The Kozmic Bubble

David Fury, the co-executive producer of 24, has been explaining what’s been going wrong in this series…

From the New York Post:
That plot concluded on April 9 (the 17th “hour” of the show’s 24-hour “day”) with the death of Abu Fayed (Adoni Maropis), the Arab terrorist behind a plot to detonate a series of suitcase nukes in American cities.

Then, just as that story ended, a new one began as the show’s hero, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), learned his lady love, Audrey Raines (Kim Raver), was being held captive by the Chinese.

To many fans of “24,” the new storyline felt tacked on, which it was.

“We’re going to figure out a little bit more [of the plot before production on the new season gets underway] so we don’t find ourselves in later episodes running into that problem,” Fury said in an interview with the trade publication Television Week that was posted on the pub’s Web site, tvweek.com. “There’ll be a little bit more groundwork done that hopefully will sustain [the show] for an entire season.”

And from TVweek.com:
“In the early seasons of ‘24,’ they did try to map out stories and arc out stories a little bit more than they did in seasons four and five,” Mr. Fury said. “And four and five turned out to be the two most successful seasons of the show. It just so happens that maybe this year it’s caught up with us.

“There are relationships that Jack had that we can’t exploit anymore, and that’s certainly a problem,” he added. “We don’t have those people to pull from anymore for stories, and it becomes harder for the audience to latch on to new characters. . It takes time for those characters to garner the same affection that the older characters did.”

My take:
I think the last 7 episodes have really turned around what was turning into a pretty lackluster series. I’m really excited about the ending now, looking forward to watching the last two episodes!