'24' Season Premiere: I Feel Bad About Saddam Hussein's Neck
24-hour man Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) returns to defend the world from yet another apocalypse in Fox's madly addictive suspense serial.
Jack's mood on Day Six: aggrieved but unbroken. The nation's: aggrieved and freaked out--the USA is under attack--again.
Naturally, the hero's no worse for wear after twenty months in an Asian prison (at the end of season five, Jack Bauer and his cellphone voice were subject to extraordinary rendtion -- by Chinese, not US, government agents -- due to his role in a Season 4 attack on China's consulate in Los Angeles. Without giving to much away: the first four hours of '24' echo both ROAD TO GUANTANAMO and the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein -- right up to the final, most gruesome HD video and cellphone images. (Time to feel bad about someone's neck? Not your own, anyway.)
Writes Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe: "24" perfectly captures the mood of America, so poised between global eruption and political farce. The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley also succumbs to the Fox network's real-time drama
Along with constitutional rights, the show dives into questions of detention camps, torture, vigilantism, working with terrorists, and suicide bombing. It's button-pushing at its most provocative. Even the opening shots of Jack fresh from 20 months in a Chinese prison have controversial echoes, as they sample the images of a bearded and bedraggled Saddam Hussein just after his capture. Also Sunday night, we see Jack torturing a guy while a huge American flag hangs behind them. That'll get your heart going. But, much as I am compelled to watch "24," and admire its craft, I find that I can't take it seriously"
Yeah, yeah: Mobile-phone service is miraculously clear, CTU and enemy surveillance powers are godlike, and who knew that every President and key federal operative has mission-critical child, ex-lover or sibling who's sleeping with a someone who might be a traitor.("Are you sure you haven't told another living soul about this. Perfect. Tell me where you are-I'll be right over there to get you."). Who knew that the American people would elect a second African-American president in a single decade-- and the new guy's so confident about his prospects that he dares to wear facial hair, a modified Fu Manchu,: a slim, sexy goatee.
Hilarious.. And essential TV.
Fox, Sunday, Jan. 14, 8-10pm, continues Monday Jan. 15 8-10pm.