (Note: the line is actually "tracking a car to Dubaku").
"Day 7: 5:00pm-6:00pm" Manny Coto, Brannon Braga, Annie Wersching
Information gained:
  • There was a lot of talk on how to make the mole reveal interesting or exciting, not just the typical mole storyline. At one point there was an idea that everyone aside from Renee (Larry, Janis, and Sean) was going to be a mole, something reminiscent of Murder on the Orient Express. They paired it down to just two - Sean and Erica.
  • The bandaid that Renee Walker wore on her neck was a prop, it became quite a fun game at the end of a day of shooting where Annie would hug a crew member goodbye and secretly put the bandaid on their back (someone who hasn't had it before), and they would unknowingly be walking around with it for a while. Jon Cassar had the last one.
  • There was a lot of talk in Season 5 of trying to pair Jack Bauer up with a female field agent.
  • The chase scene was filmed on Universal Studios backlot. It burned down shortly after - they were one of the last crews to shoot there.
  • When Jack and Renee both exit the car out of the passenger side door, during the first take, Kiefer had accidently left the car in drive.
  • Annie jokes that Renee was running faster than Jack at first but had to slow down and let him catch up because he's the star.
  • During the first cut in the chase sequence the "Zippy Taxi" sign was visible about four times which distracted from the intense action scene. It was bothering the writers and they were talking about CGI and getting rid of it, but they eventually toned it down in editing.
  • It was originally written that Marika Donoso burned alive in the car. They changed it on set where Jack breaks her leg in an effort to dislodge her from the vehicle which felt gratuitous, before settling on the final cut in the episode.
  • They were struggling to keep Cherry Jones in this particular storyline and to keep her story alive. They wanted to have at least one scene with her character so the hospital scene was a late addition.
  • At the end of the aforementioned scene, Ethan Kanin says: "We just have to hope Jack Bauer can get that info out of Dubaku." Just after that Annie Wersching says "And agent Walker." which made the other commenters laugh and agree that Renee is rarely mentioned in such pieces of dialogue.
  • It bugged the writers a little that there was this massive government conspiracy and Jack simply hands off the evidence to a stranger pilot. They couldn't figure out a way to get the chip back to FBI. They had talked about Jack plugging it into his phone and downloading it to FBI but it didn't work out.
  • The scene in the bathroom where Sean comforts Erica was filmed in one of the bathrooms downstairs from where they write the show.
  • It was debated a long time on how to end Sean's storyline. They were going to have him get away with it for a while, and they liked him so much they wanted to bring him back as a bad guy that was forced to help Janis. They kept trying to find a way for Rhys Coiro to return but it just never happened.
  • Annie Wersching intentionally didn't sleep the entire night before filming the hospital scenes as she wanted her character to have a rawness in them. There was a heightened scene where Renee was getting blamed (by Rosa) for something she already felt responsible for.
  • The infamous slap sequence was one of Wersching's favorite scenes. There was many incarnations of that scene, one being where the slap turned into a kiss. That was deemed too cliche by Kiefer and everyone agreed, so it wasn't filmed. While shooting the scene, Kiefer kept telling Annie that she could slap him harder, but they wanted to be careful that his cheek didn't have red marks on it when they did more takes.
  • The exchange between Jack and Renee where he says "If you ever pull your weapon on me again, you better intend to use it" was something improvised on the set. Some people wanted to remove it as they felt it undercut the emotion of the moment, but Manny Coto and Brannon Braga (the writers of this episode) thought it was great and shows that there is conflict between these two characters.
  • It was felt that the White House storyline needed a new burst of energy. The writers were running out of interesting story material for Cherry Jones as Henry Taylor was convalescing and the Sangala invasion was now out of the picture. They wanted something personal for her to be arguing over and introduced her daughter Olivia Taylor into the storyline. Sprague Grayden became very close to Cherry and calls her "mama".
  • The scene with Tony and Jack having a conversation near the United States Capitol was shot entirely on a green-screen set, what is called a virtual location. Everyone was amazed when they saw the finished version. The writers were a little confused on the scene at first when seeing how Kiefer played it, with Jack being wary of Tony and not completely trusting him. It turned out that was a very intelligent choice because even if Kiefer didn't realize it at the time, they turned out to make Tony a bad guy, so Jack's doubt was well founded.
