Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Point / Counterpoint: I Quit 24

I'm hoping by making this initial point, Side Bar will chime in and give a counterpoint as to why he is still watching, and apparently as engaged as ever.

The point here is that I quit watching 24 this season. When 24 didn't air last season because of the writers' strike, I didn't really miss it. I had watched every season up until then and I was certainly a fan of the show. I had felt, however, that the last couple of seasons had really left something to be desired.

In the last few seasons they had really gone overboard with these terror scenarios and while I concede that what happens in each of their seasons is plausible, it just got less and less believable. At one point in their 6th season there was a nuclear bomb detonated in downtown Los Angeles, and that was in like the 6th episode. It just got more and more ridiculous after that. I really felt like they were stretching for new plot contrivances by the end of that season.

As great as the first 3 or 4 seasons were, was as bad as the 5th and 6th were. I felt like I knew what was going to happen at the end of every episode, because the arc of the show never really changed. I mean, how many different ways can you tell the story? Imminent threat, no leads, ooh we've got a lead, he won't talk, we'll threaten torture, we'll blur the line between interrogation and torture, he talks, we save the day despite some necessary casualties. Those necessary casualties were indeed shocking, weren't they?

And I didn't just quit the show this year because I thought it would suck. I watched the first 4 or 5 episodes. Then the next 3 or 4 episodes started building up on my DVR and I just didn't have an interest in watching them. It's just the same thing over and over again. Terrorist threats diffused at the last moment, Jack Bauer ruminates over his lot in life, so on and so forth.

I assume this season picked up after I stopped watching, Side Bar? Please to explain.

4 comments:

Open Bar said...

Uh, where'd the words go?

ChuckJerry said...

Somehow this published by accident before I typed anything.

I think it's fixed now.

Open Bar said...

You know what else sucks now? Lost and Heroes. Every week my DVR records them, but I never watch.

Heroes, I'm just done with at this point. But as for Lost, I have a theory: Rather than watch one episode a week (and be thoroughly disappointed and/or enraged by nothing ever happening), I'm going to wait till the Season 5 DVD comes out and watch them all in a row. I did that for the first two seasons, which were fucking phenomenal. Then when I became a weekly watcher starting in Season 3, either the show got an STD or it's just plain better to watch them 5 or 6 episodes at a time.

Either way, all these shows are kinda similar in that they started off great, but seem to have reached their Godfather Part III era.

ChuckJerry said...

I'm about to quit Heroes. I contemplated a post about that one, but it would read the same as this one.

Lost is actually very good this year on a week to week basis. It hasn't been that way in a couple seasons, but if you ahve them on your DVR still, I would say watch them.