Last nights episode of 24 was arguably the worse episode of it's entire run of, as of now 4, and 1/3 seasons. Last nights episode eight of the current season, in fact, marks episode 104. The final episode of this year will be number 120, and I wonder where, or if, it will go on from there.
Jack Bauer,(played by Keifer Sutherland) of course, is the CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) agent, stationed in Los Angeles, who seems to not only not mind breaking the rules in order to accomplish his mission, he appears to relish it. He will engage in coercion and in torture in a heartbeat if it means the difference in the accomplishment of his mission, or for that matter if it means this will speed things up by, oh, say, a second or two.
But in a Jack Bauer mission, of course, every second counts. Hey, remember, he's only got 24 hours in each season, to accomplish such feats as:
* Prevent the assassination of a candidate for President of the United States (Season One)
*Prevent a nuclear bomb from exploding somewhere in Los Angeles (Season Two)
*Prevent Mexican drug lords from selling a bio-terrorism virus to a terrorist group (Season Three)
*Prevent the televised execution by terrorists of the Secretary of State, prevent the meltdown by way of sabotage by terrorists of a dozen nuclear plants, and then prevent the launching of a nuclear missile (A particularly busy season four which also saw the shows second President shot down out of the sky by a traitorous military pilot flying a stealth bomber).
Now, in season five, which opened with the assassination of the shows first and then former President, David Palmer (yes, the same David Palmer whom Jack went to all that damn trouble in season one to save), Jack has come out of hiding (he had been forced to assume a new identity to prevent his being handed over to the angry Chinese government for a staged attack on their embassy-long story) in order to prevent the release of a dozen chemical weapons cannisters which had been stored in an airort in Los Angeles, and then hijacked, and will be released in a dozen different locations of highly populated areas. The potential fatalities could well exceed over one hundred thousand people, we are told.
Originally, these cannisters were to be delivered to Russia, to aid a seperatist terrorist movement in their ogoing struggle with the Russian governemnt. But since they were betrayed by the current Presidents Chief of Staff-he had intended to detonate the weapons on them after they had been delivered to them, (in a wild plot which would have enabled the U.S. to secure a military presence in Central Asia, and thus secured for the U.S. a large and steady oil supply) they have now decided to take revenge on the American government by releasing the cannisters here.
Once he had found out the Chief of Staff, Walt Cumings, had been involved in this plot, as well as the assassination of David Palmer (who had somehow found out about it), Jack did what jack does best. Disabling the terrified Cummings, in the presence of the President himself, who was prevented from protecting him by a particularly patriotic Secret Service agent, Jack threatened to cut out first one eyeball, and then another eyeball, and he would, he promised, keep cutting until he found out what he wanted to know. And he meant it, and was just about to go through with it,when Cummings relented.
This is standard Jack Bauer fare. It is nothing unusual for him to oversee the attachment of electrodes, or the administering of a neurotoxin by way of injection into an artery of the neck which causes severe pain. In one episode he threatened a captured terrorist, during the course of interrogation, with his entire family, his wife and children, being shot, and even set it up so that it appearred that one of his sons was executed as he watched it live by way of satellite feed.
In last weeks episode, when attempting to interrogate a particularly uncooperative suspect, he intimated, "you don't want to go down this road with me."
So imagine my agitation, my consternation, when this hard-boiled, embitterred agent took the time to save the life of an adolescent girl, at significant risk to his own life. He had taken off the gas mask he had been wearing in order to prevent the girl from further breathing in the nerve gas which had just been released, as a test, in a busy Los Angeles mall. This, of course, put his own person in danger of exposure to the gases, and of course he should have known if that had happenned, the nation would have been short a valuable, perhaps an irreplaceable agent in the war on terrorism. But he did it anyway. What gives?
Okay, yes, it was the decent thing to do, and I like to think I would have done it myself. (On the other hand, I know good and damn well I wouldn't have). But the point is, why was this even put in the show? Was it realy necessary? Do we need a reminder that Jack has a "human" side? Hell, the man has saved America four seasons in a row, is well on his way to saving it a fifth time, at considerable risk, to say nothing of extraordinary self-sacrifice, to himself. Yet, he still keeps plucking along, despite the fact that the current President, Logan, whose hide he stands to save by this, is the very President who was willing to throw him to the wolves, and in the end okayed his assassination in order to keep peace with the Chinese and insure his own political standing as president. Yet, Jack Bauer has thrown himself back into the battle for his country, without a second thought, and with no complaint.
Well,okay,maybe he does need something to make him look human. But this?
I think this has as much to do with the Ultra Left peace and love crowd, more than anything. As an aside, I refuse to call them "Liberals" anymore. These people would ruin a wet dream. These are the same people that used to demand that any group of people should include at least one black. Now, they insist there should be one Hispaniic, and one Oriental, etc. Nothing against these folks, but is it really necessary, any time you see a specific number of peopel gathered together, that a percentage of them be a minority? Every damn time?
These are the same people who also ruined the classic television Western dramas. They were, "too violent", they used to whine. And so the American Western died with it's boots on. Every now and then, an attempt is made at a revival, but there is seldom any real violent fare one usually associates with the Western lifestyle. Now, they are more like the Waltons on horseback, are particularly family oriented, suppossedly emphasize plot, character, and storyline as oppossed to range wars and gunfights, and usually, after the first few episodes, you've seen enough. They do good enough at times to warrant an extended run, though are seldom in the top ten of the Nielson ratings, at least not for very long, and eventually die, albeit sometimes a long, slow death. They are boring.
But they help make the feel good crowd, well, feel good. They are suppossedly good family fare, and set good examples for "the children". Of course, they never explain to you just why we can't have both. After all, there are other kinds of shows on television that portray violence, and sexually oriented material, and the Far Right is rightly lambasted for wanting to censor these, but one does wonder why the peace and love sissies-er, excuse me, I meant to say sixties- ressurrectionists don't join in with them on this.
Of course, these people are hypocrits. It's not the violence they object to so much as the perspective. They dislike the portrayal of American history in anything that might promote it as a heroic era. This includes the era of the American West. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a group of neighborhood children playing "cowboys and Indians". Or "cops and robbers". Or, "Army". You probably don't. The peace and love crowd dislikes violence, and to tell you the truth, they dislike America. Certainly not the violent aspects of it. And that's their right, I guess, to not like it, but it's not their right to criticize it on the one hand, and at the same time try to change history. The American West, for example, was what it was, good and bad. It wasn't always "Little House On The Prairie". Let's see history portrayed as it was, at least when it's well past the young'uns bedtime. If you don't want them to play "Cowboys and Indians", hell, buy 'em Barbie dolls, and make them go to bed at nine o'clock.
And another thing, next football season, I goddamned sure had better, at the approach of the last two minutes of any given game I watch, hear the announcemnt of "Sudden Death"-not "Two Minute Warning". We're watching a goddamned football game, not cooking a fucking soft-boiled egg.
And finally-stop trying to tinker with Jack Bauer. Got it? Just because you read something by Craig Crawford referring to President George Bush as "the Jack Bauer President", doesn't mean you should suddenly conduct intervention on one of my favorite shows. Got it? Understand? If not, let me speak as plainly as I know how-
You don't want to go down this road with me.
