"24": Same Stuff, Different Day
Kiefer Sutherland is Back, and So Are Its Usual Cliches
Jan 14, 2009
A new order has replaced the old order at the beginning of the seventh season of the FOX TV series 24, which kicked off its latest adventure with its standard two-night, four-hour premiere Sunday and Monday. Strict adherence to the rule of law is the order of the day in Washington, D.C., and previous violators of said rule of law, like series hero Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), are being put on trial to answer for their crimes. Most importantly, Los Angeles-based CTU has been disbanded, and the FBI has taken over as the country’s main terrorism-curbing organization.
But if there’s one theme that has been running throughout 24 in its six-plus years on the air, it’s the old cliché, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.” Terrorism always remains a threat, political corruption continues to fester, and amidst it all, 24 posits, the new terrorism-combating order, ill-equipped to do whatever may be necessary to get the dirty job done, cannot hold and the old order will eventually have to reassert itself.
Out With the New, In With the Old
This re-establishing of an old order isn’t just a narrative thread, however; it’s a theme that has become genetically encoded into the show’s being. Whether an aspect of the series’ vision or merely a result of commercial considerations (more likely the latter than the former), 24 has, with each passing year since its high-point second season, cast off whatever claims it initially made toward unsettling topical relevance and become a hermetically sealed Sisyphean creative struggle.
Unwilling to change its formula one significant iota, the writers of 24 have, instead, settled on merely trying to pump fresh life into its beyond-shopworn tropes: torture scenes; behind-the-scenes political machinations; pointless office tensions; moles and leaks; and, of course, the endlessly persecuted lone wolf at the center of the maelstrom. None of this has been as genuinely disturbing or thought-provoking as, say, that astonishing Season 2 episode in which Jack dared the unthinkable and faked the execution of a terrorist’s entire family in order to extract needed information. None of the fireworks can be said to refer to any convincing real world anymore; it's all action-movie mechanisms, however energetically delivered. We’ve all gotten wise to the plot turns and twisted morals of this show, so all that’s left is to replay them in different, and increasingly goofier, ways.
Moments of Consequence-free Fun
Thus, the first four hours of the seventh season has graced us with the following delights:
- Jack defending his troublesome past in the presence of dependably stern character actor Kurtwood Smith;
- Carlos Bernard, as Tony Almeida, using this familiar intense whisper in a villainous context, at least until it was revealed that…
- …he is working undercover with old CTU buddies Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) and Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) to try to bring down a ring of corruption in the White House;
- Jack engineering an escape from FBI clutches by steering a car with a hand on the accelerator;
- Chloe duking it out through computers with FBI nerd equivalent Janice (Janeane Garofalo, whose presence on such a right-wing show after her stint on Air America is an amusement all by itself);
- And maybe the biggest fun of all: seeing formerly fresh-faced, straight-arrow FBI agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching) become corrupted by Jack’s baleful influence. From questioning Jack about how far he was willing to go with a pen in a subject’s eye, it only takes about 90 minutes of real time before she’s locking herself in a hospital room and cutting off a man’s oxygen supply in order to extract valuable intelligence.
There was once a time when all of this might have made an appreciable emotional impact, but these days the effect is lightweight, predictable and, more often than not, shamelessly enjoyable. In a time of the supposedly more enlightened leadership of Barack Obama, the series has become the equivalent of comfort food, a Bush-era relic that has re-emerged into the pop-culture landscape for no significant reason other than to retrace its steps and rehash past glories (such as they are). Funny that a show that features global terrorist plots and violent interrogations can be considered comforting, but that's the way it goes. Its implicit declaration of sticking to its guns amidst a time of “hope” and “change” would be admirable if it wasn’t just so difficult to take seriously—or so darn entertaining to watch. Consider this viewer in it for the long haul, against his better judgment.
