24’s Season 5 Body Count
Here are the numbers from tonight’s episode of 24 (these may not be wholly accurate- I didn’t keep an exact tally. Feel free to make corrections in the comments):
-Number of beloved characters who got knocked off: 2 (and Tony’s not lookin’ so hot)
-Number of people killed by Jack: 4
-Number of people tortured by Jack: 0 (although he came damn close with that baggage handler!)
-Number of government agents that got the crap kicked out of them by Jack: 3
-Number of suspects who committed suicide before talking: 1
All in all, a good start to the new season. I’m disappointed Jack didn’t torture more people or beat the crap out of his CTU colleagues. Also, it’s clear that Derek is the new version of Kim- i.e. the dopey adolescent that does nothing but act stupid and get himself kidnapped.
UPDATE: Here’s RightWingNutHouse’s take on Jack Bauer :
Of course, Bauer doesn’t stretch the Constitution. He shatters it into a million pieces. But the questions raised by Bauer’s actions are legitimate. How far do we go in protecting the country? The tension between protecting civil liberties and protecting the homeland will always be with us as long as there is freedom in America. And for that, we can be thankful that there are people like Jack Bauer somewhere out there who are protecting us. They probably will not utilize his methods. But we hope they have his determination and will to win when it comes to foiling the plots of our enemies.
Torn as America is between getting the job done at all costs while upholding American ideals, Jack simply can’t help himself. He necessarily sees the world in stark relief, a place populated by some really nasty thugs who don’t even blink at the idea of murdering hundreds of thousands of people. We recoil at some of Jack’s tactics. But we recognize that Jack is the guy doing what needs to be done to keep us safe. This makes Jack Bauer the perfect hero in a post 9/11 America. He doesn’t engage in any kind of self destructive hand wringing about not being able to do anything about the threat. His doubts – if he has any – have been left on the cutting room floor. He sacrifices his personal life for the greater good. In this respect, he is a true patriot.
He’s also a fictional character in an escapist action show. I don’t glean any more wisdom from him than I do from Cory on That’s So Raven.
Look, I love Jack as much as the next guy. But were Jack Bauer a real human being, he’d be considered a bloody psychopath. Actual counterterrorism agents simply cannot do the stuff he does. How many times has Jack punched out and/or shot his superiors without facing any goddamn consequences? How many times has he used torture as a first resort? If a real CIA agent did that, he’d be a fucking jail. In the same vein, if any woman tried to pick up men using the same techniques that Meg Ryan used in Sleepless in Seattle, she wouldn’t be considered romantic- she’d be considered a stalker. Let’s keep in mind that we’re watching fiction here, people.
Some of us are on the west coast! Shhhhh!!!
RSS should allow people to put “spoiler” warnings on posts…
Oh, for fuck’s… I’ll wait longer next time, OK? 🙂
Nah, I’m kiddin’. I’m watching The West Wing anyway. 🙂
I scoff at the West Wing. Does the West Wing featured Kiefer Sutherland almost-torturing baggage attendant terrorists? I. Think. Not.
No. Well… no. But! One time Bartlet smoked a cigarette in the National Cathedral, so that was fun.
24 is teh shiznit- and if our terrorists actually operated that way (in massive government-infiltrated conspiricies), I might actually consider such real-life action reasonably acceptable. Cuz, you know, we’d actually be in danger of having our government destroyed and population killed in large chunks on a fairly consistant basis. Our problem is purely based on isolated acts of war by a foriegn organization with little to no infiltration of the Governmental services.
There is not a clear and present danger to the continued existance of the nation. Certainly our terrorism problems are not good, but nor are anywhere near the severity portrayed in 24 (a fictional circumstance).
Since the circumstances don’t come close… well,
hypotheticals are nice, but until you can prove that our problems are of such magnitude no dice, wingnuts.
If I might expound on “Might”- I cannot speak to my feelings in such extreme hypothetical circumstances, so to make any definitive statement either way would be intellectually dishonest of me.
Certainly our terrorism problems are not good, but nor are anywhere near the severity portrayed in 24 (a fictional circumstance).
What, you don’t think Laura Bush is in cahoots with Serbian assassins? 😉
I heard Jonah Goldberg’s climax all the way over here in Austin when he SPOILER ALERT killed the guy who I MEAN IT SPOILER ALERT killed ex-President Palmer.
Okay, I haven’t watched this show in a few seasons now, and I’m still in the middle, but did they choose the actress that plays Chloe specifically for her ability to look both angrily competent and scared shitless at the same time?
I mean, seriously, I don’t know how she does it.
