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Movies / TV
Jack Versus Jaws, or How "24" Jumped the Shark
Posted by Jesse Baker on May 29, 2004, 19:40
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Jack Versus Jaws, or How 24 Jumped the Shark
By Jesse Baker
NOTE: Send all feedback emails and hate mail to [email protected].
With Tuesday's edition of Fox's "24," the break-out hit starring Keifer Sutherland officially jumped the shark with a lackluster third season that seemed to personify everything that can go wrong with a hit television series. From killing several of the show's key characters to hackneyed storylines which came off like the writers were hunched over their computers, reading message boards while writing the show's scripts so as to pacify viewer complaints, the third season of "24" is a testimony of how a show can suddenly and utterly tank after reaching the highest point of popularity one year earlier.
For those of you living under a rock, "24" is the hit Fox drama that operates under the gimmick that each season tells the story of one single day, with each of the season's 24 episodes taking place within the confines of one hour of this day, creating a serialized story that is told over the course of a single season. The series stars Keifer Sutherland, former Brat Pack hanger-on and son of acclaimed actor Donald Sutherland, as the ultra-violent Jack Bauer. A former black ops agent of the US Government, Bauer retired from active duty upon surviving a suicide mission in the Balkans during the mid-1990s to a cushy job working for the genericly named "Counter Terrorism Unit" organization (most commonly referred to as simply CTU), only to be thrusted back into the field after learning of an assassination attempt being planned against Senator David Palmer (played by Dennis Haysbert), a liberal politician running for the office of President. This unique form of serialized storytelling coupled with the show's ultra-violent action and political drama on made the show a huge hit with viewers and made huge stars out of the show's cast.
Tuesday's finale featured several key plot twists delivered in such an anticlimatic fashion that it borders on farce. The death of Sherry Palmer, longtime series villain and fan-favorite, is casually brushed aside as if nothing happened. Furthermore, the writers pull the ultimate cheat with regards to President Palmer's decision to pull out his bid for a second term as President by having this weigthty decision occure totally off-camera and then announced in a casual, by-the-by fashion. Nor do we get any sort of explaination towards the importance of Palmer's pills, which were prominently featured throughout the first half of the season with numerous close-ups of the bottle and dramatically shot scenes of Palmer chugging them down.
Pages could be spent going on about how the writers totally dropped the ball with this season's Palmer plot. Season One featured a rather gripping (though at times contrived) look at a politician's family and how his family fell apart as a direct result of the politician father's need to stick to his principles rather than sell them out to save his family. Season Two offered a cautionary tale of special interests running amuck with Palmer playing the role of the virtuous Anti-George W. Bush and laying the proverbial smack down upon those in his administration and those corporations who sought to force America into a war in the middle east regardless of the number of American lives they had to kill in order to get their war.
But for Season Three, who knows what the writers were thinking with regards to President Palmer. The first batch of episodes involved a convoluted plot where Palmer's new girlfriend is accused of evidence tampering by her scumbag ex-husband and Palmer standing by his woman in face of everyone telling him to cut ties with her. Not to mention the numerous scenes where the writers showed David Palmer taking pills, which were treated in such an ominous fashion that it was as if the writers were literally flashing "FORESHADOWING! THIS IS IMPORTANT! THE PILLS ARE A CRITICAL PLOT ELEMENT!".
There is an old theatrical cliche that says that if you have a gun prominantly featured in the background in the first act, that you have to have a main character use the gun in the final act. The same thing can be said with the pills. The writers made numerous and often gratuitous shots of these pills which hyped them as being a key plot device. So what major part do they have to do with the plot? We may never know, since the writers changed the direction of the entire Palmer plot first chance that they had with David's girlfriend being cleared of the charged leveled against her after the evil ex-husband killing himself out of shame and David dumping her rather than having her be crucified by the media.
So after spending the first third of the season on David's love life, we get a brand new plotline as David's annoying brother/Presidential Advisor Wayne reveals that he's been banging the trophy wife of one of David's most powerful political allies behind his back. The new plotline involves David being called out on the carpet by his patron and basically told to fire Wayne or else have a crucial piece of legislature killed by way of having all of the Congressmen voting against it in order to avoid the wrath of Palmer's backer. Of course this is just a set-up to bring back David's delightfully evil ex-wife Sherry Palmer who procedes to literally nag David's political blackmailer to death while forcing his trophy wife to withhold crucial medication from him as he dies.
