I’ve never watched 24, but I should point out that Kiefer Sutherland is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, the pinko commie Canadian politician who led the charge on socialized medicine and such.
Sounds like your average “Ripped from the headlines!” mellowdrama, but distinct in that you usually encounter these overblown plots in cop shows.
Anyhoo, isn’t 24 on Fox? Sounds like it’d give Rupert Murdoch a bit of dyspepsia.
Gah! Melodrama! I was thinking of a band name!
It’s a very common theme in storytelling to slant the story as anti-establshment. The cop / cowboy / superhero / journalist going his own way in face of great odds. “You’ve got 24 hours to crack that story kid and if you don’t, you’re off to writin’ obits” Other staples are: Big Business Is Evil, Politicians Are corrupted By Power, People Who Do It By The Book Are Gullible Idiots and Violence Solves Evrything.
24, like countless pulp books, movies, cop shows and video games tap into some of these clichés, mostly becuase it’s a good shorthand way to establish something and it also means you don’t have to spend too much time on character motivation. Since Big Business Is Evil, there’s no need to dig deeper into that - The C.E.O. and his flunkies and flacks don’t have to be explained, but serve as the McGuffin to keep our hero running, shooting and blowing up things.
Of course, 24 is built solely from clichés, which make it more of a video game or roller coaster, and as such it’s enjoyable. Trying to read an agenda into it is quite futile, IMO.
I thought maybe you were implying that the show was mellow, i.e. boring and monotone.
I definitely think Season 5 was anti-Bush, but the show in general is anti-bureaucracy, because Jack is always breaking with protocol in order to get things done. But he always does get things done.
I think season 5 was the best season since 2 (minus the Kim subplot). I can see them straddling both sides of the political fence, throwing both sides a bone and refusing to alienate either group of viewers. All I know is that Jack Bauer and Chloe O’Brian are too much fun to watch, so as long as those characters continue to entertain me, I could care less what blowhard demagogues the creators hang out with in their free time.
Yeah, but like Charlie Tan says, that’s a venerable old cliché. The hero always has to be some guy who “plays by his own rules”. I don’t see that as any particular statement about anything, just something pretty inherent to the genre.
Meh, my favorite compser, Richard Wagner was an anti-semitic son of a bitch.
Wrote wonderful music. Nasty politics. Procured hand grenades for the Revolution of 1848.
I’m not saying I stopped watching because of the producers’ politics. I stopped watching because I no longer found the show entertaining. Then I read about their politics, which made me think, “yep, definitely not missing anything there.” However, Howard Gordon was also a producer on *Buffy * and Angel, two of my all-time favorite shows. I’m not boycotting them now, because they still entertain me. Hell, if the 24 movie looks like it’s going to be super duper awesome, I’ll see it.
By the same token, I don’t decide I love shows, movies, bands, etc. because I like their creators’ politics. I may agree with some statements made by members of the Dixie Chicks, but I’m never buying their albums because I don’t enjoy their music. Bruce Willis has voiced some right-wing beliefs, but I still think he’s a good, interesting actor. Roman Polanski apparently likes 13-year-old girls, but he’s still an amazingly talented director.
I was mostly kidding about 24’s onscreen politics, adding fuel to the tinfoil hat fire. I don’t feel it’s written coherently enough to truly push an agenda anyway. They’re smart enough not to run for either political extreme, since that might alienate part of their audience.
I rarely laugh out loud reading the SDMB. 
Just like Clint - sorry, Callaghan - does his best work while on suspension, and a pair of apparently mismatched partners will invariably develop mutual if grudging respect by the end of a movie. Assuming one of them doesn’t turn out to be the dirty cop masterminding things, that is.
