24
Fox
Tuesday, 9 p.m / 8 p.m. CST

Fox's "24" is an action-espionage drama that unfolds in real time — meaning that the hour it takes you to watch it corresponds to an hour in the lives of the characters. Correspondingly, Flak will be providing a written-in-real- time-alongside-the- show review of "24" each week for the duration of the series or until the gimmick of the review becomes tiresome.

Episode 21: 8 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Does it seem strange to you — at least, to those of you who have watched the whole series — that we've spent almost at entire day watching "24?" I'm really not a big TV watcher, and so it's weird to be able to quantify how long I've spent watching a particular program. Can you imagine if, every week, you watched all three hours of NBC's Must-See TV when it was at its most popular? You'd be up to a full day after eight Thursdays. If you watched it for two or three years — and I'm not counting reruns — that's more than a straight week.

How much do I want to watch "24" feature a girls-in-prison smackdown? Not at all.

So it's pretty great that things have turned out well for David Palmer in terms of the election — but, as you know (or should), a big "up" five-sixths of the way through a plotline means that there's a big "down" to follow. Will it be more than the potential dissolution of the Palmer marriage? I have a feeling so — someone's going to die. Will it be David himself, but from his now-exposed financiers instead of by the Serbian terrorists?

Wow — what was up with that Nina/George fracas? Cra-zy. Oh, and here's Nina vs. Teri again. There's still plenty left to mine in that vein, and the final culmination of that subplot has the potential to be the altogether most satisfying resolution of all the storylines.

Hm. They don't appear to be painting George as treacherous anymore. I don't if that means he is a traitor and he just hasn't found any room to wiggle or if he never was or if they've changed their conception of him. He's still, easily, the least sympathic character — the by-the-books types always are in movies — but all the same, they were hinting pretty strongly that there was another CTU mole, and George is the only person it can reasonably be.

Oh no … don't have Palmer be indiscreet with his speechwriter/aide. No, no, no. That would be the worst new development yet; worse than the drug-house turn of events, which at least has the pleasure of containing a fun last-minute turnabout.

And there goes Lou Diamond Philips. A noble death, both as a character and as a plot element.

So it's been 20 hours, meaning that many of the characters in the narrative — Jack, Teri, Kim, David, Sherry, Nina, Tony — have been up for at least 20 hours; in many cases, it's probably more like 36. But the writers have never really privileged us with a real instance of anyone's pure exhaustion. Teri's collapse was more shock, and I don't think any the above characters have even catnapped. A truly suspenseful sequence would have been, for instance, Jack, left alone in Saugus looking for the facility, being overcome by his weariness, at risk of being found by Drazen's men or at risk of missing the hidden prison altogether. This isn't my inner screenwriter trying to get out; it's plain criticism. The writers put these cards on the table, and their continued oversight of that element warrants critique.

Kim's big I've-had-all- the-rotten-luck/ bring-it-on speech: Yawn. I have a strong feeling that the writers have irredeemably lost track of this storyline.

I'm not sure that Dennis Hopper, or the plot twist that delivered him, is really adding much to the story. I mean, it's a clear, and somewhat reasonable, culmination of the conspiracy, but it doesn't yet have weight in and of itself.

I'm trying and trying to think of something to say about the prison girls' catfight besides "sigh" and "yawn," both of which I've already used, but I'm stuck.

Jack's attempt to get Victor's gun is a prime example of the thing the show does really well, enhanced in large part by the show's use of real time. Two actions compressed into one: Jack pulling Victor in with the talk about his family, turned instantly around into an attack. Often in movies, that moment of turnaround is overextended — literally and metaphorically — with slow motion or fancified camerawork. But "24" director Stephen Hopkins, bound to the unity of time, always captures the "realism" of the event, giving it bountiful weight.

I don't think the Palmer/aide thing is going to become an actual indiscretion; more likely a rebuff that will be misinterpreted. Still, it's potent. And it looks like they're going to hold that punch back for another hour or so, which means it might be the incindiary event, the last climax for the David/Sherry subplot.

Now, George is being thrown into the hero role — the only person at his rank or higher who cares if Jack lives or dies. It's so the opposite of the direction with which they were leading us around with respect to the character I legitimately suspect that they just changed their mind about him.

And Nina has to deliver the news about Jack's, um, delicate situation to Teri. Their interplay, which really only surfaced a few weeks ago, is the show's most electric stuff — the part of the story within which the writers have been most steadfastly sensible and successful. (And that credit gets spread across the duration of the series, because of everything that's gone into setting their conflict up.)

Speaking of infidelity: What a great little monologue about Presidential privilege from David's handler, Mike. To paraphrase: "When you're in the White House, whatever makes you function best in the job is what you need. If that's your marriage, great. If not, then whatever you need." That's good tilling of the ground for a future occurrence of the thing with the aide. At the same time, given how David has been all about "doing the right thing," they still have to be careful to make David's actions seem within character.

The show's threading of the infidelity theme is interesting — and I've already said a lot about Teri and Nina this week, so we'll leave it at this: How they choose to tie up these story threads is likely to be pretty close to the sum total of the show's moral weight. That's meant in less of a "Book of Virtues" way than in an Aesop's fable way; every story has a moral, a life lesson that it communicates, and it's the construction of a story's last act that delivers that message. Anyway: It will be interesting to see the writers come clean about what they value.

Wow — Jack lies about one of the hitmen (Victor's son) being alive to save his own life. That really refracts back through the series; the show has leaned hard on its themes of family, and for Jack to play that card is … I don't want to say telling, but powerful. Having been in the position of having his child threatened and possibly dead, it can't be easy for him to lie about a similar situation to another father. Again, just how this resolves will certainly have an interesting moral component.

Aigh! I can't believe they're kidnapping Kim again! Oh, I just want to … rrgh, it just makes me want to wriprjav sdjklasg ipeoj

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)