From: Mitch Berg

Re: Next Two Seasons

Joel,

About this time last year, I started a binge of watching the first four seasons of 24 in, essentially, a six-week bender. I just couldn’t stop watching. I got reeled in. So while I missed most of Day 5, I made this past season of 24 my first “appointment TV” in nearly 20 years.

And like most of the rest of the Bauersphere, I was – I’ll exercise my gift for understatement – bored silly with this past season.

I got to thinking about this, since the A’nE network is replaying Day One at 6AM every day.  The morning after Day Six sputtered to a scarcely-lamented end, I caught an episode from Day One; Jack was searching the first round of people trying to assassinate David Palmer; Teri Bauer was searching for Kim, along with the infamous Mr. York, ostensibly the father of Kim’s friend but really an agent of Serbian assassins out to kidnap the Bauer family for what Bauer had done to Viktor Drezen’s brother, and so on, and so forth.  Bauer was arguing with CTU, in a life-or-death battle, and arguing with his estranged wife while simultaneously defending his nation and his family.

You know – the kind of stuff we can all identify with.  Because what made Jack Bauer (and the show built around him) compelling was that for the first four Days, he dealt – on a big, life-or-death, hyper-dramatic, caffeine-stoked level – with things that matter to all of us;  loyalty to friends, to family, to something bigger; the shortcomings we all have in exercising that loyalty; the twists and turns that life (or huge shadowy terrorist conspiracies) throw in the way of that ideal.

On the other hand, after the first four hours (which were as good as anything in the first five Days), Day Six felt like West Wing with the occasional shootout – except West Wing wrote about the canoodling and cavorting about the corridors of the innermost inner circles well.  24 has never been about “watching the machinery work”; the only way the show ever made the inner circle of the White House remotely compelling was to wrap it up in a character, David Palmer, who was having the same crises Bauer was; right and wrong, good and evil, and the many very gray shades he – everyone – navigates between them.

The big problem?  Day Six had no big moral crises; no choices between family and duty; no “to execute Ryan Chappelle or not to execute Ryan Chappelle”; no hotels full of plague victims to isolate, with the moral consequences beating everyone involved over the heads.  Day Six was just…too easy.

Oh, a lot more popped up, too – a lot of comparisons where Day Six came up wanting:

Plausible Suspension of Disbelief: That six successive terrorist conspiracies erupt within a 20 minute drive from CTU Los Angeles.
Implausible Suspension of Disbelief:  That Russia would go to war over a McGuffin shaped like a sound card.

Characters I Can Care About: Teri Bauer, Diane Huxley, Tony and Michelle.  There was a sense of conflict, loyalty, gain and loss.
Characters I Can Not Care About:  Audrey Raines. Jack seems to be obsessed over a  plot device dressed as a barbie doll.

Disbelief I Can Suspend:  Jack Bauer has the president’s cell and secure office numbers on speed-dial.
Disbelief I Can Not Suspend:  The Russians can move troops from barracks into a position flanking a US base in the ‘stans in a matter of hours.
Disbelief that Beggars My Imagination:  The Powers Boothe administration faces this potential instant attack with panicky resignation (unless they’re Democrats, in which case it’s sorta plausible).

Reality I Can Watch Being Bent And Shrug, Because It’s No Big Deal:  A US submarine named the “Vickery”.  US subs are either fish, cities, states or, rarely, congresspeople who fed lotsa pork to the Navy.  And Jimmy Carter. 
Reality I Can Watch Being Bent And Shrug, Because It’s Only My Intelligence Being Insulted:  The President arranges the firing of a dummy cruise missile from a submarine on a few moments’ notice and manages to keep his entire staff and cabinet in the dark about it.

Maybe…: Kim Bauer goes from being a bratty teen to a seasoned CTU systems wonk.
No:  Wayne Palmer goes from being a bratty presidential advisor to an elected president.

Villains That Could Scare Me: Dennis Hopper as Victor Drazen (and Zeljko Ivanek as his son; I have wondered since Homicide: Life On The Street  if Ivanek maybe hadn’t done some of that in his past); Mandy and Candy the naked lesbian assassins; shadowy Balkan killbots; Fayed.
Villains That Do Not Scare Me:  James Cromwell as Evil Grampa Bauer.  “That’ll do, Jack.  That’ll do”.

Plausible Suspension of Disbelief: CTU/LA has moles, gets hacked, suffers a bombing/nerve gas attack/direct assault.
Implausible Suspension of Disbelief: CTU/LA suffers a different attack every season, and never seems to learn.

Plausible Suspension of Disbelief: The Navy keeps a vic of F-18s fully loaded with air-to-surface weapons on American soil, ready to scramble on a moment’s notice at the command of CTU.
Implausible Suspension of Disbelief:  CTU has satellites recording activities on off-shore oil rigs even before it occurs to anyone to want to surveil them.

Joel:  have your people call my people.

Cheers,

Mitch Berg

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 6:40 am and is filed under A 'n E, Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.