June 13, 2005
The Weekend of 24
When feeling bored late Saturday afternoon, I decided to watch the first episode of the first season of 24. After watching eight consecutive episodes, I decided to ease my sudden addiction by getting some sleep. When I awoke this morning, I felt a strange desire to continue the streak. So, here I am, after sitting through the rest of season one. After sitting through what I'll call the "jump the shark" episodes, mainly the ones where Teri suffers amnesia, I'd have to say that I enjoy how they handled the ending. The thing that bothers me about most good versus bad stories is the complete victory of one side. What makes great movies/tv series is when the perceived victory is achieved only with substantial loss. This is what makes Empire Strikes Back such a great movie. Sure, Luke and Leia are reunited, but at what price? In 24, the enemies had a hard list of 4 targets (the case could be argued for 7, but I'll leave it at that). Going in to the last episode, all of those targets were still alive. It appeared we were headed for our textbook ending. How wrong I was. How happy I am.
During the course of watching today, I kept wondering why female characters in the show were always the cause of dramatic plot development. Specifically, some stereotypical portrayals of women directly caused some dramatic plot developments. The first I noticed was when Teri got lost in the woods escaping the terrorist cell's camp. This was clearly a reference to the stereotypical belief that women can't navigate. A few episodes later, Teri again nearly causes her daughter to die when she parks her car on the edge of cliff. This time, it is a reference to women not knowing how to drive. The amnesia that follows was the most dull plot development in the series. I can only suspect that the writers initially killed her off when the assassin was driving back up the street, but later decided to keep her in because a larger than expected female audience had tuned in to watch the show. When I watched that episode, I thought to myself that there was no way she was getting out of it alive. The daughter I knew would survive the crash. That would have been the irony in the situation. The daughter couldn't die, because Jack apparently loved his daughter more than his wife and this love would somehow set up a dramatic showdown between good and evil. But anyway, I digress from the initial point I was trying to make. Or maybe not. On second thought, perhaps Teri's shortcomings just set us up to not mourn her death which finally came at the end of the final episode. Kudos to the producers for not showing her being shot. Us knowing that fact would have changed the way we felt about Jack wanting to kill Nina at the end of the episode. It goes without saying that had Jack known he would have pulled the trigger.
In all, I was pretty satisfied with the series. Few things can captivate my attention for time periods of this length. To be honest, I am surprised that a television show did just that, especially in a day and age where 95% of what is on television, on the big screen, or streaming over the radio is pure crap. I can't wait to start watching season 2. Hopefully, I won't be addicted to it as much as the first. Just in case, I think I may warn Alison about it before I start. Maybe she'll like it and I'll be "forced" to watch it with her. That situation intrinsically limits watching countless hours of 24. Oh, and for the record, "forced" means that I will chose to wait and watch episodes with her because I would feel guilty if I "cheated" and watched episodes without her, spoiling the surprise when we watch them together.
Enough of this rant. It is 12:45 and I have to be at work in the morning. At least I sleep in peace tonight knowing what happened. Hopefully I can keep season 2 at bay. I'm a busy man-- I'll find something to do.
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