I do disagree with you re: the series’ quality, though. It’s always been massively variable, granted, and while a veritable bathtub of suspension of disbelief has been required at all times, I think the President-is-the-terrorist “reveal” was the absolute watershed in terms of the writers admitting that their technique is simply to foreshadow one thing, then reveal the opposite. In previous series it was obvious that they generated tension by making every character borderline autistic or pathologically paranoid, or by granting the terrorists teleportation skills; but only in 5 has it really seemed as if they just took a kind of madlib approach to the fundamental storyline. I can’t wait to find out who the Illuminati-esque bods behind Logan are; I can only assume at this point that it’s going to be aliens or Icke-style lizards. Or maybe the UN.
Basically, I think if the first season had been called “8”, it would’ve been the best action drama ever made by man; it then went horribly downhill. Season 3 was (IMO) the most consistently enjoyable, despite the preponderance of Sherri Palmer. But I think that at least prior to season 5, the ludicrous make-some-shit-up plotting was at least left to the relatively peripheral events (cougars, insomnia), whereas in 5 you realise that they’re just thinking, “what’s the most unlikely thing ever? I know! President is a terrorist! OMGclever! Now let’s show the Vice-Prez looking shifty!”
I did an OP a couple of days ago which no one read, but I’m quoting myself from that:
Peter M. Lenkov produced La Femme Nikita as well as 24.
Note the similairites; terrorists, satellites, moles.
He did that one a lot better, though.
Why would Charles Logan stay in character as bumbling but innocent when he’s alone in the room, if not to throw us viewers off the scent?
I don’t recall that specifically. I do recall him acting that way when he was alone with Walt Cummings, but that was because they needed Walt to believe he was in charge, to take the blame if anything went wrong.
Don’t cellphones need re-charging?
If they were all fully charged at the beginning of the season, I could believe that they stayed charged for a day.
Why add something corosive to the nerve gas?
Well, it was originally manufactured by Henderson’s company, right? And we don’t really know what its original purpose was. Maybe it was supposed to be released in an airtight space and would need its own built-in method of “escaping”? You’re right though; this is a little too convenient.
Are we really to believe that re-directing a satelite is just like making a cab turn at a different corner?
They’re not moving the satellite, just the cameras on the satellite. I could believe that’s relatively easy, yeah. What pissed me off is that Chloe was the only one who could do anything more high-tech than answer the phone. It seems like she’d spend her whole day telling people, “Okay. So press ctrl-alt-delete, and… yeah, on the lower corner of the keyboard. Control. Right…”
I only got into the show at the beginning of season 5, so if it used to be more believable, and then got worse, I didn’t see that progression. So I think that’s part of the reason it doesn’t seem as bad to me.
Um, sorry for pulling the thread (further) off-topic.
I really couldn’t disagree more. Certainly they hinted with camera shots and vultury expressions that the Veep was the mastermind, but I thought there was nothing at all out of character about the reveal. Logan had shown himself to be amoral, unhealthily ambitious, and easily convinced to do things in season four, when he began to resist Palmer’s efforts to help him in order to pretend to be a competent leader and worse when he ordered Jack’s death. Nor did he seem any less bumbling and incompetent at the end of season five. While they didn’t build to the reveal by suggesting it in advance, there was nothing particularly unbelievable about it, except some bits like his conversation with Walt Cummings (which I take as evidence that the writers certainly didn’t know what they were going to do, but it can easily be explained away.) The president was bumbling, stupid, weak-willed, and amoral all along, both season four and season five. And given that his plan had begun to spiral out of control almost as soon as it started, his confusion over what to do and his terror seemed perfectly appropriate.
Now, on the other end, with a reveal that simply made no sense in the context of the story, look at season two. Marie Warner, blonde, delicate, rather trivial in general, and getting married. And suddenly she’s revealed as an Islamist terrorist? Uh-uh. Don’t buy it. What, she schedules an atomic explosion for the same day as her wedding? Is this just the most epic case of cold feet in history? Because if I was part of a plot to blow up a city, you can bet I would leave my schedule pretty clear for the rest of the day so that I could get away quickly to help out if need be. Her planning was simply completely unbelievable; what’s more, the idea that this rather vapid woman could actually have been living her entire life as a lie was way too much for me to believe. Now that reveal was unbelievable. But Charles Logan? It seemed perfectly in character to me.
