Jack is Dumb

The week M-N was having baby #1, I had borrowed the dvd set of "24" season 1 from someone at BN. I borrowed it from an incredibly nice woman who was a mother, a liberal Democrat, and she watched the show with her family. I found that weird. She did, too.

It's a silly show. It's a mixture of soap opera, brainless action, right-wing propaganda, conspiracy-theorist propaganda, and kiefer sutherland's school of bad anger management.

I watched all of season 1, though. And watched some of season 4 on tv. Last night, I watched about an hour and a half of season 6. The problem is (or, one of the problems is) that it's a never-ending series of the exact same scenario. There are terrorists and double agents and senseless, violent killings and torture and jack bauer yelling, ad infinitum.

If this was an action movie, it would fail. In fact, it was an action movie, with Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken, called "Nick of Time." It was the exact same premise: Walken kidnapped Depp's daughter and threatened to kill her unless Depp assassinated a presidential candidate. That was the plot of about 4 seasons of 24. And like 24, Nick of Time was done in real time, an interesting but ultimately hollow gimmick.

The ticking clock sucks me in, but I finally realized the way out. Last night, I turned off the tv with 20 minutes left. One plot had been resolved, and I knew the rest of the show would be a build-up to a cliff-hanger. (I checked televisionwithoutpity.com, and it was: apparently, I missed one major character being killed by Jack plus a nuclear bomb going off in LA.)

Since I didn't watch, I feel no need to keep watching.