Suddenly a Guilty Pleasure

24
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

This is the fourth season of 24 on everyone's favorite network, Fox. I've been enjoying the show pretty much from the beginning. The first two seasons in particular genuinely surprised me on more than one occasion. The action sequences are pretty good for TV, and it's always fun to watch a character go through hell. It feels like Kiefer's whole career has been leading up to having exceptionally bad days, and many of them.

From the beginning, there has been the occasional suspect acting and stilted dialogue. But those things have been relatively easy to ignore for the simple reason that creating a 24-hour story in real time -- and pulling it off -- is a difficult undertaking. There will be minor glitches like weak dialogue and weaker acting.

The show came under fire early this season for its negative stereotypes about the Arab world (the bad guy this year is an Arab terrorist). Over the first three seasons, the show had an African-American president from the Democratic Party. So we're not necessarily talking about a show based in reality. But still, I understood and ultimately overlooked the issue. 24 works largely because it panders to our fears, xenophobic and otherwise.

The show, however, finally pushed my political buttons with this week's episode. A character we (the audience) know is bad news gets arrested. Mastermind bad guy gets him a lawyer from "Amnesty Global." So with the clock ticking its way toward nuclear proliferation, the Counter Terrorist Unit is unable to "extract information" from the suspect. The argument in favor of torture and against his civil liberties was just a little too simple and a little too Bushie. And of course, in this case, getting information out of this baddie is way more important than his stupid civil liberties.

So clearly, all those people in Cuba need to be held indefinitely. Aw, Christ.

I forgot the issue momentarily while I thoroughly enjoyed how Kiefer got around that particular obstacle (he even tazered one of his own men!). But, dammit. Now I have to watch the show through guilt-filtered lenses.