WSJ: 24

As it happens, I have been doing the same thing as Dorothy, namely watching Seasons 4 and 5 of that show. Unlike Dorothy, I watched the show in High Definition, something that had been lost to Dorothy, since she relied on an old DVD technology. The show is addictive, and has to be watched to be believed. The last season began to annoy me more than entertain. The endless "Are you sure?", "Oh my god, Jack!" and "I'll use VPN on a subnet" wore out my patience. The other big problem with the show is the lack of acting talent, so that any time a "real" actor like Season 4's Shohreh Aghdashloo or 5's Jean Smart shows up they immediately put everyone else at a disadvantage. The writing for these actresses did not give them much to work with, but the real acting does not need much. For the rest of the crew, the moral problems seem to be centered around "life of someone in my family vs. the rest of the nation". Strangely enough, only Jack makes the "right" decision. Everyone else says "don't kill me" and then proceeds to do eagerly what the terrorists ask them to do. One, only man so far has made the choice as Jack would do it.
Yes, I do, really, really do want Jack's cell phone coverage and his batteries. They are amazing. Have you seen John McCain's cameo? Fantastic!


By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
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The News That Fox's "24" led all other series in Emmy nominations could not have surprised the multitudes still captive to its hypnotic powers. For regular viewers (it's been five years since Jack Bauer and his counter-terror unit first hit the screen), the entire business of awards and nominations is very much beside the point -- which is to miss no hour of the brew of triumphs and calamities that is life at CTU in Los Angeles -- though Emmy talk may serve as a reminder that this hour that has its fans by the throat week after week is, after all, a show-business enterprise.
Not that it would make a difference. The willing suspension of disbelief that Kiefer Sutherland's fabulous Bauer and his impossible exploits continue to win from audiences may well have no match in television history -- a fact that has more than a little to do with today's real-world history of terrorist depredations and jihadist threats, as everyone, those viewers included, knows. It is, for huge numbers of them, the point of the show. Every time the otherwise tender-hearted hero of "24" slices a terrorist up, mashes the knee of a wounded plotter, or worse, in order to extort information about an imminent attack that could destroy the lives of Americans by the millions -- that is the point. Let someone else call the ACLU or Amnesty International.
In Season Four, which boasts the sharpest writing in the series, someone does make such a call. That someone being, deliciously enough, the chief terrorist, Marwan (played flawlessly by Arnold Vosloo), whose long-nurtured plans to launch a nuclear strike on American soil are about to be realized when he learns that someone involved in the plot has been taken into custody -- and that secrets will be forced from him that will undo everything. Reaching for his cellphone, Marwan crisply orders someone to "Call Global Amnesty. Tell them an innocent man is being tortured at CTU headquarters in Los Angeles."
No one needs subtitles to grasp the real-world suggestiveness of the scene in which a "Global Amnesty" -- read Amnesty International -- lawyer walks in with a marshal and a judge's order, stops the questioning and gets the subject released -- not before delivering a mini-lecture on human rights. The only man with information that can avert the nuclear strike is being marched off to freedom -- not that the insubordinate Bauer is about to allow it, as the graphic scene, in which he extracts the information in the front seat of a car, soon makes clear.
Much else about the series, including its addictive quality, can become clear in a remarkably short time. This I discovered when I set about catching up with all of the episodes -- an undertaking inspired, a few months ago, by the sight of two colleagues who raced from their cubicles one day to hold forth about "24": a series I'd seen only in bits and pieces. Here, I had to note, were two calm, serious men not given to intense talk about television offering urgent advice. "You have to see it. And keep your eyes on the screen. Don't think you can run to the kitchen for a minute. It moves too fast -- you'll miss five developments."
Full-Voltage Shocks
So it happened that I watched, over the past 5½ months, every episode of "24" ever shown, abetted by the packs of DVDs that made it possible to get through a season in a few days and maybe one weekend bender. Not that one felt any wish to rush through them. Production values this impeccable, suspense more reliable, even, than in "The Sopranos," don't come along every day. Best of all in the suspense department, and it's a rarity, nothing ever telegraphs "24"'s shocks -- its unmasking of traitors and moles, its Byzantine plot turns. All arrive at full voltage.
A good thing, too, since the series is not without its absurd elements, which have to do, invariably, with relationship troubles. Seldom can we find Bauer rushing to a helicopter or a CTU vehicle, calamity being only minutes away, without interruption via a cellphone from one or another of the extraordinarily vapid women in his life, none more irritating than daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), a character who has, it's reported, inspired hopes in more than a few "24" fans that someone take her out, and soon. The strong and interesting women in the show tend to be, mainly, treacherous vipers of one kind or another, among them President David Palmer's scheming wife, Sherry (Penny Johnson Jerald) -- other than, of course, the beloved, chronically dyspeptic Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub), a character whose name recognition is by now global.
It is worth noting, too, that the just-completed Season Five has gone somewhat awry. This was largely the result of the writers' focus on a corrupt and treacherous new U.S. president, Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) -- a slack-jawed opportunist intended as a Nixon look-alike -- and his befuddled, if vaguely principled wife, Martha (Jean Smart). She's meant to remind us -- this is not subtle -- of Martha Mitchell (wife of Attorney General John Mitchell), whose reported threats to expose Nixon's Watergate secrets became something of a problem for that White House.
Monsters and Thugs
As it turned out, the show's writers, who had had no problem, earlier, creating entirely believable American leaders, models of honor and decency -- take that heroic specimen, President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) -- seem to have fallen on hard times in Season Five. Something, it seems -- some sound aversion to the perverse, perhaps -- had dried the imaginative juices, undermined their capacity to fashion credible characters out of the monsters and thugs they had conceived of, now the new leadership in the White House: among them, an American president who joins in a terror plot against his own nation, who approves the assassination of a former president, whose White House is a nest of traitors and rogue-army assassinators.
How much easier to have conceived of steadfast, unfailingly respectful Jack Bauer, a magical character Kiefer Sutherland inhabits with improbable naturalness. When the script calls on him to say "I'd give my life for you, Mr. President," we can believe him. Twentieth Century Fox doesn't need convincing -- it has given Mr. Sutherland a $30 million contract for the next three years of "24."