24 Season Finales

   For today's post, I've got a rundown for you of my favorite 24 season finales in order (all of them!) and why I feel that way to order them how I do. Let's do this!

1. Day Eight: exactly what it needed to be as a farewell, to cement 24 as one of the greatest. The countdown shutdown at the end. 00:03, 00:02, 00:01, 00:00.
2. Day Three: Going second here for sheer intensity. Still can't top the series finale, of course, but this is a close second.
3. Day One: Sets off events that will echo for "days" to come; to say any more would constitute major major spoilers if you're not already into the show.
4. Day Six: I really like Day Six, hang what other people think- the first 20 hours are one intense thrillride, all revolving around the one goal of stopping the snukes. The last fourish hours, Jack's lady friend Audrey gets kidnapped, and Jack has to face off against his own father and everything, and so here at sunrise of the next day, it's all coming crashing down, and Secretary Heller forbids Jack from seeing his daughter again. Jack goes outside to stare off into the distance as the sky begins to lighten once more, and it's heartbreaking. Positively heartbreaking.
5. Day Seven somewhere?: Prion variant, Kim saves her father's life. Neat stuff, I guess.
6. Day Two: David Palmer gets palmed-- it takes twice for something to become a tradition, and this thus starts 24's tradition of having some kind of insane cliffhanger/twist at the very end of the day (a tradition that is subverted exactly one season later, of course, where the major twist is... Jack Bauer breaking down and crying. Like I said, it was an intense episode, that.)
7. Day Five: Jack kidnapped by angry Chinese agents in retaliation for staging the invasion of their base and all that- pretty nice, pretty nice. I can never really respect this episode as much as it deserves, since the first time I watched it I thought that Netflix didn't have the season five premier so I decided to watch it backwards, which turned out to be stupid and confusing and I was very bored throughout the entire thing. As I've no doubt explained elsewhere as well, but I think it's an entertaining enough story it bears repeating.

   And of course, who could forget the stunning finale to season 4, in which Tony moves to CTU Japan to inspect the new site, only to stumble across employee harassment by Japanese Jack Bauer and a heinously complex plot involving his kidnapped wife Michelle and plastic surgery Michael Jackson. No, seriously: