If you’re wondering why AIG has been a little bit slow since the finale ended, here’s the scoop.  First and foremost, I was burned out.  The closer we got to finale time and Tony’s endgame, the more the pressure piled on, and emotions were running high with the entire team.  I knew that there was at least some possibility that Season 7 could be Tony’s last if the writers decided to off him in the finale, and if that happened, I wanted the site to go out with a bang.  I sacrificed sleep and physical comfort in unprecedented amounts during that final week before the finale aired to get the site up to speed and co-produce the Tony-centric fan videos with Adam of TheJackSack.com.

Towards the end of the season, during the two weeks on either side of the finale, a certain level of stress brought on by negative interpersonal dynamics going on between myself and some specific posters on the blog and on the forum had pushed me over the edge, and once the finale had come and gone and all the dust had settled in the ensuing discussions, I needed some time away from the site to decompress.  What I came to realize during that time is that I had lost sight of one of the very fundamental reasons I started this site — personal fun and personal satisfaction.  And I further realized that despite the fact I have actively encouraged public discussion and exchange on this site about Tony and 24, and have enjoyed the open format of the site this season immensely and my interactions with the many smart and thoughtful people I have encountered as a result, at the same time I don’t owe absolutely everyone and anyone who comes by here a venue or a soapbox, and I have no obligation to the reading public as a whole to tolerate everything.  If there is a presence on this site that is making me unhappy, upsetting the balance, causing me stress or making the running of the site un-fun for me, that presence has gotta go.  It’s still my house.  And the house has been cleaned.  My tolerance for bullshit is at an absolute all-time low.

As many of you who frequent our message forum are already aware, I have some pretty heavy stuff going on in my personal life.  A member of my immediate family is quite ill and is currently battling a debilitating and potentially terminal disease.  At this time, I must turn my attention to my family and provide them with the support and encouragement they need, as well as draw from the support and encouragement they can provide to me to get through the very difficult and emotional time, and stay positive.

I have enlisted and continue to enlist the assistance of my readers, contributors and contemporaries (many of whom I have grown to consider my friends) to help me with things on the site over the off-season hiatus.  Avery will be reporting live from ComicCon, and has joined the ranks of our Official Contributors on a permanent basis.  If you have news items, blog ideas or any other material you think would be good to keep AIG interesting through the off-season, don’t hesitate to send it my way.  I need all the help I can get.  Thanks to everyone for reading this year and being part of AIG.  Come January, we’ll be back, and mark my words, so will Tony Almeida.

My apologies for being a bit behind the 8-ball with this one.  FOX Source published this interview with Carlos Bernard and Jeffrey Nordling on June 17th from the Celebrity Golf Classic.  Ground Carlos covers includes the moral quandary of Tony’s Season 7 motives, the Tony in Season 8 question and the animated web series 101 Ways To Die, in which he voices the lead.

YouTube Direct

Spoiler Geeks caught up with Carlos Bernard at The Paley Center’s annual celebrity golf classic on Tuesday, June 9. When questioned about Tony’s potential presence in 24’s eighth season, Carlos replied:

I can’t comment on that; that would be giving way too much away.

The one question on my mind is, if he’s NOT in Season 8, then there wouldn’t be anything TO give away … right?  RIGHT???!!!???

Sandie of Daemon TV has posted a great interview with Elisha Cuthbert, talking Kim Bauer, dream roles and even Tony’s turn.  Highlights:

On Kim’s return to 24:

[...] I’m really lucky that I can come in and out and get to do other things and yet still be on the show and sort of there in the right way. It’s not because the writers are forced to write something for the character now. They write for Kim when it’s appropriate and it works for the show. I couldn’t be happier for those reasons.

On the process of the Kim/Jack reunion scene:

Kiefer and I rehearsed quite a bit on our own time before actually getting on set and that really helped. In TV you don’t really have the luxury to take that time and to do that on the set because it’s such a fast paced show. There’s so much work that needs to be done that the extra time was really a nice thing for Kiefer to do for me.

(more …)

While this is in no way an official confirmation, a recent entry in NY Post Blogs about new Season 8 cast lists Carlos Bernard as one of the original 24 cast members returning to the series for “another day with Bauer.”

