Category: Television

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’24’: Week in Review

So, Jack Bauer, America’s rogue agent for life, appears to have foiled the terrorist mastermind Marwan and averted 99.some percent of the nuclear catastrophes facing the United States (104 nuclear plants could have melted down, but just one did). Earlier in the day, he easily solved the kidnapping of the secretary of defense and his daughter (Jack’s girlfriend) and wiped out the terrorist contingent that was going to try the secretary live on the Internet for war crimes. Plus, he rehabilitated his disgraced former partner, Cubs’ fan Tony Almeida, and staged a convenience store as a diversion, ran out of ammo during another shootout with bad guys, tortured his girlfriend’s soon-to-be-former husband, and captured the turncoat who gave the terrorists the “”override device” that made it possible to take over the nation’s nuclear plants. Jack did all that in eleven hours. Which means just one thing: His “day” has another 13 hours to run. So — despite the mopping up that still must be done — capturing Marwan; catching the Turkish terrorist dad, freeing his son, and delivering the mom to the responsible authorities; dealing with a few hundred thousand casualties from the Southern California nuclear plant meltdown — all of the proceedings so far are just an appetizer for some horrific main event.

Guesses, anyone? It looks like the nuclear meltdowns were a diversion themselves. Either that, or they’re not really over. I’m puzzled.

The other question is: What purpose is served by the absurd subplot involving the Counterterrorism Unit station chief, the stoic but bitchy Erin Driscoll, and her schizophrenic daughter, Maya? Last night, Maya committed suicide, thus sparing viewers her continued histrionics.

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TV Is Very, Very Bad

Television will rot your mind. Really it will. I say that knowing that it’s too late for me. But go on — save yourself.

With that public-service message out of the way, let me just say that life has finally regained a bit of its equilibrium. I’m working some, everyone in the family is healthy and happy as can be expected in the age of Bush, the Sequel, and the new season of “Survivor” has begun.

This installment is set in Palau. The producers are playing up the area’s heritage as scene of a bitter struggle between the United States and Japan during world War II — including a long, savage and perhaps needless battle on the island of Peleliu (the subject of Eugene B. Sledge’s memorable “With the Old Breed“). Lots of striking video of shot-down planes and wrecked ships. It’ll be interesting to see whether they talk about how awful the fighting really was. Probably not.

Too early to come to any conclusions about the new crop of people, although the producers did throw in a couple of mean tricks right from the top. They sent 20 people out to the islands instead of the customary 16 (or 18 who have appeared on the last two installments). Then they devised a way to choose up sides after everyone had been there a day or so, with a provision that only 18 of the 20 would get chosen; two people would get sent home right then and there. So, if anyone had been getting on the group’s nerves, they were gone. Of course, there was one middle-aged woman who, apparently to show her individuality and mettle, had shown a predilection for bursting into tuneless, self-composed “Survivor”-related arias. She was eliminated, along with one young guy who just seemed like a cipher. Bye!

An immunity challenge wound up with a third person sent packing. Again, it was a woman who all but campaigned to get voted off by assuming the role of her tribe’s boss. I sympathize. The idea of competing on “Survivor” is actually attractive to me — just for the show biz, not the million bucks. I’m just afraid I’d get spotted as the biggest jerk on Day One and voted off first, too.

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’24’: Week in Review

“24” continues to amaze: In a stunning display of self-discipline, the show’s creators are keeping the soap operatics on the back burner while allowing action to drive the plot. Yes, sometimes the action seems a little heavy on the deus ex machina element (case in point: how in the world did there happen to be a terrorist sniper in place to kill the guy responsible for the nuclear-plant takeovers before he could be questioned?).

But my quibbles aside — and they should be put aside, because we’re talking about a prime-time network action drama here, not a complex entertainment like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” — there’s actually something akin to real tension developing in the story line. One nuclear plant is already melting down and more might do so at any time. We’ve already gotten to see the heroic control-room workers who got radiation-toasted while trying to avert catastrophe. Elsewhere, Jack is getting ready to go mano a mano with the super-nasty Turkish Terrorist Dad, who just offed his credulous pharmacist brother-in-law. The Terrorist Mom, meantime, has let it be known that unless Jack can save her son, the Terrorist Teen, from the very upset Terrorist Dad, she won’t lift a finger to stop the imminent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Mommy dearest!

