David Kronke: "24:" Every day should be this fun
Another breathless episode of “24,� another host of plot holes you could drive one of those military vehicles enforcing Martial Law in L.A. through. But who cares, when the show has gone so completely out of its mind that you’d follow it anywhere?
(WARNING: If you have not been following “24� this season, do not read any further, lest your brain explode.)
Just a few of tonight's plot-hole queries:
How did the recording made earlier in the day implicating the President and evil top henchman Henderson in the assassination of David Palmer – a recording surreptitiously made by the First Lady’s assistant – find its way from the compound where President, First Lady and assistant have been staying – which, it has been established, is at least an hour from downtown L.A. (with no traffic, via the 5) – to a bank 10 minutes from the Van Nuys Airport? And why would the person, whoever it was, hide it in the one bank in all of Los Angeles that apparently has no security cameras?
If there’s martial law in L.A., why are gas stations open?
How many American Presidents give televised press conferences at 2:32 a.m. ET? And then plan for the next day a mere radio address to discuss deadly terrorist attacks on the country?
How can Henderson find out his prey’s position via a 911 call 20 seconds after said call has simply been placed?
Where can the rest of us get a cell phone that runs nonstop without recharging for 24 hours, works as relentlessly and downloads information as quickly and never drops a call, like Jack’s?
Once Jack finds the crucial-piece-of-evidence recording, why doesn’t he call anyone and everyone – particularly Chloe, who single-handedly has enough techno-gizmos and know-how to right the world – and play it for them so he’s not the only person with said crucial evidence?
Why would Jack allow the bank manager he’s kidnapped to try to escape the bank with him? Hasn’t Jack sort of, well, you know, noticed what happens to the extraneous characters with whom he hooks up?
Whose idea was it for “24� to buy the “Peter Gunn� music library?
And yet, there’s something somewhat more intriguing about this season of “24�…
… and that’s that this season seems to be exploiting in a more thinly metaphorical sense than in seasons past our nation’s real concerns and neuroses. As you may recall, “24’s� pilot – shot before Sept. 11, 2001 – ended with a spectacular mid-air explosion of a commercial passenger flight. Said scene was toned way down before it actually aired. And except for last season’s use of Middle-Eastern characters as terrorists (a previous season had characters from the Middle East, but they were subterfuge; other characters were the real bad guys), “24� has adroitly sidestepped realpolitik.
Until, it appears, this season. A major storyline concerns CTU (the Counter-Terrorism Unit, where Jack once worked) being absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security, which has essentially dismantled its ability to do much of anything (except for, of course, computer whiz Chloe). This feels suspiciously like a reference to how DHS had so thoroughly emasculated FEMA that it was hapless in its response to Hurricane Katrina.
Even more bizarre is the show’s recent revelation that the President himself is behind this potential holocaust.
Now, no one has ever accused series creators Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran of liberal agitprop – after all, week in and week out, they seem to advocate torture as a method of squeezing information from suspects – and, in fact, Surnow and “24� executive producer Howard Gordon have been on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, and you know Rush wouldn’t allow articulate radical lefties anywhere near one of his microphones.
Nonetheless, this season’s depiction of an utter moral collapse of a White House Administration, as reflected against today’s troubling realities, is kind of interesting.
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