While most of “24’s” characters are one-outfit players, FBI Agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching) will join the ranks of “24″ originals Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub), Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) and Kim Bauer (Elisha Cuthbert) for another day with Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland).

That’s right folks, Kasia has the DVD and she’s screencappin’!  Screencaps for the first two episodes of Season 7 are now available in the AIG Gallery, with more on the way very soon.

Well, that’s it for another season of 24. And as always, we learned a lot.

WHAT DID WE LEARN ON THE SHOW TONIGHT, JOHANLEY?

I guess I’ll go first. I learned that any time I use nicknames in a review, I should put more effort into them, because I never know which ones are going to become immortalized.

Seriously, Fake Lawyer isn’t that creative.

Kasia learned the definition of the term “fanwanking,” after it was revealed that Christopher Henderson formulated a complicated plan to fake Tony’s death and have someone else recruit him for an anti-government conspiracy… three seconds after waking from a coma… after trying to kill him earlier in the day. And here’s why it all makes sense.

The 24 writers learned that they can write the most suspenseful, thrilling, gleefully implausible assault on the White House the world will ever see, but if they bring back an obscure character and then get his name wrong, shit is gonna go down.

That said, we all learned that the 24 writers are smarter than we thought, after realizing that Sangala, Colonel Dubaku’s country of origin, is an anagram for lasagna, his favorite dinner. And shortly after that, we learned that wearing Aviator Shades is always bad-ass, even when the sun has already gone down. And of course, we learned that no matter what you do with Kim Bauer, somebody somewhere is going to bring up that fucking cougar.

We HAVEN’T learned how to not get really mad every time that happens. Yet.

Mr. Seaton learned that stress is the fertilizer of creativity. That was a good one.

And most important of all, we learned that an awe inspiring, soul shattering, possible website-title-undermining plot twist can be ruined by a single solitary nostril.

I think that’s enough of that.

(more …)

iF Magazine has published a Q&A with Jon Cassar (this was pre-finale) that feels a little nostalgic, given this is his last season working on the show.  Check it out.

Before I begin, I would once again like to take this opportunity to thank the other contributors to the site who devoted their own very valuable time and resources to the Official Episode Summary & Review portion of the site this year.  This was a new feature for Season 7, and from the start I knew that it would kill me to try and handle this content plus everything else every week.  So to Ivanhoe, johanley, Kat, Avery and JustABill, who all threw down at least one OESR this season, you have my eternal gratitude.  I’m indebted.  Now, let’s get on with it …

Summary

We left off at the end of the first hour of the finale with Jack having just escaped Tony and Fake Lawyer’s clutches by pulling a Nina, slaughtering their team of evil doctors with a scalpel and busting out into the sunrise.  We pick up at the beginning of the second hour with Renee, Kim and Chloe desperate for the computer Kim recovered from Fake Lawyer’s hippie henchman to yield some kind of lead on where Jack might be.  Cut to Jack breaking into a storage unit adjacent to Fake Lawyer’s shadowy lair, where he finds an array of taxi cabs ripe for the hotwiring.  But before he can make his escape, Tony busts in shooting, putting a few holes in the gas tank of one of the cabs, causing gasoline to pour out all over the floor.  Jack hits the automatic door control device to lower the door back down and Tony rolls out of the way just in time.  This is a mere inconvenience for Almeida, who gets himself a forklift and uses it to force the door open.  Jack spots a cache of flares on a table nearby (is it SOP for cabs to carry flares, I wonder?) and decides to blow them both to hell by tossing a lit flare into the gasoline pool.  Tony, however, gets to Jack in the nick of time and knocks the flare a safe distance away from the gasoline.  Jack, weak and fatigued, tries valiantly to crawl towards the flare, but Tony easily overpowers him and knocks him out with the classic Krav Maga chop to the neck — The Tony equivalent of the Bauer Sleeper Hold.  He drags Jack by the feet back to Fake Lawyer’s shadowy lair.

(more …)

Big Fucking Conspiracy?  You don’t say.  It’s hard to keep track of.  I hope to help.  Click the image for full-size view.