Twenty-Four Hell

It's back. I don't know when it was exactly that networks decided to start seasons in both September and January, but my DVR has started working overtime in the last week or so. I record shows for Tom and he (usually) watches them in the mornings before I wake up. But since he's home during the week this time, and since I wake up to get my daughter off to school, I have spent the last four hours in 24 Hell.

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I hate Kiefer Sutherland, and I most definitely hate Jack Bauer. Not only am I incredibly bored by real-time filming (The Johnny Depp movie a few years ago bugged me too) but I also find the whole topical terrorism plot trend to be highly irritating, especially when viewed through bureaucratic red-tape, complete with incompetent presidential advisors and overshadowing sub-plots.

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The entire show, regardless of "hour" or season, can be summed up in one blog entry, in case any of you are lucky enough to have escaped this unworthy cultural phenomenon. Jack, the unshaven, brave, heroic lead character, who seems to be the only one in the entire U.S. Government to know how to stop terrorists, is assigned by the highly secretive Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU) to fight bad guys before they enact a huge plot to kill the president/blow up America/suicide bomb strip malls/ poison the water supply/ taint the froot loops/or whatever else the invariably Muslim and brown-skinned bad guys want to do. CTU only finds out about these plots about (duh) 24 hours before they happen, but always with a wealth of details such as who, what, where, when, and how. The average discovery is made via a bat-phone like direct line to the oval office.

President who may or may not be corrupt and/or incompetent and/or the leader of an elite squad of Army "clerks" called The Unit and/or an insurance salesman hawking accident forgiveness and/or the brother of a former president who took over for an incompetent president, who then got killed as part of a corrupt advisor's plot to discredit Jack Bauer: We have received information that Musharref Al Saminadabab may be plotting to put stolen Russian warheads into the water supply at the froot loops plant, thereby killing himself and dozens of strip-mall shoppers. CTU, your nation needs your help.
Leader of CTU, who may or may not be incompetent, having an affair with Jack, a former lover of Jack's, or Sean Astin: There's only one man on my team I would trust with the job. Sir, I'm sending in Jack Bauer!
Presidential advisor who may or may not be corrupt, actively on the side of the terrorists, aiding in a future presidential assassination plot, or recently ejected into orbit on a completely separate prime-time drama: Mr. President I highly discourage you from trusting Jack Bauer with such an important and crucial mission. He's spent the entire series hiatus in Mexico faking his death/in a Chinese prison/cosmetically removing all of the scars he wore in previous seasons that the writers don't think viewers are smart enough to remember! His judgement is questionable at best.
***President looks pensive***
Jack Bauer, piped into the conversation via a series of cell-phones, bat-phones, military satellites and Chloe (the shy and bucktoothed computer whiz who somehow manages to subvert military security systems to get to the truth, yet seems to spend half of each season either crying or waiting for permission to establish satellite links.): Mr President! I don't have time to explain but I am right here with the terrorists and if you don't LET ME DO MY JOB I won't be held responsible for the DEATHS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS.
President who may or may not be married to a schizophrenic who despite a lifetime of psychiatric commitments managed to survive a presidential election without costing her husband the election or having a breakdown but who now knows exactly who is to blame for this crisis and therefor must be locked up again to keep her quiet: I trust you Jack. Do what you have to do.

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(see how annoying that gets?)

Well, "what he has to do" invariably involves just about every single unconstitutional thing our president is doing now, plus getting hit by shrapnel strategically over one temple so that the blood manages to look dashing and heroic without impeding his vision. He tortures people with only a shred of circumstantial evidence, he violates direct congressional orders, he shoots up populated civilian gathering spots, and he all-but-verbatim, declares himself to be the Decider. He is everything bad with the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. The problem? His torture sessions invariably result in the very information he wanted. More people watch this drivel than can name the Speaker Of The House. This is why people vote Republican. I think the thinking goes somewhat like this: "Torture works when Jack Bauer does it, so what can be wrong with Gitmo?" Substitute the term 'racial profiling' for torture and the thinking remains the same.

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I really hate that show. I can't wait until Jack dies, or the dems have him tried for war crimes.