  • The siege in the White House was talked about very early on, it was an early idea that the writers knew they wanted to get to. The first cut was "atrocious" and was missing a lot of the firefight inside the White House. Coto said it happened far too easily, and joked that it appeared as if Juma's men walked in the back door and were suddenly in the Oval Office.
  • Senator Blaine Mayer turned out to be a great character. He was originally just someone who inquisitions Jack in the first episode but they were able to work him into more of the story.
  • Braga spent around four hours on what the text message to Ryan Burnett would say that wouldn't look cheesy.
"Day 7: 7:00pm-8:00pm" Brad Turner, Tony Todd
Information gained:
  • There was six hours of swimming involved. The hole was actually a tank created from a large full-sized dumpster. All of the underwater footage from the previous episode was an underwater camera in a dumpster with doubles.
  • In order to create the feel of the underground area, they had a freight car transported to their filming location in San Pedro and stuck it on old rail tracks. There was no windows, no light, and it was very claustrophobic. Portions of this underground area were actually shot on the White House set that was disguised.
  • Renee is supposed to be running out of a dam in order to try and keep the sense of water. They had to supply water to the creek where that was filmed since it's dry in Los Angeles.
  • All of the characters that people love are in the White House and have no idea what's currently happening - it's called an "open mystery" where the viewers know what's going on but the characters don't.
  • They invented a world of underwater caverns in the Potomac River. The biggest problem is that the White House is probably the most secure building in the world, so they had to make the journey inside as difficult as possible in order to keep plausibility. They tried to hammer through the fact that people on the inside were supplying Juma information—their group had schematics from confidential engineering plans.
  • Reshoots and additional shooting were done as they wanted to show more resistance from the Secret Service and have a sense of more people in the hallways and building. A scene where Juma's men break into an office and take a room full of people as hostages was one of the added scenes.
  • The firefight scene in a hallway between Secret Service and Juma's group went on a long time. One particular lamp shade in the background falls about three times but viewers wouldn't notice it.
  • A scene was filmed where Juma got inside the Oval Office and saw that the President wasn't there, but they cut it as it became irrelevant after moving up another scene.
  • There was much debate amongst the crew whether they should be more specific on what Jack was doing in the background behind the President when he was looking through cupboards, but eventually viewers find out.
  • Brad Turner told Kiefer and the writers that one of his favorite moments was seeing the President of the United States plugging the lamp cord into the wall socket when Jack asked. It was a great human moment that we all do but can't imagine a President doing.
  • Annie Wersching shot most of the fight scene between Renee Walker and Laurent Dubaku even though there was a body double available. They try and do a lot of action stuff with the actual actors when possible.
  • Tony Todd worked with Jeffrey Nordling on True Women alongside Angelina Jolie. He also knew Cherry Jones in New York as a theater actress.
  • The exterior of the White House with all of the men gathering was shot inside their set. The inside of their makeshift operations center in the truck was shot on stage in Chatsworth, though when the characters exit it's back on location.
  • A brief snippet of people working with the White House in the background was a computer generated shot.
  • The helicopter that Larry and Renee exit from is a "dummy helicopter" where all they did was take the tail and pull it up and drop it down. Someone was actually holding it in the back.
  • A set with Vice President Mitchell Hayworth was temporarily built in a corner for this episode. The concept was that he was transported to the Air Force base, ready to get onboard Air Force One if it was necessary.
  • Jon Voight suggested his character Jonas Hodges be eating something in his introduction scene, which wasn't in the script originally. It's one of the things fans ask about often and Turner supported. Hodges "Stress is the fertilizer of creativity" quote and the following dartboard sequence was also something suggested by Voight.
  • Originally Hodges just helped Juma, but they decided it would work better for both characters to have a dilemma and show that they're very clever people and play the chess game very well.
  • While filming the scene where Aaron Pierce is shot, they realized he was hit on his writing arm. Turner added the piece where Pierce said "Get the pen out of my pocket" in order to conserve his strength in that hand and then had Pierce struggle to write it down in order to make it more believable.
