24-Liveblogging
An hour in and it’s too early to tell exactly how the show will set about justifying cruelty and abuse, but it’s not to early to say, Man this show is inept. The dialog is awful, the characters are thin and the actors can’t put any meat on them, presumably on account of, they suck. (Jeanine Garafolo is actually not bad. I suspect the pattern of previous seasons – I can only hate this for so long – seems likely to repeat. Man, the girl FBI agent threw away a career’s worth of putative ideals awfully quick, though.
UPDATE: So the theme of the season is either a very hamhanded fable on the injustice of honoring the rule of law regarding the war crimes of the last seven years, OR, it’s a good show, that will tease out all the tragic dimensions of the question of accountability. I wonder which might be the case . . .
Comment by Gary Farber —
January 11, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
“24-Liveblogging”
Gee, I’ve just been doing that on YM to a friend.
Yes, the dialogue is really awful.
Jack investigates via a computer screen and his helper! There’s active pointing to screens!
It’s very exciting!
“Jack, you’re coming with me, and you’re doing it my way!”
“Do whatever it takes, Jack!”
“They’ve never seen anything like this before!”
“oh my god, they’re on a collision course!”
“What do you people want?” “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Man, it takes professional writers to write like that.
But, hey, the first Watchmen tv commercial! (Be nice to think we’ll actually get to see the film in theatres, lawsuit or not.)
Comment by Thoreau —
January 11, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
It hasn’t yet started in my time zone, but I was spoiled on the premier a LONG time ago, and I’m not optimistic. I’ve said many times that the worst politics on the show happen when the writers have no ideas. I defy anybody to watch seasons 2 and 5 and tell me that those seasons are right-wing propaganda. (The fact that right-wingers liked those seasons just means that right-wingers are easily fooled, but we knew that already.)
I think there’s a chance that this season will improve about 10 hours in: The writers had an extra year to do this season, because of the strike, and supposedly somewhere between hours 8 and 12 they looked at what they had, realized they’d have to change things around to make a good 24 hour story, and made a lot of fixes. Those fixes may have included changing a few scenes from the early hours, but it would be cost-prohibitive to do much of that. So there’s at least some hope for the second half of the season, but only time will tell.
Comment by sab —
January 12, 2009 @ 12:37 am
Well at least David Palmer (the only truly Presidential president on 24) made the choice between the smart, elegant, calm, wonkish Obama and the hyperactive, uninformed, crisis-loving septuagenerian from AZ seem like a no-brainer.