This leads of course to the big shark-jumping moment of the Palmer plot, as David procedes to send Sherry packing, with it being stated that David wants nothing to do with her after this mess, despite bringing her back into his inner circle to get rid of the problem no matter what it took. Now it is true that David never specifically told Sherry, "Kill the motherfucker if necessary," but you would think Palmer, in light of the previous season's revelation that Sherry was a key member of the conspiracy to force Palmer into declaring war on the Middle East through detonating an A-Bomb on American soil, would realize that murder is something Sherry would be willing to do. Especially if she felt that this was her last chance possible to get back into the life of her ex-husband. The fact that David willingly lied to the police to protect Sherry and as a result cast full suspicion for the murder on the dead industrialist's trophy wife tells you how utterly screwed up the writers are towards the David Palmer character. After all, this is the same character who went through hell itself in order to ensure that his son confessed to his part in the death of the man who raped his sister. Is this the same Palmer who not only gives his ex a proverbial blank check to clean up his brother's mess and then lies to the police to protect her?
Which leads to the end of the arc, which has Sherry returning one more time to play Palmer and his rival in the coming Presidential election against each other with the bottle of medicine she kept from the dead political patron as the reward for giving into her demands. So how does this plot end? With Sherry having the crap beaten out of her and the bottle taken from her by annoying brother Wayne and the dead industrialist/patron's trophy wife killing Sherry dead due to the fact that everyone was going to let her take the fall for her husband's murder. And of course, she takes her own life in order to tidy up all lose ends of Palmer being exposed.
Which leads us to the ending, as we get Palmer learning of his ex's death and yells at Wayne after his annoying brother suggest that they spin the deaths as murder/murder/suicide brought about do to Sherry sleeping with the dead industrialist and getting caught by the trophy wife. So do we see any sort of aftermath towards Palmer and his ex-wife's death and his involvement in her death? Nope. Aside from the casual, by-the-by sequence where David tells Jack Bauer that he's aborting his run for a second term, we never receive closure on the plotline. We don't even get to see Palmer contact his children and telling them that their mother is dead or him telling Wayne that he was abandoning his campaign for a second term out of guilt/shame over his wife's death.
In short we are denied any real sense of closure towards the character's arc, or the pathetic and half-assed written arc that the writers gave him this season. The only real theme this season for Palmer (who for the last two seasons has been written as an Ayn Rand-esque figure of principle who refuses to compromise regardless of how bad the crisis is or how said crisis threatens to destroy his world) is that Wayne Palmer is an annoying little shit who, if around his brother, will eventually cause David to act and behave like a retard with his bitching if left in the same space as him for 24 hours.
Of course it would be extremely lazy to lay the full burden of the shark-jumping on the exploits of dumb (David Palmer) and dumber (Wayne Palmer). All-and-all, the third season of 24 was a complete and utter mess despite decent ideas existing, The notion of narco-terrorists as the season's "Big Bad" was a very interesting idea and one that was ripe with potential as was the idea of Jack Bauer being totally isolated from his entire support system and forced to go rogue in order to serve the greater good. Of course this fell apart due to poor writing and craptastic plot devices that crippled the show this season.
First off, the notion of a disease as the main tool was poorly done especially in light of the way that the writers set up then abandoned only to bring back in an ultra-rushed and ultra-contrived form. The notion of the disease being carried by an annoying and spoiled teenage suburbian desperate not to be cast below the poverty line was annoying but had potential if the virus would go off and start killing the cast of ultra-annoying casting rejects from "The OC" first. Even the plot twist where the virus turns out not to be in the cocaine the spoiled bitch was muling into the states had potential, especially given the way that the writers were positioning. But the entire decision to abort the virus storyline one-third through the season only to magically restart it during the homestretch was extremely weak. Especially in light of the way that they blatantly cheated one of the key elements of the plot regarding the incubation time of the virus (the virus originally supposed to take over half a day to become spreadable and kill the infected) but thanks to the miracle of the writers pulling out totally unrealistic plot twists from their asses they were able to have it killing people as soon as it was finally brought into play by having the virus be magically altered to kick in immeadiately instead of slowly.
