24 BLOGGING….A few days ago Jim Henley said he was giving up on 24:
Watched 24 last night. Not watching tonight. It was bad. Last season was bad too, but last season was resonant bad. It was bad in a culturally interesting way. Its badness had a lot to say about kinks in the post-9/11 American psyche. It was martyr-complex bad and torture-justifyin? bad and bluster/blubber bad in addition to its esthetic failures.
This time around all we have are the esthetic failures….
I think Jim is missing a bet. In seasons 1 and 2 we watched in order to find out just how comically farfetched the “Kim in peril” scenes could get. Last season we were spellbound by the bizarre and ultimately unfathomable torture fest. This season we have….
No, not datamining, although we do have that. What we have this season is President Charles Logan, possibly the most worthless excuse for a fictional leader of the free world ever. Just how much of dink will they make him into? Will he eventually panic and order the assassination of Jack Bauer? Start rolling around on the floor and chewing the carpet? Or will the scriptwriters chicken out and allow him to redeem himself with some unexpected act of moral bravery at the end?
That’s what makes this season worth watching: basking in the utter worthlessness and steady emotional deterioration ? on Fox! ? of Republican President Charles Logan.
