The first season of the American drama television series 24, also known as Day 1, was first broadcast from November 6, 2001, to May 21, 2002, on Fox. The season's storyline starts at midnight and ends at the following midnight on the day of the California presidential primary.
The season's main plot revolves around an assassination attempt on David Palmer, a U.S. Senator from Maryland who is a presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, on the day of the primary election in California. The central character is Jack Bauer, a former United States Army Delta Force operator, who is the Director of the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) in Los Angeles. Bauer becomes professionally as well as personally involved when his wife Teri and daughter Kim are kidnapped by the people behind the assassination.
The season is divided into two halves, each with a distinct villain. The first focuses on a mercenary group, lead by Ira Gaines, in their efforts to control Bauer by kidnapping his wife and daughter, blackmailing him to kill Senator Palmer. The second half focuses on the Drazen brothers, who hired Gaines and his men, as they execute a contingency plan. As CTU tracks their activities, Bauer learns why he and the Senator are being targeted.
Fox initially ordered only 13 episodes; the successful rescue at the end of the season's first half was planned as a series finale in the event that the show was not renewed.
The show follows each of the five main characters—Jack Bauer, Teri Bauer, Kim Bauer, Nina Myers, and David Palmer—simultaneously, as well as one main villain: Ira Gaines, Andre Drazen, and finally Victor Drazen. The day's situations and the relationships between these five characters and their associates form the basis for the season's subplots, which include:
Season 1 starts and ends at 12:00 a.m. PST on the day of the California Presidential Primary. The season focuses on presidential candidate David Palmer, and the repeated attempts on his life prevented by Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer, who becomes personally involved when the assassins kidnap his wife Teri and daughter Kim in an attempt to blackmail Bauer.
The first 13 episodes focus on the efforts of a terrorist cell led by Ira Gaines to assassinate Palmer. Bauer becomes an instrument for Gaines after Gaines kidnaps his wife Teri and daughter Kim in order to force him to aid in the assassination and take the fall for Palmer's death. Forced to go rogue from the agency, Bauer gets assistance from Nina Myers and eventually Tony Almeida as they attempt to identify a mole in CTU helping Gaines.
Throughout the day, Palmer also deals with his ethical responsibilities as it is revealed that his son is implicated in the death of his daughter's rapist. He clashes repeatedly with his wife, his son, and his fixer trying to figure out the best way to handle the coming story. Upon discovering his wife Sherry's role in the cover-up, he begins to doubt her motivations. After the first assassination attempt fails, he remembers Bauer, and eventually the two meet and begin to work together to take down the men who hired Gaines, Andre and Alexis Drazen.
Two years prior, to the day, Bauer was sent as part of a classified team to Kosovo on the orders of a Senate subcommittee headed by Palmer to kill Victor Drazen, Slobodan Milošević's "shadow." In order to ensure secrecy, the panel never met nor knew the team of operatives, nor did the team know the panel. Therefore, Palmer and Bauer never knew about each other before the events of the show. The mission went south, resulting in the death of Victor Drazen, as well as his wife and daughter. The Drazens decided to get revenge on Palmer and Bauer by killing Palmer, framing Bauer, and killing Bauer's own wife and daughter.
During the last few hours of the day, Bauer discovered his team had only killed Drazen's body double; the real Victor Drazen is actually a top secret, unofficial prisoner of the U.S. government, and the Drazens' primary goal was to free him.
Eventually, to satisfy the Drazens, Palmer's death is faked, but Sherry exposes the ruse on TV, causing Palmer to divorce her. Out of options, Victor Drazen calls his mole inside CTU, revealed to be Nina Myers, ordering her to call Bauer and tell him that his daughter is dead in an attempt to lure him into a trap and kill him. Bauer ultimately kills Drazen and all his men in retaliation, but learns that Myers lied to him and must be a mole. Before he can take her into custody, she shoots his wife dead, and the season ends with Bauer cradling his dead wife in his arms.
The first season introduced split screens into 24, a feature which continued to play a role in all of the seasons, especially the early ones. Editors originally wanted the boxes showing separate characters to overlap but Stephen Hopkins decided not to do this.[25] The writers were intentionally secretive about whether Teri Bauer would be killed in the final episode. To cast doubt about the outcome, three endings were filmed, two of which showed that Teri survived.[25] Writers Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran originally planned for Teri to survive, but half-way through the season, they decided that a happy ending would not be as satisfying. They instead went with the ending where Teri dies. Surnow explained, "It made the show feel more real. And it gives our audience a sense when they're going to watch the show next season, of not being able to expect anything they’ve come to expect in a normal television show."[26]
The trailer for the first season aired some time between April and November, 2001. The trailer announces that David Palmer may become the first black U.S. president and shows Jack Bauer learning about the assassination attempt and corruption within his agency. Notably, the trailer shows the explosion of a commercial plane that was edited out of the show in response to the September 11 attacks.[27] All other scenes shown are from the premiere episode.
The first season received universal acclaim, scoring a Metacritic rating of 88/100 based on 27 reviews.[28] On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 95% with an average score of 8.7 out of 10 based on 21 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Brimming with tension and political intrigue, 24 successfully introduces its unique, high-concept format and a compelling hero worth watching in Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer."[29]
Kiefer Sutherland won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama and the Satellite Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama for his role as Jack Bauer for this season. In 2009, the season finale ("11:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m.") was listed in TV Guide's list of the top 100 episodes of all time, at number 10.[30] In 2005, TV Land included the same episode as part of its "100 Most Unexpected Moments in TV History", ranking it number 32.[31] Teri Bauer's death at the end of the finale was voted by TV Guide as the second-most shocking death in television history.[32]
The first season was released on DVD in region 1 on September 17, 2002,[33] and in region 2 on October 14, 2002.[34] A special-edition version was released in region 1 on May 20, 2008.[35] The season 1 DVD features an alternative ending in which Teri Bauer survives.[36]