Other crucial “24” matters:

Best new character: Edgar. He’s a nebbish. He’s a mensch. Never mind the his lisping and whining and Brooklyn mama’s boy exterior. So far, he’s averted the meltdown of 100 nuclear reactors, exposed the enemy mole and tried to abandon his post to rescue his mom from the fallout cloud.

Whatever happened to: Paul, the soon to be ex-husband of Jack’s girlfriend, Audrey. I think he went to the bathroom two episodes ago and hasn’t come out. When he does, get ready for trouble!

Chloe: As a key Jack ally, who can believe she’s really gone for the whole season? Maybe she’ll come back with her baby and they’ll take on the terrorists together, “Lone Wolf and Cub” style.

Intriguing: Erin Driscoll, the putative CTU boss (putative, because it’s clear Jack was, is, and will always be The Man; and if he’s not, there’s always Tony), alternates between something like sensitive nobility (as when she talks Edgar out of his well-meaning but sort of dumb mom rescue), callous cruelty (as when she oversees the torture of one of her employees), and continuing blind stupidity (as when she agrees with a subaltern that they should cover up evidence they helped the enemy mole get a high security clearance). Conclusion: She’s nuts, just like her schizo daughter, Maya.

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’24’: Totally Sensitive

During tonight’s broadcast of “24,” Fox ran a short public-service announcement from Kiefer Sutherland. The message, in essence: ” ’24’ depicts a group of really evil Muslims. But you, Mr. and Mrs. American Television Connoisseur and your extended families, should bear in mind that not all Muslims are bad people. Please keep that in mind as you watch me, as agent Jack Bauer, kick some evil Muslim butt.”

In case you need a translation, that’s America being real sensitive to minority sensibilities. Actually, it should be noted that on tonight’s episode, Kiefer/Jack didn’t confront any evil Muslims directly. But just wait. Their hour of reckoning approaches.

Even more significantly, it should also be noted that Tony Almeida’s Chicago Cubs mug made another appearance on tonight’s show — the first time it has been seen since the first season of “24,” I believe. Unlike its first supporting role, when it likely contained a brewed hot caffeinated beverage, the Cubs mug tonight served as receptacle for a brewed cold alcoholic beverage. Yeah, the actor who plays Tony (Carlos Bernard, aka Carlos Bernard Papierski) is a Chicago-area native who apparently advertises his roots with his Cubs mug. From which he now drinks beer.

(January 15, 2006 update: Tony and the mug are back — check out the details — for the new season.)

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’24’ vs. Reality

The plot line on “24” has made it through its big early twist and is now dealing with the real business at hand. First, an Islamic terrorist group kidnapped the secretary of defense to subject him to a show trial for war crimes; the plan was to execute him live on the Internet. But once and future Counterterrorism Unit station chief Jack Bauer (CTU is like a combo of the FBI and CIA and NSA, except more fashion-conscious, futuristic, and failure-prone than all of the real-life agencies put together) figured out what was going on and terminated the bad Muslims’ plans with extreme prejudice. As the gunplay unfolded and Marine recon forces arrived to mop up, it was clear that everything had all gone a little too easily. Plus, the season still has about 18 episodes to run. So the whole secretary of defense thing was a diversion from the real terrorist scheme. Within minutes, the scriptwriters revealed the real plot: The bad Muslims had figured out a way to take over every nuclear power plant in the United States, more than 100 of them, and cause core meltdowns across the country. Scary!

OK: That’s “24.” Here’s “reality”: Security Focus, a good source on network security issues, ran a story the other day talking about a new initiative from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to implement new safeguards against computer intruders. Just an interesting coincidence. People are talking about it on Slashdot.

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Dick Day

In its role as national arbiter of decency, the Federal Communications Commission declared Monday that it’s mostly all right to describe someone as “a dick” during primetime (it spells out its thinking on dick and other raw broadcast vocabulary in two opinions — here and here as PDF files).

The case, as reported by the Washington Post, is delightful for two reasons. First, it sheds more light on the kind of protests the Parents Television Council — the main engine for broadcast decency complaints to the FCC — is filing. For instance, among the 36 instances of smutty utterings the council pointed to are gems like this:

“ ‘Everwood,’ September 16, 2002, 9 p.m. EST: a character remarks to another: ‘I got this black eye because of you, dick.’