*the middle of tonights two-parter, that is.
Brief trivia: Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe) was in the first two seasons of Mr. Show. She was also hilarious in The Larry Sanders Show. An inspired bit of casting for the 24 folks.
“a place populated by some really nasty thugs who don’t even blink at the idea of murdering hundreds of thousands of people.”
Cleverly, some of those thugs have learned not to keep track of how many thousands of people they have ‘murdered’. Plausible deniability!
What, you don’t think Laura Bush is in cahoots with Serbian assassins? 😉
Only on weekends…
My partner watches 24 loudly in the other room while I’m trying to quietly have a migraine in mine.
(Disclaimer: I find the show nauseating on a number of levels, but then Lethal Weapon made me ill, too.)
I’d rather see Mr Sutherland in a story called The Lost Bay Boys which would center around a group of fishermen, all of whom are unemployed, that become vampires. We’re not exactly sure yet how they become vampires, but they do. It’d be basically a group of good-looking guys. Kiefer would play a character whose name was Dylan, who is also a waiter, and, oh, every week they’d blow something up, a few buildings, a car here and there.
I think it’d be terribly exciting.*
* program title and description taken from television-industry satire Made in Canada, which you’ve never seen, because you’re convinced Canadian TV is all Hockey Night and educational shorts about beavers.
No, Sidhe, the reason we don’t see Canadian TV down on this side of the border is because Canadians are Communists, albeit mightily polite Communists – and the gubmint don’t allow the import of Communism into America. It might taint our precious bodily fluids.
“Let’s keep in mind that we’re watching fiction here, people.”
You forgot “poorly written, and acted” in that sentence.
Okay, dammit. I realized something late last night, and now I’m angry: I was sucked into 24 again but they let me down.
***TiVo? SPOILERS***
If baggage handler man was willing to take a cyanide pill rather than talk to Jack – why did the GUY WHO KILLED PALMER want to go to a hospital badly enough to talk?!?!??!
You’d think the assassin himself would pretty much know that if he goes to the hospital, he’s up for the needle anyway, not to mention retribution from his colleagues – and yet some dude who works in an airport takes the black capsule right away?
Damnit.
If baggage handler man was willing to take a cyanide pill rather than talk to Jack – why did the GUY WHO KILLED PALMER want to go to a hospital badly enough to talk?!?!??!
Because they needed JAck to learn why he killed Palmer?
But yeah, it’s a fair point. Idiot assassins.
Plot trumps reality…
It is with great difficulty that I resist some sort of lewd joke about precious bodily fluids and Rick Mercer.
Anyway, my cable company loves me enough to give me CBC. (Well, not *give*….)
I figure it makes up for the four years of my life during the first Bush administration that my cable company wouldn’t let me have Comedy Central *or* the SciFi Channel.
(Also I now get two PBS channels. Talk about commie-coddling!)
Huh- I get two PBS channels as well (Illinois and Iowa) and Comedy Central and SciFi and both C-SPANs, plus a bunch of other crap (GameShowNetwork, that NASA channel).
Makes my Room costs totally almost worth the 2000 I’m paying to live in this damned crackerbox.
He kills 4 men and beats 3 all within the confines of one hour? How does one keep the willing suspension of disbelief needed for this ridiculous fiction?
“And for that, we can be thankful that there are people like Jack Bauer somewhere out there who are protecting us.”
Somebody is having trouble distinguishing between TV and real life. In real life the people with Jack Bauer’s mission sometimes shoot missiles where there was supposed to be a terrorist leader, but actually kill only a couple of his subordinates and innocent men, women and children.
http://tinyurl.com/e49d3
I don’t watch 24, so I don’t know if Jack Bauer agrees that it’s worth killing any number of innocent foreigners in the name of “protecting” Americans, even if it turns out not to protect them.
http://www.foxtrot.com/
And for that, we can be thankful that there are people like Jack Bauer somewhere out there who are protecting us.
How true that is. Why, if not for the efforts of fictional characters in a TV show, I would not feel safe sleeping in my own bed, much less outside! Thanks, TV heroes!
To be fair, punkinsmom, it was in two hours, not one.
Maybe the baggage claim guy was a more central villian. That is, he was committed to the cause and not just an independent contracter like the Palmer assassin. Come to think of it, the very fact that he had a suicide pill probably supports my theory even more (why leave open the option of suicide if all you care about is money?).
Pfft.
The only show on TV is Lost.
Lost has it’s moments, but is nothing suspense-wise compared to 24, and falls off the scale of acting and storytelling completely when compared to Battlestar Galactica.