  • Jack working in the background comes up in the next episode. It's very subtle but becomes an important part of how they stop the threat.
  • Brad Turner loves the exchange between President Taylor and Jack. So much guilt and history comes up when mentioning his daughter, and the question she poses challenges him the most.
"Day 7: 8:00pm-9:00pm" Brad Turner, Sean Callery, James Morrison
Information gained:
  • In the previous episode they just built the corner wall and background as when first writing it they didn't know what room the Vice President Haysworth would be in. In this episode it's expanded and built out to the whole set.
  • Callery scored this episode before the previous White House break-in one. It was one of the first times he's ever scored something out of sequence like that.
  • When shooting episodes 12 and 13 a lot of crew members were out in Africa shooting 24: Redemption. They were shooting this with a second unit crew which was a pretty big undertaking.
  • It was refreshing for James Morrison to be outside of CTU this season, he joked that it was like he hadn't seen the sun in years.
  • The white flash from the explosion that caused the response team to move in was an added CGI effect.
  • Callery appeared in an episode of Season 2 as a member of a rock band.
  • Turner said that some of the biggest production values they've had this year was on the aftermath of Bill Buchanan's death.
  • Jack lost a friend, Carl Benton, in 24: Redemption and Buchanan's death theme was a whisper of that same theme.
  • Bill had taken another guy down first which blew James Morrison's shoulder out. While they liked the idea of Bill having that resistance, it needed to be done faster to maintain the element of surprise. It was also important to Turner that no one shoot at Bill, it had to be an action he did by himself.
  • Morrison initially questioned why Bill was dying so early in the episode and not at the very end, but the structure was perfect because it makes the audience more vulnerable. Whatever change happens helps make that transition of power.
  • The fact that they were able to show history in 24: Redemption before the first episode aired was really quite a gift. Sean Callery wishes he could revisit the second, third, and fourth episodes to thematically remarry some of the musical themes from Redemption.
  • When James Morrison first came on the show he asked Jon Cassar for pointers who told him that the show was basically "soap [opera] on crack"
  • This episode had so many things going on - it concluded the first villain, said goodbye to a beloved character, and immediately seamlessly went to this next chapter.
  • The hospital room was a practical location, but the vents were built on set. Those scenes are difficult for Callery to score since there's no dialogue for two to three minutes at a time and he has to keep it sonically interesting but not too much so.
  • Callery's favorite character arc of all time was George Mason got infected early on in Season 2 and became sick over the next fourteen episodes.
  • Sean put a really groovy track in when Jack is escaping from Ryan Burnett's hospital room. Manny Coto or Howard Gordon said that it was "too hip" and they needed it more grounded and dramatic.
  • Kiefer Sutherland finds a way to make stuff work, it's really difficult to give credibility to the scene where Jack becomes temporarily paralyzed and recovers in real time.
  • Turner commented that Jack was "magic bag"-less for a lot of this season. The idea of his messenger bag was that Jack needs a lot all these tools of the trade and the writers never know from episode to episode what he's going to need next, so Jack either steals it or takes it out of his bag.
  • It took many takes to complete the scene where Larry Moss and Jack Bauer talk on the phone at the end. Walking and talking was very difficult and it was all one long scene.
"Day 7: 9:00pm-10:00pm" Evan Katz, Juan Carlos Coto, Annie Wersching, Bob Gunton
Information gained:
  • With modern cars they can't just be hotwired easily, so they try to have Jack hotwire older cars when possible.
  • It's nice to see Morris O'Brian again. Katz admits that they explored the relationship between him and Chloe almost too much last season without developing it. This year he was brought in later and at a crisis moment so he was in the fray right away.
  • In order to handle the exposition scenes, they always aim to have a character who doesn't know what is going on so that it can be explained to them (and thus the audience) organically. In this case it's Janis.
  • The writers laugh as Jack is uploading a photo into an email and sending it all with one hand while driving.
  • There is a parody on YouTube of what 24 would be like in 1994 that both Annie and Juan Carlos Coto have watched. Jack Bauer gets paged and has to go to a payphone with Nina Myers trying to send a file on AOL over the 56k modem, and CTU prints things on an excruciatingly slow Dot matrix printer.
