24 has an opening. Joel Surnow, the show's executive producer and self-described "right-wing nutjob," is leaving the show when his contract expires later this year. Will the show change after his departure? Almost certainly. But how will it change? Well, that depends on which other well-known showrunner takes his place. Following is a shortlist of possible candidates, along with some changes you can expect if you start seeing their names in the opening credits.
Jack Bauer's job gets a lot easier when terrorist henchmen start to become rather chatty with him after he kills them. With the information they provide, he's not in as much of a rush to track down the mastermind. Unfortunately, the death of his father in Season 6 means that Jack's now going to have to take over the family business of shady defense consulting and ex-president assassination, moving back home with his mom (Patricia Clarkson) and working with his not-dead-after-all-but-actually-gay little brother Graeme and their miniature employee/partner, Carlos (Verne Troyer). Needless to say, the transition is not a smooth one.
Jack's daughter Kim Bauer returns, and she and her father spend the season working through the issues that have kept them apart for so long, as well as several bottles of wine. But in the middle of the climactic emotional breakthrough that comes at day's end, Kim is suddenly called away on an emergency Peace Corps mission just before Jack gets word that she secretly has ovarian cancer. Then we all cry like assholes at the abrupt departure and uncertain future of a character we've unexpectedly come to love. Damn you, Berlanti!
Mark Burnett
The creator of Survivor makes a surprisingly easy shift to scripted TV, thanks to 24's preexisting habit of eliminating a different character every week.
With Chloe a new mother and Jack all but absent after a breakdown in contract negotiations with Kiefer Sutherland, Carter switches up the couple at the center of the once-buzzworthy Fox series. Now, maverick super-agent Doreen Helfer (Mimi Rogers) teams up with socially awkward but brilliant computer geek Howard Rizzuto (Chris Owens) to face down the terrorist threat from CTU's basement -- even when higher-ups like Vice President John Steele (Terry O'Quinn) and the nameless Secretary of Defense (William B. Davis) don't really want them to succeed. Together, Helfer and Rizzuto can do anything, short of tying up plot threads.
Marc Cherry
The Desperate Housewives creator turns his sharp satirical eye on the supposedly heroic members of the counterterrorism community and discovers its dirty little secret: some of those people have issues of their own! Who knew?
Kelley takes Season 7's rumored "trial of Jack Bauer" theme and runs with it, putting Fyvush Finkel behind the bench, changing the venue to Boston, and pitting Jack against hard-bitten prosecuting attorney Mildred Large (Camryn Manheim). But since Jack can't stand the thought of being defended by anyone, he burns through a long line of quirky hotshot defense lawyers played by William Shatner, Gil Bellows, Dylan McDermott, Greg Germann, and Peter MacNicol (returning as former White House Chief of Staff Tom Lennox) before mounting his own unorthodox defense: his enemy is terror itself, and thus anyone who would question him allies themselves, by definition, with the terrorists. The prosecution considers itself lucky to get out alive.
Tim Kring
After raiding comics lore for Heroes despite claiming not to be a comics fan, Kring will preside over a 24 that continues to borrow shamelessly from such videogames as Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Hitman, and Half-Life. Kring will maintain that he knows nothing about videogames.
When a freak accident lands Jack, Chloe, Morris, Nadia, and a large CTU field team in a cavernous underground bunker, the questions come faster than the answers. Where are they? How did they get there? Who's pulling the strings? Are there traitors among them? Are they alone? What do the numbers mean? How does "real time" apply in a world where time has no meaning, let alone reality? How many more ways can we find to scare away new viewers?
A franchise "reboot" follows the exploits of a younger, more idealistic Jack Bauer and his partner Stephen Saunders (James Callis) as they pursue the villainous Drazen family (Michael Hogan, Jamie Bamber, and Michael Trucco) across Serbia. What is the mission's mysterious connection to Senator David Palmer (Isaiah Washington)? Who is "Yelena" (Katee Sackhoff) and what does she want? Who are the real war criminals? And what horrible, body-disfiguring torments will be visited upon the young Jack (Tahmoh Penikett)?
