Entry 39: "24 Hour Pernicious People"

Yo!

Finally, the series that Kiefer Sutherland built is back in action this week, bringing us 24 fans another thrillingly bad day in the life of Jack Bauer. Season Six started last night, and part two of the premiere is airing literally right now (East Coast time) on whatever your Fox affiliate is, but even having seen only the first two hours of this latest day, I've noticed a couple things I feel I must talk about this week.

Obviously, this series is best known for its political undertones and topical references to then-front-page current events in world affairs, starting with season two's nuclear bomb. Three was the bioterrorism season, four was the holy-crap-what's-gonna-get-blown-up-next by Imhotep from The Mummy season, and five was the "Who really killed the President?"/"How do we stop the Russians?" season. This year is all about a bunch-- a BIG bunch-- of Arab-led terrorist attacks, and the return of a shaky, tense, and almost unexplainably physically battered Bauer. See, at the end of last season, Bauer was abducted by some Chinese agents working for their government, out for revenge after Bauer led an attack on... I think it was their Embassy back in season four. In fact, the last scene of the season was Bauer getting tortured on this big boat en route to parts unknown and--- oh, HOLY CRAP!!! The local Fox station's audio cut out again!!! For the second time tonight!!!!!!! For some reason, this never happens during the significantly less popular shows on this channel (cough, Trading Spouses).... Hope those Peer-to-Peer users get this episode up soon... Before iTunes tempts me with $1.99/episode. Anyway, also this year, the dead President Palmer's brother is now the President, and you can count the number of returning regular cast members on one hand, give or take a finger or two, since almost all of them died or were written out last year.

...But getting to the two things worth mentioning... Thing one, as I said, this season is VERY Arab-heavy. In fact, one of the subplots this year involves this Arab teenager freaking out after his dad's arrested by the FBI for reasons unknown, and getting roughed up by a paranoid neighbor when the teen's actually one of the terrorists, and he winds up taking over his best friend's family's household because they know too much about his first murder, the paranoid neighbor, and the still as-yet undiscovered big plan. Putting aside the fact that this family's being held hostage by Taj from National Lampoon's Van Wilder, this year's actually shaping up to be pretty good. The problem I see lies with the way that the aforementioned side story was executed. It makes sense from a realistic standpoint, in that if this were to happen, this is how it would probably go down, but this can't be taken too well by the Arab community who were up in arms during season four's airing over the fact that all Arabs on the show happen to be terrorists. The writers tried to mix it up this year by making one of them good, but only after introducing the character as a terrorist. And frankly, as a regular fan, I'm not sure about this guy's good-guy status, and if you saw the way he out-interrogated Bauer last night (Well, it's okay. I'm sure the guy wasn't using that kneecap much anyway), you might understand why I'm a bit concerned about what this guy will bring to the story long-term. I mean, this is 24 we're talking about. This could be another Nina Myers we're dealing with here. Guess old habits die hard, huh, writers?

Thing number two, Bauer's really beaten down now, after everything that's happened over the last five days/seasons, plus the twenty months of Chinese torture, and now I just saw a promo that actually has the guy saying he can't do this anymore..... and the promo ended with an announcement of a supposedly super-SUPER shocking ending to the premiere tonight. Well, that narrows things down nicely for us. Yeah, if we can figure out for ourselves that the main character is literally hours away from being written out somehow, and you practically tell us upfront with that kind of promo ad who just might be the first main character to go this year.... it's just not that shocking, Fox. Sorry, it's just not.

Wrapping up with the Bottom Line, I must say this Arab-heavy storyline is an extremely risky path for the writers to take, especially about two weeks or so after Saddam Hussein's execution and the sudden over-focus from other bloggers, the liberal media, and most of the general public on going after Osama bin Laden now that the Bush administration's prize distraction is history-- FINALLY! Fox just got the audio back on 24!!!!!! Okay, I gotta go now and brace for this ultimate cliffhanger at 9:55. Um..... quickly ending, I apologize for that brief snippet of politics I had to include, but that was hard to avoid completely with this topic. My regular readers know I deliberately try to avoid politics here normally, but hopefully you get my point here: Unfortunately, this season of 24 can only go down from here.

.....But that's just me.

Comments are always welcome..... Let's get some discussion going......

-D.