I didn’t find the reveal with Nina Meyers in season one terribly believable either - particularly since I saw it after having seen later seasons and watched carefully for it. It just didn’t make sense. Sure, throw in video footage from earlier of her killing someone - but meanwhile, she had ample opportunities all day long to make sure that Kim and Terri didn’t get rescued, but instead she worked her ass off to keep them safe. Why did she try to protect them from the “FBI agent” sent to kidnap them from the hospital? She could have just distracted the real agents for a couple minutes, given him the opportunity to get Kim and Terri, and done it all without blowing her cover. But instead she made sure Kim and Terri were safe. Doesn’t make sense. (Though I can forgive them, since I love Nina as a baddie in seasons 2 and 3 so much that it makes it okay.)
I liked seasons 2 and 3 best, I think. But I have to disagree that Sherry Palmer’s a bad thing; she was one of the best parts of the first three seasons - her relationship with David and her presence as his foil was absolutely wonderful, and Penny Johnson Jerald played the character perfectly. She was just so deliciously wicked. I miss her and Nina Meyers for that reason. I also thought those two seasons were relatively well plotted, whereas seasons one and four in particular seemed just like a confusing mishmash of different random things going on and the plots didn’t make sense as a cohesive whole.
One major character’s entire storyline - kidnapping, explosion, arrest, arson, car accident, cougar, crazy-ass survivalist, convenience store shooting, and then one more shooting for good measure - is peripheral events? I loved that part of the season, but only because it was so ridiculous. It was simply too unbelievable to take seriously, but it was fun as hell along the way.
Like I said, they’ve done it all along. Dramatic, unbelievable reveals? Par for the course. Season 5 was more plausible than any of the earlier ones.
Granted, I haven’t seen the show (and so you can tell me to butt out) but I’d add something corrosive to nerve gas if I were an evil bad person. Why? So it would melt gas masks.
But this is (from my point of view) beside the point. I find the idea of the President being a terrorist so utterly, completely, fundamentally stupid that I can’t even begin to care about whether it’s in keeping with his character. Your examples of other reveals are quite probably examples of dubious writing, but the fundamental idea that a CTU agent could be a mole isn’t ridiculous, so at least you can worry about whether Nina as the mole makes sense on the show’s terms; with Logan my brain just tells me that we’re off in cloud cuckoo land, and ceases to care. Mileage obviously varies; this for me is just when I stopped enjoying the show in an I-know-it’s-ridiculous-but-hey kind of way, sat up and said “oh, come on!”
My problem isn’t with the character per se, it’s with the actress, whom I believe to have been extensively tutored by Shatner. It’s the way she can’t utter a sentence without trying out a whole new facial expression for each … tortuously over-enunciated … word. Hated her in DS9, hated her in this. Her stabbing scene was greeted with cheers in our house. Mileage, vary, etc.
Well, yeah, I think it’s chunky but essentially peripheral to the basic 24-hours-to-stop-the-terrorists strand. I think Kim was essentially filler. Bountiful, bouncy, beautiful filler, but filler nonetheless.
Well, I’ll be far more surprised if a President of the USA turns out to have orchestrated a nerve gas attack on US soil than I will if a teleporting Muslim fundamentalist tries one, that’s for sure. Internally consistent(ish), maybe; believable, nope.
I thought Sherry was shot by Julia. Please refresh my memory.
This link doesn’t tell how Julia killed her.
Thanks!
Oh yeah, eventually; but she got stabbed as well in series 2, only to unfortunately recover. Jack leaves her to bleed on the ground while he goes after the bad guy. My hero.
Oh yes.
But doesn’t she save him after a heart attack and an SUV wreck?