The Worst Day Ever

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And in a twist even more stunning than a C. Thomas revival...Chloe gets a man! Our harried hacker — who will pay a price for helping Jack last season — engages in an interoffice relationship with a fellow techie (Jonah Lotan) that goes about as smoothly as a Steve Carell chest wax. ''[Expect] a lot more spite, even more rude remarks, and of course some hot, hot sexuality,'' says Rajskub. In equally titillating CTU news, Tony (Carlos Bernard) and Michelle (Reiko Aylesworth) get sucked back into duty, while Lord of the Rings star Sean Astin pops up as a higher-agency suit tapped to run the unit. But as usual, don't get too attached to any new (or old) faces. ''People will die,'' assures Cochran. ''The show will continue its tradition.''

But for how long? How many worst-day-evers can there be? ''This series could go 15 years,'' says Surnow. ''This could be Law & Order. If we do the CTU thing for seven years and then want to do a day in the life of a cop with a different actor, we can.''

To Sutherland, that means the clock is ticking. ''We've known from the very beginning that it never can run forever with the same characters, and I'm one of those characters,'' he says. ''The show will get to a point where you might be going through complete cast changes season to season. I'm going to be really sad when that day comes, because I've learned more on this show than on any project I've ever done.''

The actor's learning curve may continue in theaters, however: 24's producers have begun plotting a film franchise for Bauer. Sutherland (who stars with Michael Douglas in the thriller The Sentinel, out April 21) is itching to pull the trigger. ''It can be an amazing series of movies,'' he says. ''One of the things I've experienced making this show is that an audience can handle a lot more than we thought when we started — the tension, the anxiety.... If we could [compress] all the energy we spread over 24 hours of programming and put that into 2, I think we'd knock your socks off.''

(This is an online-only excerpt of Entertainment Weekly's Jan. 13, 2006, cover story.)