Jack's ill-advised night of passion with Chloe drives a predictable rift between her and Morris that ends with Morris shipping their newborn baby to Afghanistan to be trained to take revenge on Jack in Season 10. It also complicates Jack's need to make a romantic choice between the love of his life, Audrey, and his sister-in-law Marilyn, who is also the mother of Jack's child, Josh, raised to teen-hood as Graeme's son. But since Marilyn has sworn Jack to secrecy regarding Josh's paternity, Jack must figure out how to prevent a budding romance between Josh and his other child, Kim. Meanwhile, President Karen Hayes is struggling to balance her responsibilities as head of state with the demands placed on her by ex-husband Bill Buchanan and their newly-adopted child (who, thanks to an unlikely series of mix-ups and unbeknownst to them, is actually Morris and Chloe's baby). At one point, in an ambitious mid-season sweeps episode "event," there are also terrorists.
With Homeland Security, CTU, and the Department of Defense bogged down in bureaucratic infighting and alcoholism subplots, it falls to a small group of affluent teens to protect us from the terrorist threat. Fortunately, jihadist bloodthirst is no match for great clothes, self-aware wisecracks, and impeccable taste in music.
Amy Sherman-Palladino
The creator of Gilmore Girls and The Return Of Jezebel James starts her tenure by both shortening the season and giving the show a more familiarly alliterative title: 22. With that out of the way, Jack and Chloe finally realize what all those quirky peripheral staffers at CTU have known for years: they're meant to be together! All is bliss for a time, but when an argument between them sends Jack back into Audrey's arms, the excitement gives way to heartbreak and awkwardness. And the safety of the nation is at risk, as Jack avoids asking Chloe for vital technical help in favor of having rapid-fire, cultural-reference-laden conversations with Kim (who, by the way, is also having doubts about her life's goal of becoming a quantum physicist). How will it all end? Ask Sherman-Palladino's eventual replacement.
In the season informally titled "What Kind of Day 7 Has It Been?," Jack Bauer experiences a moral awakening regarding the wrongness of torture, illegal searches, and other denials of due process that used to be his specialty. Unfortunately, Republican president Jefferson Jackson (Bradley Whitford) is the type who insists on "any means necessary" when it comes to capturing and/or killing and/or rhetorically destroying the terrorists. Jack and current CTU-Los Angeles boss Danny O'Malley (Timothy Busfield) discuss how best to persuade the POTUS in a walk-and-talk that has them reaching Washington, D.C. by the season's climax. Once inside the White House, Jack quickly hits it off with National Security Adviser Henrietta Harris (Allison Janney). Is romance in the air for Season 8? Jack is going to have to be, if he ever wants to kiss her.
J. Michael Straczynski
The creator of Babylon 5 seems to be the answer to the prayers of longtime 24 fans who have been complaining about the lack of story planning throughout the seasons. Unfortunately, the show is canceled before the resolution of his epic five-day, five-season plot arc, and the two-hour TV movies "Day 11" and "Day 12" garner disappointing ratings.
Rob Thomas
Having learned his lesson about season-long mysteries from his experience on Veronica Mars, Thomas has Jack Bauer switch to thwarting a brand-new terrorist threat each hour. This ends up freeing a surprising amount of Jack's time to make smart-ass remarks and endure patronizing comments about what a tough line of work he's in for a tiny little blond.
Except for Jack Bauer's promotion to Secretary of Homeland Security, 24 remains largely unchanged in terms of its format for another ten years or so. The big change is on Fox's schedule at large, which soon sees the premieres of 24: Enemy Combatants, 24: Homeland Security, and 24: Reign of Terror. The spinoffs retain the ticking clock onscreen, but have little else in common aside from all featuring appearances by Richard Belzer as Special Agent John Munch.
Things go pear-shaped while Jack and Chloe are out in the field, and Chloe is forced to step up and take out an entire terrorist cell single-handedly after Jack sustains a sidelining injury. After both of them are unfairly drummed out of CTU, Jack takes it upon himself to cultivate Chloe's secret talent, while they slowly accrue an impromptu gang of fellow war-on-terror misfits and outcasts that includes a burned MI-6 agent (Alexis Denisof), a former terrorist (Gina Torres), a disgraced cable news pundit (Nathan Fillion), and Paul Wolfowitz (Armin Shimerman). Ultimately, Chloe's battles against the "monsters" of the modern world serve as an allegory for our everyday fights with real monsters like vampires and demons.
Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz
The topical, action-packed terrorism series morphs into a brilliantly realistic and honest family ensemble drama, then quickly gets canceled.