Note: As promised, I’ve begun watching Season 1 of 24 and will start weekly blog posts on it today. As I’ve previously confessed, I never did watch the first season of The Jack Bauer Show and am finally catching up. As a run-up to Season 7, I will blog weekly, pretending I know nothing about Seasons 2-6 and know none of the twists and turns that have made 24 one of the best 24 hours on television each season (OK, except the Season 6 crapapalooza, which was only one of the best 10-12 hours or so of television last season.)

An interesting concept, this, having a show take place in “real time.” Hopefully we won’t have to see any potty breaks or boring lunches in the cafeteria — “What!? You’re out of tater tots? I want to speak to the manager!”

But based on this first hour, there doesn’t appear to be much downtime on 24.

The main characters appear to be the Bauer family and presidential candidate David Palmer.

Palmer’s a senator who is likely to be the first major-party African-American candidate for president. Actor Dennis Haysbert has a very serene quality to him and I really liked the interaction between him and his wife, Sherry, played by Penny Johnson Jerald. She seems very grounded, a very solid political wife; a true asset to his campaign.

There is some sort of mystery here, though, as he almost threatened a television reporter on the phone about not running some story; he refused to tell Sherry what the story was about though. I felt badly for her as he closed the sliding glass door on her after she pushed him to tell her what the call was about. This seems like one of those things that he’s better off being honest with her about right off the bat rather than hiding from her. I can’t help but think this will come back to haunt him.

Speaking of wives, I wonder if Teri Bauer really has forgiven Jack for having an affair with his colleague, Nina Myers. It wasn’t made clear that she knew exactly why it was that Jack had moved out, but it seemed like she did. If not, that’s gonna come back to bite him in the butt; that’s not the kind of thing that stays secret for long on a television show, you know?

They seem to have their hands full with their teenaged daughter, Kimberly. She plays all nice and sugary sweet with Daddy, then all but ignores her mom and then sneaks out the bedroom window to meet some college guys at a furniture store with her friend.

Yeah, like that’s gonna turn out well. It’s obvious the guys don’t plan on taking Kim home, even though they promised to. Given that her dad’s a government agent, I don’t think that’s a really good idea to get him pissed off.

But her being missing couldn’t happen on a worse night. The Los Angeles division of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, or CTU, has received intel that there will be an assassination attempt on Palmer’s life. They’ve got to find the assassin and, hopefully, figure out who ordered the hit, before time runs out. With his daughter missing, Jack can’t help but be distracted.

Good thing his wife is with the father of Kimberly’s friend; at least she has someone to help her look and keep her occupied (and, probably, prevent her from being mad at her husband. But let’s get real. He’s a government agent. If he’s being called into work in the middle of the night, there’s probably something bad happening.)

Speaking of something bad happening, Jack is not only tasked with trying to foil and solve this assassination attempt, but he’s also ordered to figure out who within CTU is in on the plot. Yep, there’s a mole. Jack doesn’t think he’s up to the job because he previously took down three CTU agents who were corrupt, so no one who’s doing wrong will ever dream of opening up to him. But it’s for that very reason that his boss believes Jack’s the only man he can trust in CTU.

Jack is told to suspect everyone, and indeed the first person he meets with, George Mason (from “division”), seems to totally be on the wrong side of things. He acts very suspiciously, but I have to admit I was totally shocked when Jack shot him in the knee with a tranquilizer dart. Of course, Jack was right to suspect him, and he’d done bad things, and Mason gives Jack the info he asked for.

I find it hard to believe that Mason is actually the mole, however, because that would be far too simple. It’s hard to say who the bad guy might be. Perhaps he should open up to his partner (and former lover), Nina. She immediately helped him hide Mason. She seems like the kind of person he can trust. But his boss did say not to trust anyone.

This CTU guy, Tony, however, is a big jerk. He’s going to be trouble. Can’t say I think he’s the mole, but he is pretty obnoxious. It’s obvious Jack is a supervisor of some sort; Tony’s gotta just step up to the plate and deal with it.

Now, as for the assassin, that was pretty interesting. I completely thought that photographer was the assassin at first, and Palmer’s aide was in on the plan. That ditzy chick sitting next to him, Mandy, was a total revelation when she quit the drunk, hot passenger act and killed that stewardess and blew up the plane. Wow. She’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

I like the tinking digital clock idea, too. But did you notice how every time they gave an idea of when something would happen, it was a time frame that would have pushed it right over into the next hour, i.e., the next episode? Nice. Guess they want to hook people into watching the next episode. Not a bad way to do it.

Anyhow, all in all, a very compelling hour of television. Good characters, interesting plot. Let’s see where this season takes us.