  • This was a massive reorienting of the story, with Renee Walker being filled in and Jack getting her on board. A lot of times they do phone calls with the off-camera reader Marci Michelle, but Kiefer actually came in for this one because it was a significant one.
  • Annie Wersching had worked with the actor who portrays John Quinn, Sebastian Roché, before on General Hospital. Juan Carlos Coto knew about it as his wife is an avid viewer of the series.
  • Jon Voight always plays with the scripts a little bit, tossing in some things and enabling the writers to select between little additions he does.
  • The writers were uncharacteristically subtle about the relationship between Renee and Larry Moss. Clearly there was history between the two characters, but they never wanted to hit the nail right on the head. The more specific they were about it, the more they put themselves into a box and the more cliche it would be.
  • Sprague Grayden looks like a younger version of Cherry Jones. They were going for an All About Eve storyline with her. The writers said that while her character was devious she had good intentions, sort of. She was really telling herself that she was doing everything for her mother.
  • Bob Gunton didn't know how long he would be gone and neither did the writers.
  • Originally Evan Katz wanted Renee to get right to the door with light outside before being stopped as she was making her exit from FBI, but that wasn't possible on the set.
  • It wasn't evident at first that Jack was going to go to Mayer's house at first. A lightbulb went off in their heads and they thought he should go back to the guy who was grilling him at the start of the season. Kurtwood Smith provided a kind of interim villain, someone that Jack could bump heads with a bit until Jonas Hodges came to the forefront.
  • Juan Carlos Coto wrote the Presidential speech in this episode. Cherry Jones called from the set to thank him.
  • Gunton worked with Tim Guinee before in Mission of the Shark, a 1991 television movie. He had also worked with Cherry Jones back in 2000 on The Perfect Storm and they had not seen each other since then until reuniting on the 24 set.
  • All of the scenes that Gunton had with Olivia Taylor had a special psychological depth for him because that's the name of his only daughter. Juan Carlos also has a daughter named Olivia. His brother Manny Coto is the one who named her after his niece.
  • Senator Mayer's address at 951 Deerbrook Avenue was a shoutout to Juan's neighborhood - Deerbrook is one of the main streets there.
  • It was Manny Coto's idea to have that surprise death of Senator Mayer right after the two men (he and Jack) bridge the gap between them.
  • There was incarnations of the script where John Quinn and Jack had a more extended battle, Jack Bauer vs "Evil Jack Bauer", two guys with equal skill sets going at it. However it can take days or a week to shoot hand to hand combat scenes when they only had a night and a half, so they needed to find a different way to be interesting.
  • Director Brad Turner came up with the "crazy trailer idea". Initially Katz was really negative about it, thinking it would be like the Fred Astaire movie Royal Wedding (in which his character walks on walls). He was a little worried that it would be a little too big, but Brad felt strongly that he could make it work. Juan Carlos had written that scene as Quinn opening the trailer door and Jack wasn't there and gets him from behind the door or the desk, but Brad wanted to start that scene with a bang.
  • The fight scene between Quinn and Bauer was longer but trimmed down because "you get the point".
  • A scene played in the split screen which is something they haven't done in a while and was more common in earlier seasons. Katz felt that wasn't enough of a scene to be a scene but it had to happen.
"Day 7: 1:00am-2:00am" Howard Gordon, Carlos Bernard, Jeffrey Nordling
Information gained:
  • Nordling said "I've been cooped up in the FBI and wanna get out of here" and was told that's where the bullets fly and they were right. Howard Gordon jokes that they've blown up a building or two in their time though, so no one is safe.
  • They were finding themselves in a conundrum, there was this fan favorite (and writer favorite) character who was back, but was sort of becoming Kato to The Green Hornet - there wasn't a whole lot for this character to do. It was a bold decision to determine that Tony wasn't really "a good guy playing a bad guy playing a good guy", but was really a guy who had gone over to the dark side. It had to be a big moment, a moment that really was born in something that was a game changer for this show. The chips fell on Larry who was a very pivotal character this year.
