Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Does Television Still Need Jack Bauer?: Thoughts on Fox’s 24: Live Another Day



Fox’s 24 (2001-2010), along with other hit series like ABC’s Lost (2004-2010), changed viewers’ expectations for network dramas.   In the case of 24, the series provided viewers with a different viewing experience with its filmic, action-packed sequencing and “real time” format.  The narrative for each single season follows a single day in the life of its protagonist, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland), as he struggles to save the world.  This show was the first of its kind to attempt real time delivery – breaking each episode into one hour in the adventures of him and his colleagues at CTU (Los Angeles’ Counter Terrorist Unit). Having one “day” as the center of a season’s focus allows for various time manipulations and a different viewing experience.  The one-day-a-season format allows for plot compression – action, events, and conflict must unfold at rates beyond that of a normal day and viewers are asked not only to suspend their disbelief but to take this day as an exception that could happen somewhere behind the backdrops of the real government in existence to protect them.  But while compressing plot development – speeding up action or packing thrills into a more concise segment – the show actually stretches out a fictional time (one day in this case) in ways that viewers are not used to – while the action is sped up, the time itself is retarded to fit in all of the events.

The design of the show assists in making this venture successful.  Every angle foregrounds this focus on time, and the fear of running out of it.  The show’s logo is the ominous glowing digits of the number 24, each episode begins with the tagline:  “the events in this episode take place between…” (showcasing fictional start and end times for the specific episode), and all important scene breaks find themselves ending against the background sound of the foreboding tick-tock – the show’s marker and thematic sound effect. 

Of course in all actuality the program does not show its viewers a complete day in the life of Bauer or any other character for that matter.  The narrative threads change frequently, usually focusing on a minimum of four different storylines.  So while the audience can tag along on Bauer’s adventures usually for half of the time, the other half is divided between his enemies, the plotting terrorist organizations, sneak peeks behind the scenes of the White House administration, the intelligence gathering work of his colleagues at the command center or in the field, and, depending on the season, the perils of his own family members or friends.  The quick cuts between various intersecting plots allow viewers to be privy to some information before the show’s heroes, to try and unscramble the sinister plans before CTU does, and it allows the audience to be in an interestingly voyeuristic position – seeing things that should not be seen from many different perspectives.  Each episode ends in a way that highlights this multiple storyline focus and the fact that we never really know which plot point is going to develop into the most important one.  A few minutes before an episode’s end the screen is split and filled with four different shots of action unfolding at different locales and then one event is selected to finish off the show – the infamous cliffhanger.  Often this is a shot of someone dying, a bomb beginning to countdown, or a mystery uncovered, but – as intended – it is usually intriguing enough to allow viewers to eagerly await the next hour… although it will take 167 of their own until it arrives.  The temporal discord is important to note.  The show, operating under the guise of real time narrative delivery, perpetuates the myth of temporal continuity while jarring viewers with a rather profound gap between the time they experience in their own lives as they watch the show and the time that they will continue to experience during the hiatuses that exists between weekly segments and season breaks.  The promise of real time is delivered (in mutated, commercial-filled form) for approximately 45 minutes each week, but in all actuality this practice of the temporal tease is actually delivering the opposite of what a show like 24 promises – it slows down time.  Jack Bauer’s day is actually retarded and stretched out in order to fulfill the necessary requirements of program sequencing and network delivery.  And, in multiple seasons, viewers are forced (again despite the promise of real time continuity and temporal parallelism) to experience the reverse and watch time be sped up as a new season of 24 will often find itself starting up in the fictional world months and/or years from where the viewers left the imaginary scene the season before.  However this temporal discord is played out, the device is apparently quite enjoyable and has inspired many shows in its aftermath to attempt such a temporal structure (e.g. Prison Break, Lost, Mixology). 
            
24 also helped to disrupt televisual rules, such as “thou shall not kill off main characters.”  As is expected, Jack is always successful in saving the world from peril.  However, the first season schooled viewers early that such heroism would not always come without a cost.  The final episode ended in a scene reminiscent of the final moments of the film Seven, where Jack (who had successfully prevented an assassination attempt and rescued both his pregnant wife and teenage daughter from captivity) walks into a holding room at his own work place to find that his wife’s throat had been slit by his traitorous, double agent partner.  The happy ending – the saved day – is undone within the last 30 seconds of the episode.  Other shows have followed in step, making bold moves to unexpectedly kill off main characters (e.g. Lost was known for this practice early in its run as well, and kept viewers unnerved by eventually even killing off the character whose flashbacks grounded the individual episode that was showing). 

In its early years, 24 was also at the forefront of programming that provided timely post-9/11 political critiques – merging real news headlines concerning terrorism, torture, homeland security, and foreign policy into its narrative.   Since 24 went off the air in 2010, other shows have surfaced to do similar narrative work:  Showtime’s Homeland (2011-present), ABC’s Scandal (2012-present), and Netflix’s House of Cards (2013-present).  With so many shows giving viewers a fix of what 24 once did (an action film in a televisual format; temporal play; narrative complexity; political commentary), I was curious to see how Fox’s recent miniseries, 24: Live Another Day, would be received and what this limited run reboot would do the narrative legacy it left behind four years ago. 

The ratings would deem this added season (although they are not calling it such) a success.  And, as I expected, the potential of another miniseries or a movie offshoot is not off the table.  As a fan of the original series, I found myself once again enjoying the narrative pacing, the ability to binge multiple “hours” at a time through delayed viewing, and the ways in which contemporary concerns (foreign relations with the Middle East, China, and Russia; military defense debates concerning drone programs; campaigns for information transparency, and so forth) played out (hyperbolically) in the fictional world.  But mostly I was interested in seeing how this new run would pick up on old plots and relationships and in that way I was not disappointed.  [Spoiler Alert]  Live Another Day brought Jack into contact with his former love interest, Audrey Heller, and his old nemesis, Cheng Zhi.  Like the shocking first season, this series ended with Audrey’s death (at Cheng’s extended hand) which (although not at all shocking now that the show’s formulas are so well established) gave the series the feeling of having gone full circle back to the beginning.  Her death during the last fifteen minutes of the episode pretty much solidified the fact that Jack himself would not die, although viewers might have been led to believe otherwise.  The pained look on Jack’s face in this scene reminded me of that of Dexter’s in that series’ finale after Deb died.  It did not surprise me to discover that the writers had toyed with killing off Jack because, like with Dexter, it is hard to imagine that the series will ever end in a traditional happy ending for a character who has perpetually played the suffering soul and crossed so many moral lines.  The tightrope dance Jack does in terms of morality was displayed beautifully by the juxtaposition of his last two scenes this season.  In the first he decapitates Cheng after providing the proof the Chinese government needed that he was alive (hence stopping a war). And in the second he sacrifices himself to save his only friend, Chloe, by surrendering himself to the Russians who have been hunting him for four years.  This scene where Jack is whisked away on a helicopter was almost exactly the same as the end of season five where Jack was carted away on a freight headed to China – another moment of déjà vu.  But it was fitting that his last heroic action was to save his friend – arguably one of the best characters on the show – as their relationship has always been the one constant the strung the various seasons together.

If I was a betting media critic, I’d say that we haven’t seen the last of Jack.  I’m not sure that we still need Jack Bauer in 2014, and I’m not sure that any additional runs of 24 will provide us with anything we haven’t seen before, but there is comfort in the familiar, in the nostalgia, and the escapism of believing the world will always saved by a little rouge vigilante justice, so I’ll watch the next round when it comes out. 

No comments:

Post a Comment