” ‘Fastlane,’ September 18, 2002, 9 p.m. EST: one character threatens another by stating: “…in my next life I’m coming back as a pair of pliers and pull off your nutsack.’ ”

What’s equally amusing, and ironic, is the length to which the Post goes to avoid printing the words that were in the FCC documents. Here’s how the Post gets around saying “dick.”

“It’s generally okay to use a common nickname for “Richard” as an insult on network television, the Federal Communications Commission ruled yesterday, in a denial of several indecency complaints brought to the agency. …

“… A number of the denials focused on the nickname — also a slang term for the male sexual organ — which increasingly is working its way into television scripts.

“For instance, the agency ruled that it was not indecent when, during an Oct. 30, 2002, episode of the WB’s ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ one character says to another: ‘Listen, I know that you’re [upset] at your dad for flaking on you. It doesn’t mean he’s a bad dad, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.’ Prompting another character to say, ‘No, it just means he’s a [nickname/slang term for male sexual organ].’ ”

(Just for the record, the FCC’s opinion shows that the “Dawson’s Creek” character above said “I know that you’re pissed,” not “I know that you’re upset.”)

I’ve been on the other side of this question, editing copy for a daily newspaper audience, enforcing and agreeing with a policy that pretty much kept all vulgar expression out of our copy. But in this instance you have to ask what’s the point?

In this story, the whole point is how a government commission that has been turned into a tribunal on cuss words and risque imagery is arriving at and justifying its decisions to the public and a pressure group. The words involved here — the actual words that prompted complaints, not cutesy/clumsy euphemisms — are of the essence. So why in the world would you keep them out of the story? How can a reader judge whether the parents group is being plain silly or the commission is turning the country over to the porn lords without using the words at issue?

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Revolutions

Finally got around to watching the History Channel’s “French Revolution” documentary. As a general outline of the events, it’s an OK hour and 28 minutes of programming. Yes, it’s history that’s been tarted up with lame live-action voice-over sequences, hundreds of scenes of the guillotine falling (most accompanied by a shot of a blood-like substance spreading on the pavement beneath) and a sometimes ponderous and breathless script (“And then, the sans culottes really got their croissants in an uproar and treated the royal family very rudely” or, “If there was one thing Robespierre couldn’t stand, it was moderates — especially moderates who had bad table manners”).

There was one little detail when the documentary is dealing with the years leading to the revolution (usually with scenes of peasants scrabbling in the snow for branches to gnaw on) that I wonder about. The script says that Louis No. 16 wanted to support the American Revolution largely to settle scores with the British. And to do so, he approved spending 2 billion livres (the scripts says two thousand million, which is the same thing), enough to feed about 7 million of his subjects for a year. The claim is made that the deficit incurred in supporting the Americans eventually bankrupted the French government and threw the national economy into a state of collapse. On one level, what an irony. On another — and I know before I say it the parallel is superficial — what an interesting analogy for our leaders’ apparent willingness to spend whatever it takes in Iraq. You wonder what the ruinous consequences for us could be,

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Revolutionary Advertising

The national edition of The New York Times, the one that lands on the doorstep here in the post-revolutionary community of Berkeley, had an interesting advertising insert Monday morning. It consisted of four broadsheet pages, the first of which appears thus: Big bold type: “For Two Hours It Won’t Kill You To Love The French.” Then there’s a big bold simple picture of a blood-red guillotine against a blue background. Then the type again: “The French Revolution.” It’s a come-on for a History Channel documentary on the subject stated above that showed tonight. That’s striking, or strange, in its own right. But the ad itself is more striking, or stranger, still.

The following three pages outline, in slightly smaller but still bold type an outline of the revolution, starting with the declaration, “You’ll love the French Revolution. It speaks freedom fluently.” The copy, in trying to convey the revolutionary spectacle, achieves outright oddness: “When the prison governor, de Launey, gave the order to fire on them, their rage achieved its full ignition in what is known as the storming of the Bastille.”

The ad copy ends, after explaining that 17.000 French men and women were guillotined in the Terror, by saying: “Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. They’re the 3 most expensive words in French history. And, in any mans [sic] language, you’ll love that the French stood up and, without complaint, paid the price.”

Huh? Paid the price … without complaint? Not to be overly persnickety, this starts to read like something from the George W. Bush press operation, except as well all know that’s not possible because in the Bush universe the French are just one small step above true evildoers. More significant, that little declaration at the end leaves out the little matter of what followed the revolution: Napoleon running amok across sundry exotic destinations in Europe and elsewhere for the nearly two decades. Maybe the show will try to explain how the revolution’s energy was channeled in that direction.