  • Nordling's disappointment was that he felt like from episode 10 or 11 on, that his character of Larry Moss shifted into a new gear - Nordling really started getting to know the character and thinking like the character, and that it was such a shame to kill a great character like that. Carlos Bernard and Gordon responded that Tony couldn't just kill "Security guard #2" and that those significant losses that the viewer suffers makes it real, interesting, dangerous, and full of stakes.
  • The White House is a "peculiar and tricky place" because they've exhausted the arc type. The last six episodes are Gordon's favorite ones involving the White House this season.
  • Jon Voight accidentally hit Chris Mulkey for real with the glass bottle two takes in a row. It opened up and Mulkey required a bunch of stitches.
  • Gabriel Casseus who plays Robert Galvez reminds Howard of a younger Tracy Morgan.
  • Jeffrey Nordling said "I decided early on that I couldn't do James Morrison, you can't outdo what he did. There's no duplicating that, he was magnificent. I had to go a different direction".
  • Nordling's very last shot on 24 was rushing with the FBI to the scene of the Starkwood missile explosion. The crew had a cake for him and everything, but when he had to come back as a corpse they didn't have another cake he laughed. The final shot of the year was a reshoot with him and Rhys Coiro, so he filmed the very first and very last scene of Season 7.
  • At one point in the script, President Taylor slapped Jonas Hodges.
  • Nordling says that in the first episode where Jack was wearing a tie, the cast was taking bets on how long it would last on him. After the first scene it came off.
  • Rory Cochrane didn't want many lines, as he was going for something with his character listening - acting through just facial expressions. They thought he was great at it, but kept teasing him by threatening to give him a load of dialogue.
  • Christina Chang who plays Sunny Macer played the same character in Season 3. Nordling starred in a television movie with her titled War Stories.
  • Kiefer Sutherland weighed in on strongly that Kim had been there all day with Renee keeping that fact from him. Kim is a remarkably important character to Jack. Nordling got choked up when watching the scene between Kim and Jack as he has three daughters.
  • Carlos thinks Elisha Cuthbert is a really underrated actress, that she was given a lot of difficult material in the first three seasons and she pulled it off. She had a scene with a cougar and was bitten by it. Jon Cassar got attacked by a lion in Africa while filming 24: Redemption, so there is a feline curse jokes Gordon.
  • Bernard joked that Kiefer is a bit of a crybaby, pointing out all of the scenes where Jack cried: the Season 1 finale, the end of season 3, Tony dying in his arms, etc. Gordon points out that Kiefer cries a lot better than David Duchovny (remembering his time as writer on The X-Files).
  • The helicopter scene was filmed on a sound stage with green screen and it all works and looks normal.
  • Howard Gordon let Nordling know of his character's death by the phone two days in advance. He joked that Camarillo was too far from Chatsworth (a 20 minute drive) to go in person, and that he is "a procrastinator who hates confrontation".
  • Carlos recalls that in the first season of the show, Karina Arroyave (who played Jamey Farrell) was the first person to find out she was dying. The camera operator who had read the script apologized to her and she was completely unaware at the time. Gordon says there are a lot of really notorious stories of people who found out they're dead or just not coming back.
  • Originally they wanted Tony to simply shoot Larry. The shooting felt wrong and a smothering was much more visceral. The scene ended up a lot more violent than Carlos thought it would be.
  • There was one take where Nordling was hitting Carlos which was basically the sign to stop (although Carlos was unaware). He finally ripped Carlos's hands off him and screamed "I can't breathe!". If you look closely in the final take you can see that Larry Moss's nostril is uncovered in order to allow Nordling to breathe while filming the scene.
  • When looping Larry's death scene, Nordling was gargling with water in order to get the sound just right.
"Day 7: 5:00am-6:00am" Evan Katz, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Glenn Morshower
Information gained:
  • This is another episode involving trains. Evan Katz is always suggesting trains as he's a train freak. It was all shot in Los Angeles and the subway looks nothing like the one in Washington DC but it does look like a subway. LA's subway is modern while there's is older.
  • This year they've really tried to shy away from torture as they were kind of bored of it as writers. They didn't even want to do it here but there wasn't any other way to efficiently and believably get the information out of Harbinson. It's very hard to do a show about a guy who will do whatever is necessary without doing that at all. They try to show the price of it and give voice to the other side of the issue.
