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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 5 |
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TV'S ALL-TIME BEST THRILLER: '24'
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Jack's 'dead' and our world
may be ending--yikes!!
of TheColumnists.com
Hold onto your hats! Can you believe Fox's "24." TV's all-time best thriller, has only been on the air a total of four days so far? Of course, those days each contain 24 hours. More to the point, that's 24 agonizingly suspenseful hours per season for a grand total of 96 breathtaking episodes.
No TV program in TV's 60 year history has stimulated the adrenal glands and terrorized the nervous system of so many people for so many hours. And starting Sunday, Jan. 15, the fans of "24" are going to get a two-night, four-hour sendoff into Season #5.
The new season will launch Sunday night from 8-10, then continue Monday night from 8-10. Get through that, folks, and you'll only have another 20 hours in which you'll have to be medicated in order to get back to normal.
For those who don't know what in tarnation I'm talking about, "24" is the critically acclaimed series that takes place in real time. That means each 24-episode season covers only 24 consecutive hours in the dramatic events that keep the federal government's Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) working at madhouse pace.
Last season, terrorists had hijacked a nuclear bomb in Iowa, then launched it westward aboard a missile aimed at Los Angeles. That bomb didn't get shot down until the very, very last minute. Within the next 10 minutes, Americans broke the world record for the largest number of undergarments sent to the laundry within one 10-minute period.
The hero of "24" is agent Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland with such vigor that he's now one of the hottest properties in the entertainment world. Bauer is the kind of guy you would trust tap-dancing on a tight rope while holding a sack full of test tubes containing instantly fatal biological formulas. He actually may have done that already. My memory isn't what it used to be.
I know that Jack has been beaten, shot, tortured and tormented through four consecutive seasons--and remained fiercely loyal to America. He's the kind of federal agent that would inspire even Donald Rumsfeld to pack a suitcase and head for the airport if somebody saw him in the lobby with a mean look on his face.
At the close of Season Three, Jack was officially gone from CTU because he scared as many people there as he did at Al Quaida HQ. At the end of Season Four, he was officially dead. That, of course, was just a cover-up to save Jack from having to turn himself in to the Chinese, who wanted him for leading a raid on their U.S. Embassy, kidnapping a Chinese national and torturing him to find out where that nuclear bomb was heading.
Even though Jack had saved a million or so people from nuclear annihilation in Los Angeles, the U.S. government didn't want him embarrassing them by taking his medicine courtesy of the Chinese. So they gave him a CTU tote bag, some false I.D. papers and pointed him toward Mexico.
All we fans know about Season Five is the little teaser they've been srunning lately. It shows a very worn-looking and grizzled Jack being pursued by a black sedan full of would-be assassins. One assumes Jack will officially return to life in 2006, so he can save the USA all over again.
Make no mistake about it: This is the best-written, best-acted, most action-packed TV show I've ever seen. And I've been watching TV since Howdy Doody first visited Brokeback Mountain and wanted to renegotiate his contract with Buffalo Bob, "no strings attached." I've been on the job since Martha Stewart was a Girl Scout, pushing cookies door to door. I've been taking notes since Theodore Cleaver first asked brother Wally what a beaver was.
Now, I don't watch "24" in the conventional manner. I wait until the whole season is over with and then I buy the boxed DVD package containing all 24 chapters. That's because I like to watch the whole thing in a single week. True, I sometimes have to go to a retreat for a couple of weeks to recover, but I CAN'T STAND WAITING A WHOLE WEEK FOR EACH CHAPTER!
I don't recommend this for normal people because if everybody did that, Fox would cancel the series and Kiefer Sutherland would go back to Canada and wonder what happened to his career momentum. So, please start watching Sunday and don't stop until I tell you it's okay.
As for Jack Bauer, I secretly pray he'll
corner that cute CTU agent named Michelle somewhere during the
next 24 hours of his TV duty, even if he has to bump off good
old Tony, her boy friend, to accomplish that goal. I think the
boy needs some r&r and I can't think of anybody nicer to
spend it with than sweet Michelle.
©2006 by Ron Miller.
The photo ;of Kiefer Sutherland is courtesy Fox Broadcasting.
This column first posted Jan. 9, 2006.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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