I wish I could get your gravelly voice out of my head. Erase the image of your unnaturally tan face and hair coiffed just so from my mind.
How is 24 so addicting? I just finished Season 1 Disc 2. My days feel like an accumulation of aimless hours spent waiting until the time that I can justifiably watch the next disc. I’m thanking Blockbuster for their convoluted policy of their online system which allows you to return a movie you got in the mail in-store, allowing you to pick up another dvd right then and there (great), but not allowing you to return that in-store movie for another in-store movie. In my opinion, you should be able to have 3 movies out at any given time, regardless of whether you got them in store or through the mail. Despite this minor frustration, it ends up being healthier for myself (and my siblings who seem to be addicted as I am) by restricting us (those who don’t want to pay) thus far to only 1 dvd of 24 per day.
My qualm with being so taken with this series, besides the fact that I can’t decide if it’s really good or not — and I don’t think I really care if it is good or not — it’s fast paced, it keeps you guessing, it gets your heart racing (especially with the suspenseful score and ticking clock – literally and aurally), it leaves you wanting more and keeps you enough in the dark to want to keep watching to find out what’s going to happen — anyway, back to my point in this epic and grammatically incorrect sentence (note: where are the options of footnotes when I want them? can you tell I’m reading DFW?) is that not only are there obvious moral issues of torture, human and civil rights being broken left and right and not following the due process of the law (especially in this age of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, etc…and I haven’t even gotten to the real torture scenes yet…I’m in the domestic age of the show) but also the co-creator Joel Surnow is what he himself refers to as a, “right-wing nut job.”
I read an article awhile back in the L.A. Times about a show he was developing for Fox News, titled, The Half Hour News Hour. It’s kind of like a Conservative version of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. I haven’t heard about it since then, but I’m not in the habit of watching Fox News either. Anyway, I came out of that article not being too fond of Surnow (despite the fact that he hails from Michigan). I had forgotten about his proud Conservative status until Laura reminded me yesterday. It is hard now at times not to view the show through that Conservative lens and it’s fairly easy to see things that would fit that worldview. Does this perhaps explain why North Hollywood is depicted as being one of the seediest places on Earth? However, I’ve tried to be objective, and there are things that could be seen as having a liberal slant. I’ve decided to try and not let this information ruin my enjoyment of the show. It does bring up an interesting point and/or minor moral issue. Should I really be supporting something that is made by someone I really, truly disagree with and whose politics may be infusing the show with the same laissez faire attitude towards human rights that some other hard-headed Republicans exhibit (e.g. those in the White House right now)? A show that, according to a very interesting New Yorker article, may actually be influencing those in real positions of power, such as those in the military, to use these same tactics of torture on suspects?
On the flipside, there are a number of very liberal people on the show as writers, directors and actors. So maybe it is more reflective of our country’s political attitudes than most shows. Or there is the argument that it is just entertainment; a show for thrills, for fun. It’s hard to argue that people would take it very seriously, especially given the outlandishness of the plots and drama (this guy’s day is really filled with that much excitement and serious life-threatening danger to himself, his family, and everyone he is close to? how would he not have a heart attack by hour 3?)…then again, George Bush is our President and he likely took his stance, attitude and some of his one liners from all those John Wayne movies he watched as a kid.
The real question is: Do I even have a choice to stop watching 24? Or rather, the will?