Another point of contention is the revolving door of characters serving as the "Big Bad" for the season. First we have the Salazar Brothers, who are a group of Mexican narco-terrorists who Jack has spent over a year infiltrating and gathering evidence against, to the point that he becomes a drug addict. They last for about half a season and multiple plot-twists, including Jack's infamous switching sides. Then they are killed off and replaced with infamous "24" villain Nina Meyers and the Injustice League of Euro-Trash that were the "Big Bad" for Season One and revealed to have played a key role in the activity of Season Two's cabal. Then they are killed off as we meet the third and final "Big Bad": Stephen Saunders, a former British black-ops agent who was part of the infamous mission in Eastern Europe against the Drazen family. Left for dead, he ends up resurfacing and deciding to strike a blow against America by unleashing the virus upon the country while at the same time eliminating the remaining Drazen clan members with a mock auction for the virus.
As characters go, I have to admit that Stephen Saunders had potential to become a break-out character for the show. But several things hamper this, most notably the rather haphazard way in which the character is introduced into the series. It's as if the writers decided at the last minute to create an "anti-Bauer" of sorts for Jack to face in the last half of the show in a desperate attempt to pad out a storyline that was being written as the season progressed. Which is sad, since it would have made for a much deeper subtext for the season (and given it much, much, much more focus) if they had Saunders running around and established as the "Big Bad" from day one, what with the running theme of Jack finally crossing the line and essentially going rogue after everything he's been through.
Of course, even Jack's descent into treason and betrayal is messed up by way of the writers refusing to fully commit to the notion of a rogue Jack Bauer running around. The notion of Jack Bauer saying, "Fuck It" to rules and regulations and freeing the Salazar Brother he spent nearly a year gathering evidence on in order to stop his brother's blackmail schemes as well as Jack's "I'm sick and tired and not going to take being made a stooge of the man anymore" was a compelling one that made sense. That being said, the cop-out revelation that it is all just a scam being pulled by Jack and two conspirators (made in typical cliched fashion, as one of Jack's collaborators rises from a hospital operating table to clear Jack and the other collaborator) kills the undercurrent dead in its tracks. The writers try and bring it back onto track by having Jack murder annoying the micro-managing boss from hell Ryan Chappelle, and later forcing his fellow conspirator, Tony, to put his wife in harm's way as part of the plan to catch Saunders. But by then's it's kind of too late. In a way, the writers lose interest in this interesting storyline twist even when they get a perfect chance to expand upon it after Jack kills Nina in cold blood despite orders to keep her alive.
Aborted storylines are a major problem and killing point for "24" this season. Besides the infamous pill subplot, we find have other aborted subplots such as:
1. Jack being a drug addict.
2. Tony being shot in the neck and whether or not he suffered any major injury from his wound.
3. The entire subplot about Jack sleeping with one of the Salazar sibling's wife while he was undercover.
4. The subplot involving Sherry threatening to expose the fact that her ex-husband's political patron-turned-enemy had killed a girl in a drunk driving accident and then covered it up.
5. Jack's break-up with Kate Warner, his romantic love interest during season two.
6. The story behind Chase's baby and Kim's reaction to Chase confiding in Chloe and not her about it
7. Tony planning on leaving CTU for a new job and the question of what would happen to Michelle professionally.
8. Suicide pills being offered to the doomed innocent people in the hotel that Saunders infected with the virus so that they wouldn't suffer a horribly bloody death at the hands of the virus.
9. The infection outbreaks that happened throughout the city after an infected cheating husband snuck out of the hotel after being exposed to the virus and running around the city.
That being said, compare this to the previous two seasons of 24, which were tightly written to such a point that when they did through in a nonsensical monkey-wrench into the equation (such as season one's revelation that Nina was indeed the mole inside CTU despite going out of their way to clear her of said claims halfway through the season) it doesn't derail the entire train. Hell, even last season's "Perils of Penelope"-style filler plots involving Kim being chased by every plot device one could throw at a fictional character didn't derail season two of the series. But the absolute drop in quality of the series this season is quite frankly something that has to be addressed with regards to how badly the show has lost its way during it's third year.
And it doesn't seem that they are learning anything from this season's collossal failure. It has been widely reported that just about the entire supporting cast of the series has been told that they will not be brought back next season. This is a huge deal given how much the show's writers have fallen back onto the supporting cast to flesh out the plot, most notably the characters of Tony and Michelle, who have become a major part of the series since the second season.
So in conclusion, what is to become of this one proud show? Can "24" recover from the disaster that was the show's third season? Will this season be the turning point in this franchise that has entertained and enthralled millions of viewers, at which point the show goes down the slippery slope of mediocrity before being cancelled? Only time will tell, as we have around seven months until "24" returns to the airwaves in January of 2005. Hopefully by then, the writers will have come to their senses and be ready to salvage the show, which does not deserve to be sunk permenantly as a result of this clunker of a season...
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