November
5, 2002, 9:00 a.m. Post-9/11
TV
Fox’s 24.
By Thomas Hibbs
he
second season of 24,
starring Kiefer Sutherland as agent Jack Bauer of the U.S. counterterrorism
unit (CTU), opens with the gruesome torture of a prisoner who possesses
information about an imminent attack on U.S. soil planned by the Middle
Eastern terrorist group called Second Wave. The prisoner breaks and reveals
the plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in L.A. in the next 24 hours.
Soon, President David
Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) — America's first black president —
is called back from a fishing vacation. Once briefed, Palmer demands that
Jack Bauer, who foiled the assassination attempt on his life in last season's
24, be put on the case. Since we saw him last, Bauer has been in
retirement. He eventually agrees to return to CTU and learns that the
suspected leader of the plot is someone with whom he had prior undercover
contacts. He also learns that the U.S. has in protective custody a witness
willing to testify about the previous illegal activities of the suspected
terrorist. Bauer immediately asks that the witness be brought in for an
interrogation. The witness arrives, Bauer runs through a litany of the
heinous crimes he has committed, and then pulls out his gun and executes
him. To his boss's shocked criticism, Bauer responds, "You want to
fight these guys, but you don't want to get your hands dirty." Bauer's
plan is to reestablish his undercover status and make contact with the
suspected mastermind.
Bauer has a rougher,
more cynical edge this year than last, a result of the personal costs
of combating terror. As Sutherland commented in an interview for Entertainment
Weekly: "Jack doesn't really care anymore. Whatever boundaries
he had last year are pretty much gone now. Last year's promo was great:
'I'm federal agent Jack Bauer, and today is the longest day of my life.'
Now maybe it's 'I'm federal agent Jack Bauer, and today is the most violent
day of my life.'' But Bauer's violence is not indiscriminate or irrational.
Like a latter day Dirty Harry on the trail of international terrorists,
Bauer retains a sense of justice in the midst of a sometimes corrupt and
often negligent U.S. security team. Set up by the bad guys and uncertain
of whom to trust in his own CTU, Bauer spent most of last season on the
run from the law. Even as he tried to combat the threat to Senator Palmer,
the terrorists first kidnapped his daughter, a throwback to the era of
the ditzy valley girl, and then his wife. Bauer's success in stopping
the assassins was purchased at quite a cost: the murder of his wife by
Nina, his colleague and former lover, who turned out to be working for
the bad guys. 24 rarely goes for the obvious or settles for conventional
plots or endings, but the murder of his wife in the last scene of the
season finale ran so counter to primetime-TV expectations that many fans
assumed it could not be the final word. It was.
In this year's plot,
24 takes on post-9/11 America directly. One of the more intriguing
subplots features a wealthy American family one of whose daughters is
engaged to an Americanized Middle Eastern male. The sister of the engaged
girl learns from an investigative agency that the man has terrorist connections.
To discern the precise nature of these connections, the investigator will
need the sister to deliver more information. 24 captures the way
the terrorist threat shatters the ordinary assumptions of American life
and the even more terrifying suspicion that terrorists are already in
our midst plotting our destruction.
In these and other
ways, 24 is a more accurate reflection of post-9/11 American sensibility
more than the gossipy internal White House politics of The West Wing,
which still embodies the fascination with personality characteristic of
the Clinton era. When President Palmer finds out the Middle Eastern country
of origin of the terrorist group Second Wave, he puts in a call to the
country's prime minister. To the prime minister's pat denials that his
country supports terrorism of any form, Palmer bluntly asks why terrorist
training camps are operating in his country. Palmer promises that, if
the bomb goes off, he will have no choice but to retaliate. "The
bomb will harm us, but it will destroy you." Still, Palmer is not,
at least not yet, as hawkish as his military advisers, whom he angrily
rebuffs for plotting retaliation even before an attack has occurred.
24 never tells
us the party allegiance of the first black president and only occasionally
adverts to Palmer's race — last season the CTU was clearly worried
about the consequences for the entire country had the "first African-American
with a real shot at the White House" been murdered. The stress is
less on Palmer being the first black president than on his being the
president. At least 24 did not take the predictable route of making
the terrorists into white supremacists; they were Serbs, irked that Palmer,
as senator, and Bauer, as CTU agent, had intervened in the nation's politics.
While interesting,
speculation about the political leanings or implications of the show is
certainly secondary to the plot and fast-paced action of the series. Indeed,
the great novelty of the series, reflected in the title, is its temporal
format, with the entire year's series taking place over one day and focusing
on one central plot. In renewal talks for this year, the format was nearly
dropped in favor of a more conventional series of independent plots, thought
to be more attractive to viewers who might not have seen early episodes.
Luckily, creativity won out over shortsighted economics. Occasionally
too tricky for its own good, 24, nonetheless, makes effective use
of many techniques: a clock ticking as the show approaches and comes out
of commercial breaks, multiple, often-frenetic camera angles, and split
screens that heighten the tension in the various overlapping sub-plots.
In terms of plotting
and filming, 24 is typically superior to anything else on in primetime,
except when it falls into soap-opera subplots involving family members.
In its style and pacing, 24 at its best recalls the brilliant and
underrated, Homicide: Life on the Street.
24 airs on
FOX, Tuesday nights at 9. The premiere episode, which aired last Tuesday,
will be replayed Tuesday at 5 on FX.
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