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’24’: The Final Verdict

We finished watching the second two hours of the new “24” (“the most critically acclaimed show on television”) last night. In my expert opinion, the show as written is simply too ludicrous to be saved. The appearance of one after another (after another after another) dumb soap-opera subplots simply overwhelms the alleged main story line and the action attendant thereto.

However, I have to admit some of the plot twists are so mind-bendingly idiotic that they’re entertaining in themselves, and they make you wonder whether the show’s creative geniuses have given up on action and suspense in favor of remaking “Dallas,” only with automatic weapons and mass casualties and bad guys with foreign accents. My favorite subplot so far involves the tight-assed Counterterrorism Unit boss, Erin Driscoll, who gets a call in the midst of a national emergency from her schizophrenic daughter Maya, who is wigging out and refusing to take her meds. She wants Erin to say she loves her, which Erin does with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner facing a firing squad. Minutes later, a neighbor calls to report that Maya has been terrorizing the neighborhood. Erin’s response is to bully a subordinate into waving off the Los Angeles police officers responding to the incident and sending a CTU medical team to deal with Maya instead. As bad as that sounds, it’s actually worse when you factor in the comic-book dialogue and very limited acting skills of all involved.

The question now is whether I’m really done with “24” for the season or whether I’ll respond the way my friend Endo did: “I’m burned out on ’24’ — UNTIL NEXT WEEK!!!”

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’24’

Now back to really important stuff: The season premiere of “24,” Fox’s suspense/thriller/action”extravaganza, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack “Just Do It! Do It Now!” Bauer. (In case you didn’t know, it’s “the most critically acclaimed show on television.” Fox’s announcers kept saying that during the Green Bay-Minnesota playoff game, so it must be true.)

I admit ’24’ used to be a sort of guilty pleasure. The series’ central conceit, that you’re watching the story unfold over the course of a day, and that each episode represents real time, was an attraction at first. Yeah, it was kind of trashy in some ways. The characters’ personal side- and subplots were kind of dumb and not all the acting was great, but hey, it’s network TV and the original story line was engaging enough: a group of mysterious and really nasty people are trying to assassinate a leading presidential candidate on the day of the California primary.

We watched that season. And the second, when the presidential candidate Bauer saved has become president and is confronted by terrorists who try to detonate a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles. And the third, when the same president — by now notorious to regular viewers for letting his loose-cannon wife and other relatives wreak all sorts of outlandish havoc on the Constitution and other innocent bystanders — is confronted by terrorists who threaten to wipe out Los Angeles and probably most of the country by releasing a super-bad germ that makes Ebola look like the sniffles.

Now, you’d never mistake “24” for “Smiley’s People” or “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” Then again, it’s not aspiring to be complex and challenging. It’s a romp. But even on that level, it’s had its problems. The terrorist plots are never intelligible. Bad people are doing bad things, but their motives, aside from wanting to settle scores with Bauer and his pal, the president, are never explored. Meantime, the scriptwriters spend most of their time concocting more and more elaborate woman trouble and political backstabbing for both Jack and the president.

This formula — just enough exotic terrorists vs. good guys action to make you sit still for the parallel soap opera — has been in place since season one. But last season, it went too far. Whenever any of the so-called good guys had a straightforward choice between a sane, common sense action that might keep them out of trouble and one that would bring them one more step toward utter destruction, they always — not sometimes or most of the time, but always — chose the latter. It got to be too much, so manipulative and dumb that we gave up on the show halfway through the season (though we did pick up again in the final couple of episodes just to see how it all came out).

So, where were we tonight when “24,” the most critically acclaimed show on television, began its new season? Not in front of the TV, at first. We got a TiVo digital video recorder, and we started watching about 40 minutes into the two-hour broadcast so we could just jump through the commercials. And what did we see?

It’s disheartening to report that the show didn’t even make it to the first commercial break without introducing its first sappy, predictable romantic subplot or disclosing that CTU, the counterterrorism unit where Jack does his stuff, is supervised by jealous, politically-driven moron who cares more about marking her territory than, gee, stopping a terrorist strike. Another predictable character was present, too: The field agent brought in to replace Jack had “dispensable” written all over him, and sure enough, he was dead by the time the show was off the air.

After saying all that, yeah, I’ll give it another couple hours tomorrow to see how bad it gets.