  • Annie Wersching is a tremendous addition to 24, in many ways this season is from her point of view. Given that Kiefer Sutherland is such a professional, to be able to work in such close proximity to him it showed that Annie was able to hold her own.
  • This episode has some nice Chloe/Janis stuff which was written at the last minute. They also felt that relationship could've done more, and this was one of the few episodes which really had an opportunity to focus on it. Mary Lynn Rajskub loved it. She spent many years doing live standup shows and being on the same bill together as Janeane Garofalo. They were both comedians who really locked in the acting thing effectively, said Katz.
  • Jibraan Al-Zarian being led to the disguised Transit Cop and being told to put his earpiece back in was one of Katz's favorite little twists. Chip Johannessen pitched the idea in the writers room and Katz thought it would really surprise people.
  • Work calls vary throughout the year based on the time. Sometimes the actors report to work at 6:30 in the morning, other times it might be as late as 10:00 PM in order to shoot exterior scenes during night time.
  • Glenn Morshower loves that Kim Bauer is back on the show this year. Katz believes the key to the character is bringing her in when it's organic and having her be part of the story, not just finding stuff for her to do because they have her.
  • Script coordinator Geoff Aull appears in this episode as a DC metro passenger.
  • Despite Morshower and Rajskub being on the show for many seasons, Pierce and Chloe have yet to film a scene together.
  • The scenes on the streets were shot on a Paramount backlot set which is supposed to be a New York street. There are only around three NY backlots in Los Angeles - at Warner Brothers, Universal, and Paramount. They were at Paramount for either two or three nights. It's actually a very small area that is shot from all sorts of different angles to make it appear bigger.
  • The violent scene where Jack punches Tony was extended in the editing room - the beating was slightly longer than it actually took place. They cut the same thing from different angles to make it appear as if more punchers were thrown. This was a culmination of Jack's rage and desperation and Carlos Bernard is particularly good at being insolvent.
  • Originally in the script, up until the last minute, Jack and Renee didn't get in the car and go to the Metro Center. Brad Turner pointed out that it would work better if Jack were actually physically there. Evan Katz was concerned about the real time aspect of it, could they actually get there in time. But a little bit of dramatic license was allowed.
  • All of the subway scenes were filmed in a very narrow window. They're not allowed to use the trains until after 11:00PM. The Los Angeles subway system doesn't run all night which helps.
  • When filming the canister detonating it had flames when exploding in its first incarnation. They had to reshoot it later as they established in another episode that heat kills the pathogen.
  • Morshower worked with Don McManus on past projects including television movie Innocent Victims and feature film Air Force One (both of which also contained a number of other 24 actors).
  • It took days to get the storyline and choreography right of the scene in which Bob Peluso kills Agent Franks in the bathroom.
  • Glenn Morshower was feeling distraught on the day of filming a scene, something went awry with his voice and he was having a tough time projecting it.
  • The writers wanted to be very careful about putting Kim in jeopardy since they did it so much, too much, in the first couple of years. Katz joked about the cougar from Season 2.
"Day 7: 6:00am-7:00am" David Fury, Alex Gansa, Glenn Morshower
Information gained:
  • The writers point out the blatant Cisco commercial/product placement at the start of the episode.
  • It was an extremely difficult/long scene for Cherry Jones to do. The writers had first tried to split it up among other characters but it just didn't play right. The President needed the focus here to lay out what's going on. There was a wonderful visual aid in the background of all the villains seen throughout the season.
  • The airport interior scenes were shot at the Los Angeles convention center. The production crew did a great job of faking the location. The top of the parking structure where Bob Peluso gets in the car was shot at Los Angeles Airport (LAX).
  • Jack had shot the FBI agent in the toe and the agent yelped, but it was edited to make it appear differently as if he was shot in the thigh. They had tried to avoid someone being shot in the leg since they did it a little often, but it didn't seem to be the right play here.
  • Fury made up all the street names so he has no idea if they're accurate or not.
  • The tunnel where the van stops was filmed in the basement of the Los Angeles Music Center which is the private entrance for the symphony. Alex Gansa thought that Jack becoming the final canister because he contains the pathogen in his organs was one of his finest storytelling moments. Fury pointed out that the weakest scripted thing in this episode is that these characters (Cara Bowden and Tony Almeida) are being hunted but are spending a lot of time talking in this tunnel, though it's necessary to get these exposition scenes out there somewhere.
