Entry 6

Yo!

Okay, first of all, I want to correct something I found out about recently that goes against a recent Blog post of mine. Last week, I mentioned that "a couple weeks from now", the company doing the English voiceover dubs of Pokemon will be replacing all the voice actors with new soundalikes, because the 4Kids Entertainment guys are going to hand over total operation of the show to the guys handling... well, pretty much everything else Pokemon, The Pokemon Company (yes, that's seriously their name), but more specifically, Pokemon USA. I found out that they're going to let the current season ("Pokemon: Advanced Battle") run its course, thumb-tack the 10th anniversary special probably somewhere around the middle of the summer season, and then clean house with the recastings when season 9 starts in September. Yeah. They're not even at season 9 yet, but they're going to air the 10th anniversary special anyway. People! It's horse, THEN cart!!!! Well, in any case, I just had to correct myself there with the slight fact inaccuracy of the real timeframe for the voice recasting. That was terrible blogsmanship on my part, and I apologize. I really have to do a better fact-checking job before I post on here.

Now that that's out of the way, this week, I want to talk about the Fox action-drama show 24. I personally didn't start getting into this show until the start of season 2 back in 2002, but I did get season 1 on DVD a while back, just to bone up. It's since been sold at GameStop for store credit building up to a GameCube Action Replay code system, but that's beside the point. For those who don't know, 24 is one of those shows that's so out-there, it practically makes its own genre. These days, I guarantee you, you can't find a simple split-screen milti camera sequence without thinking of 24, even if it's not on television. That 2003 Hulk movie is a perfect example of how that stuff is used on the big screen, but even other networks manage to borrow that same visual style and still pull off the same dramatic effect. Denis Leary's FX show "Rescue Me", another great example. Sorely lacking in orange ticking clocks right before the commercials, though. Anyway, 24 is the story of this on-again, off-again government agent named Jack Bauer, who has 24 hours to stop various ripped-from-headlines national security threats, from presidential assassination plots and bioterrorism, to nuclear bombs and the good old fashioned wife-and-daughter kidnapping.

The thing is, everything, all 24 hours of the day, happens in real time (factoring in commercials), and is shown hour-by-hour over the course of a single season. This means, except for that one time in season 3, (and that episode from a couple weeks back), you never see anyone even walk NEAR a bathroom. Sure, the producers and writers make excuses, like "well, the characters take care of that stuff during their non-onscreen time or the commercials", but come on. Let's be Simon Cowell honest for a second here. Hey, Counter-Terrorist Unit agents!! Suggestion 1: Take that Aquafina commercial announcer's advice for once and drink more water. Suggestion 2: Metamucil. It's pretty obvious to anyone who really pays attention to the goings-on with this show that Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park is more regular than these guys. But I guess I'd have to be scared (literally) $#@%less too after enduring what these people go through apparently every 18 months on the dot (that's the time gap between all seasons, except 2 and 3. There was a 24 video game for Playstation 2 that released recently that took care of that 3-year gap by slicing it in half and doing a story that perfectly fits in with the usual 18-month gap structure).

In January, Fox started season 5. I'm not going to spoil anything here, you'll just have to get the DVDs to catch up (all 4 previous seasons are out now). But I will say this: Apparently, (the OTHER) "Jacko" will live to see a few more bathroomless days, since Fox just renewed 24 for another 3 seasons, meaning the show will continue at least until summer 2009, plus, a script for a 24 movie is in the works right now. Seriously. You know, if they really wanted to keep things realistic, they'd get Ford to do some more serious sponsorship going to run the 9-10pm episodes commercial-free every year, because that's the show's usual timeslot (except for the last 2 episodes of the season, which they always run back-to-back the same night, starting at 8). I believe they only did this with the season 2 and 3 premieres and all the finales, but it'd really amp things up (for me, at least) to see things LITERALLY happening in really-real-time. But, on second thought, I guess it'd get stupid quick, having every single CTU vehicle, terrorist car, bombed car, bystander vehicle, Jack's civilian ride, and the president's limousine all be Tauruses or Expeditions. But that's just me. Later.

-D.