The Jack Bauer Power Hour

With spoilers up to S4E22.

It's been a weird season of 24. By the end of last year, everyone was either dead, on heroin, in jail or missing a limb, so it was always gonna be tricksy putting a gang of heroes back together again for our continued viewing pleasure. Guessing how they were going to crowbar another series regular back into this year's plot has been the main reason to keep tuning back in, cos the story has regressed to run-around-aimlessly-and-fail-to-catch-the-bad-guy since Marwan was introduced. And now, Mia Kirshner is back.



Hey, Mia... over here. No - here! Nuts. I think her character's name is Mandy but that's not important right now: she's the hot lesbian biker babe from Season One who tried to kill the president with a Vulcan Handshake in Season Two and now she's back and not actually a lesbian after all. Yay for me!

But I originally logged on to talk about politics on the show, so I suppose I should "go there".

24 has never preached party politics - in fact, we've never even been told to which party the three presidents we've seen so far have all belonged. But I was reassured by several speeches Palmer made during Season Two about the importance of only going to war with concrete evidence and as a last resort. (Of course, by that time in the real world, we'd already initiated conflict based upon far less.) Jack got a Middle Eastern good guy colleague for a few episodes and the Big Bad turned out to be a white guy hellbent on raising the value of his oil stock.

I guess the show doesn't have a consistent political agenda, because I'm not watching as comfortably as I once was and I ain't just worried about those mountains in Iowa. Nor am I concerned about the suburban Arab-American family that was revealed as a terrorist sleeper cell.

I'm bothered about the recent raid and kidnapping at the Chinese Embassy. The more I think about it, I'm bothered by Jack's willingness to go outside the law to get the job done. By that standard, Jack's no better than Marwan - using the law when it furthers his mission and flaunting it when it doesn't. It makes for absolutely cracking TV but it completely endorses his criminal behaviour as heroic because he does it in service to his country.

Sure, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but when did I start cheering for the bullies? When did I start rooting for people who would kick down the door of your home without a search warrant? When did I start condoning the circumvention of due process? Well, I don't suppose they have a local Fox affiliate down in Guantanemo anyway...

At least 24 has raised the issue. And the president is doing his best to keep it alive and in our minds on a weekly basis. President Logan in TV Land, that is!