| | Based in part on this this topic, we rented the first season. The first four hours were gripping. The plot twists kept our attention. It was so exciting, it affected my dreams. Then, the next disc ... and the next... began to unravel. Once my wife and I talked it out, we realized that this is a viceral show with low mentality.
Anyone here who still thinks well of this program is not applying the Objectivist theory of aesthetics. In point of fact, nothing posted so far mentions the integration of plot, theme and plot-theme to characterization and dialog. Nothing does because nothing can. Such does not exist. We have three more hours to work through, but here are some of the problems with the first 21 hours. I mention these only as a list because I do not intend to invest 24 hours pointing out more. What follows is only an inventory to outline problems with craftmanship.
- Continuity is always such a problem that it doesn't bother me anymore -- things disappearing and reappearing -- Rick's bruises were back when he got home (he lost them temporarily at the compound) -- the senator's necktie changed after his wife said she liked it. Maybe he changed it because he stopped liking her, but that was not clear, just a continuity problem -- to say nothing of people who come and go from the background. You get that with television productions because of the tight shooting schedules.
- However, some technical research would help. The girls were at an airport with a tower -- they never say which one; LA has about six -- running across the runways, being chased by two guys on foot, dodging an aircraft taking off and this did not attract anyone's attention, no line jockeys, no mechanics or FBO pilots.
- And as for "real time" it takes at least three minutes to run a mile, usually more, especially in high heels. Not only do the girls run the 4 miles across LAX (assuming that was the airport), these women run all over greater Los Angeles in less than an hour. (After the flaming car crash, Jack's wife was spotted at Griffith Park; it's a wonder she did not run into Keith and Carl.) Even the Senator in his motorcade makes fantastic time, blowing away schedules for ad hoc meetings. The people forgive you if your son is accused of murder, but they do not forgive you when you no-show an award, but politics in this show is no more realistic than anything else.
- When the power company traitor was picked off by the angry marksman in the plaza, the agent yelled that he was just going to "wing" the guy... but his rifle scope had no crosshairs -- even if such a shot were possible, which it is not... not a running man. No one in the plaza noticed the agency shooter standing behind some potted plants with a rifle.
- How about the close interface between work and family. "Susan, this is Joanne, Bill's wife. I know we never met but could you do me a favor? I mean, I know you work for a top secret government agency, but this is really important."
- Jack's wife and daughter seem to have all the numbers to all the workstations at CTU.
- "My Dad is a secret agent." The first time I met an FBI guy, he said he was a lawyer for the justice department. And that's _above_ ground. Arnold Schwartzenegger had a better cover in True Lies: computer salesman.
- "My family! My family!" Oh, your family! Well, why didn't you say so! Of course, if it's your family...
- The secret prison being assaulted by the Serbs and their mercenaries is undefendable -- even though prisons are supposed to be just that: lockdowns and lockups. There was no electrical back-up, no generator, no batteries, no portable lamps. The corridors should have been killing chutes. The defenders had no gas grenades, no sprays. Even fire hoses would have been effective.
- Cellphones at work. Anyone and everyone seems to have a personal cellphone on them for secret calls against orders.
- After the safehouse was compromised -- four agents dead: one of them killed in a power company cherrypicker: was the killer disguised as a squirrel? -- the CTU sends one guy to the Bauer home to walk around the place and check it out and get killed, of course. The bad guys did a good job of putting lasers into a tunnel, but no one wired the Bauer home with extra alarms, so the agents were totally surprised and killed. Where did the other killer come from when the Serbs attacked the safehouse? There was only one Serb -- who killed four agents -- then, at the last, someone else acted as a decoy in the bathroom.
- How do you sneak pot in a "holding cell"? Last time I was jailed, I was searched.
- You do not put suspects together in a holding cell because you do not want them to get their stories straight.
- Why pay a utilities guy to cut the power from a substation when they could have blown the junction box themselves, which they did as Plan B.
- The whole thing with Victor Draken being taken from prison to prison, interrogated while he gives them information for two years, is internally flawed. Was he giving them information or not?
- How does Milo -- a contractor -- have so much access. He raps the keyboard and gives Jack more privs. Isn't that a violation of something? This will not be noticed by another contractor? (Never mind that no one at CTU will ever notice because that's a given.)
- The guy killed in New Orleans could not have survived in the field as long as he did if he was snuck up on in a men's room with a mirror over the urinal. Why did he go in there in the first place when he had already pulled his gun once? Get out and go somewhere else. Why was he on the cellphone and secure top secret database computer in a bar?
- "24" perpetuates the "Cult of Comfort" i.e., that the government can and will protect you. They know every digital code on every U-Store and parking garage. They can crosscheck every name against "every database" in a few minutes. They can track any phone call -- except when they have to... then it takes forever...
This is a gut-level show. I am disappointed.
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