No, not Syd Casear, but the return of Jack Bauer and the gang at CTU! I've been telling people since the very beginning that this is TV best show since the invention of cable TV networks. Sure, THE WIRE and update of BATTLESTAR GALATTICA and SEINFELD fall within the pantheon of great shows, but they're not as captivating and addictive as "24".
"24" is maybe the most gripping piece of televised drama that we'll ever likely see -- the editing style (which changed the game) and the pulse-pounding storylines were finally reward for an industry-insider award -- The Emmy this past fall. While some people complain about some of the logic in the show, "that's not real", I'm like, "fuck off, it's TV" -- because all that TV has to do is deliver 40 minutes of truthful emotions within in believeable scenes, so if any individual scene bends reality but its emotional core is true... then the scene works, and the show wins (for example car bombs that are wired to the ignition, I was reading up on how that happens, and most of the time the victim survives the actual explosion).
The thing about this scene of Jack Bauer's exploits is that we see a broken man tracking down terrorists under the auspecies of a presidential administration that is ready to suspend civil rights & liberities at a moments notice to get the answers that it wants... which closely resembles what's actually going on in the Dubya Bush administration. You have to love the way a TV show can criticize what's going on within the Beltway, and seem like its grandstanding on a soapbox.
What like so far about the latest daily installment is that Bauer, who was used to using torture to extract information, has been the victim of dehumanizing physical & mental abuse at the hands of the Chinese (before this season began) and he's unable to take on the "mindset" to be an effective counter-terrorist... or at least he's unsure of his abilities... which again makes for fantastic drama. And Bauer is initially released from the Chinese, because he's to be traded for information about an Arab terrorist; Bauer tortured and killed a defecting terrorists brother several years ago and now that dude -- in perfect Arabian mode of eye-for-an-eye -- wants to torture then murder Bauer... however, Bauer does escape.
It's an intersting prospect to consider what would happen if the names and addresses of the Haliburton-hired private contractors who ordered or carried out some of the most heinous toruture for info extraction purposes in Iraq, was leaked to terrorist cells operating here inside the US? It calls into question the concept of War Crimes by private citizens... what's the purview for that?
Anyway, the second part of "24"'s season openner is in about 3 hours, so I gotta get back to rousing the rabble on another subject...
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