  • In one of the original takes, the digital recorder gadget made all sorts of beeps and whistles, but David Fury thought that was a little too sci-fi as it's just a recorder.
  • Fury was very careful to write the scene so that Aaron Pierce had never lied to Olivia and instead answered with another question. It's part of his character to be honest and pure.
  • In the original cut of the scene, Olivia Taylor leaves and slumps down outside the door, having a minor breakdown. They decided to remove that and make it seem as if she was still in control of the situation at that point.
  • It was first envisioned for Kim to turn around and see Bob standing right next to her, but they decided there'd be a little more of a jolt if he popped out from behind a pillar.
  • The toothbrush story that Kim told Bob in order to keep her cover was actually based on a true story of David Fury's son. His son left an electric toothbrush in a luggage case and they did break the lock and called them at the gate to announce it.
  • Alex Gansa joked that he's glad Olivia didn't follow through on the threat to have Ethan Kanin strip searched. Gansa is childhood friends with author Ethan Canin (whose name the character of Ethan Kanin was based on).
  • Gansa is also childhood friends with Leland Orser (who plays Martin Collier, a character which Fury named).
  • Secret Service Agent Hobson was named off a character that David Fury introduced in the first Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode that he wrote. Fury likes to do homages like that.
  • The scene with Jack Bauer being walked to an improvised medical center was very scary and creepy, it's an example of the director (Jon Cassar) really improving what was on the page. Kiefer had wanted his character to know that he was going to be used as the canister while walking down the long dark hallway, but it was more scary to have Jack being led to something he knew is bad and not understanding why.
  • The medical scene was scripted for one needle injection, not two.
  • The writers were confused as to why it appeared Tim Woods was suspecting anything in the hallway scene. They think it was overplayed a bit.
  • Kim's battery is dying which is something that was ingeniously set up in the prior episode with her conversation to her husband. Cell phone batteries dying is not something they do often on the show.
  • The sequence of Kim following Bob Peluso probably went on a little longer than it needed to. What they liked though is that Kim wasn't being the victim and instead being resourceful. She was grabbed by Sarah but got herself free by using the pen as a weapon.
  • Kim on fire was a stunt double wearing a wig.
  • During the scene in which Kanin listened to Olivia's recording in his car, the writers joked "We had our Cisco commercial earlier, now we have our Hyundai commercial". Fury jokingly listed all of the features of the Hyundai Genesis and asked the company to send him a free one.
  • In the first cut of the episode, Jack had opened his eye as they wanted to connect the idea that he was listening and understands that high temperatures would destroy the prion variant in his bloodstream, which sets up what he attempts to do in the next episode.
  • The character of Alan Wilson was created and named by Chip Johannessen. Fury and Gansa joked that it was not a particularly intimidating name for a villain, but Fury wants to believe it to be an alias that he operates under and not his real name.
"Day 7: 7:00am-8:00am" Howard Gordon, Jon Cassar
Information gained:
  • At one point there was scenarios of it being Henry Taylor who hired the assassin, then it was Allison Taylor who hired the assassin, and they wrote scripts reflecting those possibilities but it all felt overburdened. The original idea was that everything pointed to Olivia but it'd be revealed at the last possible second it was Henry. Howard Gordon admitted "it was a gimmick in all the worst possible ways". They settled on the right thing which was Ethan Kanin's resurrection in the story.
  • Kiefer, Howard and Cassar were in New York for the 24: Redemption premiere when Kiefer pitched his version of the conversation between Jack and Tony, which was much more nuanced and ended up in the final cut.
  • Jon Cassar points out how in the very first episode Renee said that Tony is doing it for revenge and Jack questioned that. The complexity was there from the start and the story was given away in the premiere.
  • Jon Voight was killed in episode 21 and it's very hard to top that performance. Will Patton did a good job and put his own spin on it. There was "something going on" between Cara and Alan Wilson. Cassar told him to not even look at her as she kisses him on the cheek and to instead keep his eyes afixed on Tony.
