{"id":11048,"date":"2010-05-24T12:05:57","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T17:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11048"},"modified":"2010-05-24T10:45:17","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T15:45:17","slug":"dammit-theres-no-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11048","title":{"rendered":"Dammit, There’s No Time!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phones will all be turned off during tonight’s sign-off of 24 – <\/em>in an electric perimeter than I can guarantee will be a lot more effective than any the Los Angeles Police ever set up in six seasons.<\/p>\n

The first three Days of the Fox counterterror drams\u00a0were as close to “Must-See” as any TV has ever been.\u00a0 Four and Five were both decent.\u00a0 Six was abysmal.\u00a0 Seven was a worthy comeback, and eight has been almost back to early form.<\/p>\n

For me, it’d be hard to top the first two seasons for personal immediacy, in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11 (Day One was actually produced before the “man-caused disaster”); a guy fighting for his country on the one hand and his family – his aggrieved wife and his bratty teenager – on the other, and his comrades at CTU (implausibly mole-riven as they were) on the third; the demands frequently conflicted with each other.<\/p>\n

In other words, just like life for most of us, except with nerve gas and bullets instead of angry principals and tax bills.<\/p>\n

As the show got further and further from the immediacy 0f the three way network of loyalty and duty – to country, family and comrades – the flabbier and more West Wing-<\/em>y it seemed.\u00a0\u00a0 In the earlier Days, Bauer’s loyalty to his nation (wrapped up in the logically-stretchy but dramatically brilliant relationship with Dennis Haysbert’s President Palmer, and then the even-better one with the reptilian mass of gray areas, President Logan\u00a0– bounced off his troubled family, Teri and Kim, provided a constant tension that, by Day Six, had decayed into the sloppy, formulaic ones with Wayne Palmer and Audrey Raines, whose coma was the only interesting thing about her on The Longest Day.\u00a0\u00a0 On Day Six, Bauer had no personal skin in the game; the day’s biggest failing was that it was all about a scenario, not about Bauer’s personal conflict.<\/p>\n

In a way, one of the show’s most ridiculed moments – Tony Almeida’s resurrection from the dead on Day Seven – was one of its best.\u00a0 For the first time, really, since Day Four, Bauer had an immediate, personal conflict – his longtime loyalty to Almeida – along with a judicious return of a personal life, loyalties and conflicts \u00a0in the form of Annie Wersching’s Renee “Agent Hotpants” Walker.\u00a0 And implausible as it was (“What?\u00a0 24 <\/em>implausible?”), it worked, and the show pulled off the impossible – it actually re-jumped the shark<\/em>, in the right direction this time.<\/p>\n

And so 24 <\/em>actually is <\/em>going out on top (barring a Newhart<\/em>-like dream sequence ending of some kind).<\/p>\n

So leave me alone starting at seven tonight.\u00a0 Dammit, I won’t have time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phones will all be turned off during tonight’s sign-off of 24 – in an electric perimeter than I can guarantee will be a lot more effective than any the Los Angeles Police ever set up in six seasons. The first three Days of the Fox counterterror drams\u00a0were as close to “Must-See” as any TV has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11048"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11050,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048\/revisions\/11050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}