  • Joseph Hodges directed portions of the action scene in this episode.
  • They wanted one last action sequence for Renee. She moves really well and you believe her with a gun. Sterling Rush takes the actors to gun ranges and makes sure they're comfortable, Annie got used to it very quickly. They tried to make Renee as close to a female Jack Bauer as possible. At one point when they were on the ship together in episode 2, they both shot Masters at exactly the same time.
  • It was important for Tony to beat up Alan Wilson but not so badly that he would have to go to the hospital (as he needed to be transported to FBI in real time. It was a challenge as it had to be enough of a beating without making it too much.
  • The idea of Michelle Dessler being pregnant with Tony's son as she was killed was Kiefer's addition.
  • Alan Wilson has the key to a deeper conspiracy, at the point where he is caught everything is over except for the fact that he has more information.
  • The location in the first half was about 4 different places, they used the pieces that worked best for what they were. Renee walking away from Alan was shot in the back of their studio since they ran out of time the day they were supposed to shoot it.
  • Aaron Pierce is the hidden hero of the entire series, the "knight on the white horse".
  • The Chloe and Janis scene was tough to fit into the show because of time issues. It wasn't truly necessary since it didn't push the story forward but "you can't not wrap up these two characters". The scene was important because the episode needed a breather moment after all the emotional and action scenes. The scene was a little longer so they did trim it a bit.
  • Jack getting diagnosed in episode 16 made it difficult as they knew it wouldn't be an action ending. Kiefer had to have these attacks and go back to being strong again and trying to find the right balance of that was very difficult - Kiefer wasn't very happy about that but he did a good job. It locked them in that early and they had time to keep thinking about it. Cassar said that ending the year with Jack shooting the bad guy in the final act is something that a lot of people want as an ending, but it feels unsatisfying. This finale was very different, probably the most different and unique finale ever done on the show.
  • Olivia Taylor humanized Allison, she "made that family a family". While Olivia was totally motivated [to kill Jonas] the best part was when she tried to take it back. The second you do that it's understandable - she's a human being and not this monster of a villain like Jonas Hodges. She was a person who had a little lapse of decision-making and got caught on it.
  • The Taylor family photo was shot on the very last day of filming. They brought Eric Lively back to pose as Roger Taylor in the picture. It was the first time Sprague Grayden met Lively despite them playing brother and sister. It was very important to bring that in and have the audience look at the picture and think 'there's no way she's going to wreck her family'.
  • Allison Taylor kissing her daughter when entering the room was Cherry Jones idea and not something in the script. It made the scene lean towards 'there's no way I'm going to give you up' and she does the opposite.
  • Despite Allison losing everything, she has to put her family crisis behind her and go back to being President of the United States. After having a defeated crouched body her head goes up high and she marches out of the scene and gets back to business. Perhaps even more-so than David Palmer she held to her guns on everything and her character remained intact.
  • The sequence with Renee at the end is frightening just how much she channels Jack Bauer. To Cassar, she is virtually Jack's spirit at this point and that's why he likes the reflection as she's looking through the two-way mirror at Alan Wilson. It's a setup for "what you're going to do with the rest of your life" basically. They tease that it doesn't end well for her and that her decision comes with a price.
  • It was fun to have Christina Chang from season 3 back again.
  • Cassar talked to production designer Joseph Hodges about the hospital room and wanting a window there so we can look in. They also decided to turn the lights down in the final sequence and have the silhouette of Muhtadi Gohar standing behind the window.
  • The writers wanted to address some of the problems the fans (and people inside the show) had with Kim. With her being the cure and making the adult decision to accept the risk and defy him, ultimately she saves Jack twice (although Howard Gordon is quick to point out the treatment working is not guaranteed). Kim also located Jack which allowed the FBI to rescue him.
  • The network (FOX) up until the very last day were begging "Please, have Jack open his eyes or close his hand around Kim" but Kiefer fought against it. The last thing Kim Bauer said was "I won't let you go". In Cassar's mind that was the audience, the chorus of a whole bunch of 24 viewers going "No, no, not yet".
Deleted scenes Stephen Kronish, Paul Gadd
Information gained:

See also[]


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