Friday, November 12, 2010

Skyline: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hollywood

This review contains many spoilers, but I promise you, it won't matter. :)

I didn’t really go into this movie expecting much, but like a moth to a light, I got sucked in. It wasn’t until I left the theater, feeling quite dirty and ashamed, that the point had been made. I had been through a struggle, much like my beloved protagonist. I watched his face closely like all the others, in painful anticipation that one of them would at last spit out the line of dialogue that might finally provide the context I needed to understand what I was seeing. I endured to the bitter end, waiting with anxious unease for the vindication of my desire. I waited for someone to get to the point.

The movie opens with a hook: some lights outside, an earthquake, some dude in his underwear starts turning into a zombie, then… the movie dies for a while. Like another very trying television show I won’t mention, the film timeshifts to 15 hours previously to deliver what I was hoping would turn out to be relevant information. I was optimistic though, so I reached out to my dear screen-friends. They were pretty, after all, and I couldn’t just go and not be empathetic to pretty people. And look! They’re having a pool party, too! That’s pretty awesome, I guess.

But as I sat there in my mental bathing suit, pretending that the banality I was hearing was actually Kerouac, trying REAL hard not to impose – because that would be dreadful rude – I indulged their LA appetites. I went along with the crowd, but only because I really was concerned about my buddy, Jarrod. He’s not quite sure he wants to move to LA yet. Hey, that’s something I can get with, so he mustn’t be all that bad.

Then I found out he knocked up Elaine. That’s kind of personal, so I must be connecting with her, too. Man, this film is awesome! We got a guy who’s maybe got a job in LA doing some computery thing, and he’s going to be a father with someone who maybe doesn’t like LA so much. Ok.

Then, back to the lights.

“Wait!” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly in the theater. “Aren’t we going to get to know the other guys?” (I thought it prudent to whisper this last part, for there may have been some present who had no problem with the story) In fact, I thought, we didn’t really get to know Buddy Jarrod or his old lady all that well either. And now the aliens are going to come and take them away from me? This, I believed at first, was the point of the movie: There are ugly things that will rip away your friends before you fully get to know them. With this in mind, I trudged on.

Some guy got sucked out of the room toward the blinding light and a girl screamed. After that, Buddy Jarrod started to go all zombie again, but thankfully, the light stopped. Not much of an explanation was given for why it happened in this manner, but I assumed there was a reason. I thought maybe Buddy Jarrod was special. Maybe that is why he and the Black Guy have a gun. You must be special if you think a handgun will save you from Ginormous Alienfuckball.

But then an interesting part came: Buddy Jarrod and Black Guy see thousands of people being sucked into the big blue Thing. I found this quite frustrating because the camera didn’t really slow down long enough for me to see anyone’s faces! I kept thinking, “Wait, I might know one of them!” I mean, I have dozens of friends who now live in LA, and I have to know if they’re ok. I guess in retrospect, I only wanted to be able to emphathize with these poor souls, but they seemed more like, well, moths. And who cares when a moth flies into a buglamp, really? The aliens were ripping people away, alright, but they weren’t people from MY life. So actually, not that scary.

But they did start going after Buddy Jarrod and Black Guy shortly after and they almost got ‘em. Here, the aliens acted quite strangely, though. Something about their movements seemed off, but I assumed that I was just reading into it and dismissed it. They were saved, at last, by Pretty Elaine, who opened the door that conveniently locked our heroes on the roof. In doing so, she conveniently looked into the lights of the squid thing and started to conveniently turn zombie. I realized later that the reason for her to do this was so that we, the audience, could have a poet explain to us the awesome power of this strange magnetic light: “It was like being pulled by something. And the light, it was so beautiful.”

Alright, maybe not that poetic, but these are my friends. Maybe they aren’t ahhtists, but perhaps they are more like engineering-types. Yeah, that means they’ll come up with something clever. I’m gonna ride with them and see what they come up with.

Brother Jarrod speaks: “They’re not near the water; we should go to the marina and get a boat and get out of here.” Ok, I’m inspired by his optimism. Because, after all, what would that take? They mentioned it being ten blocks away. That’s probably half an hour to an hour on foot – assuming all other forms of transportation would attract far too much attention. You would probably go at night to avoid being seen, and take the back alleys. But even as easy peasy as that sounds, how do you know those big floating squid monsters are impervious to the air above the water? And where would it take you that is safe? Perhaps you would swim, say to an island? It wouldn’t be fun, but it would save your ass, right? Assuming the aquaphobic alien theory is correct.

So, they pile into their convertibles and high-tail it out of –

Wait, what?

Man, the black guy didn’t have to die! Why did you take cars? And in the broad daylight? And with the top down? This sucks. I liked him.

Oh well. I realized that the Ugly Things Will Rip Your Black Friends Away Theory was probably not the real point of the movie, because this situation was easily avoidable.

Then, enter Angel. I don’t remember his real name, but I recognize him as that smooth-talking, kind-hearted detective from Dexter. He won me over, not just by saving Jarrod and Elaine’s beautiful butts, but by just looking like Angel. I didn’t have to get to know him, because I already KNEW him. It was like going to class for the first time in high school and feeling all alone, and then realizing that someone you know is in the same class with you. And this guy is gonna be with me and Buddy Jarrod until the very last blue light goes out. This'll be awesome! With another shot of adrenaline to my poor, aching heart, I sat up and readied myself with some popcorn for the next episode in the Pretty People saga.

After a while, the popcorn started to taste funny and a queasy feeling started to set in. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but it went away immediately when the fighter jets arrived. Almost like the movie could see the precursors of the thought, “why is nothing happening?” before I could formulate the thought, the military showed up. I was at first sour to think that the military would be a lame cop-out for a movie with such beautiful people, but their fighter jets looked pretty sweet.

I don’t know how Buddy Jarrod knew which jet had the nuke, but together we watched it fly to the mother ship and drop its payload, and the most miraculous thing happened: Buddy Jarrod and his friends were not affected by the explosion at all. This is the point at which I began to question my assumption of the film’s purpose.

I was beginning to think that maybe Jarrod was getting a lot of freebies, given how little progress he had made towards advancing a goal of any kind. I was starting to see that his friends would begin suffering for his inadequacies and his utter cowardice, and so I formed a new theory: Make friends with the military. It’s not implausible that the purpose of this film would be to raise enlistment levels. And if Monsters come out of the sky to suck your brains out, you’re gonna want some muscle, no?

So I waited for the military to give Soldier Jarrod some orders to make him, uh, useful. I even imagined a downed soldier saying something like, “…must…blow…arc…reactor…” and then handing him some funny-looking but probably expensive device which he would no doubt be able to use because of his computery skills (that is what exposition is for, anyways). But this moment did not come.

Instead, the giant bipedal beasties destroyed every soldier that came on screen. Even the ones on the roof.* As well, the mother ship which was downed by the nuke had somehow, by powers that go just as unexplained as the mothlight powers, reconstructed itself. The military seems quite as useless and incapable here as That Chick That Was With Them At One Point. The only one that ends up DOING anything is Angel, who kills himself trying to do it. Now that’s not very productive. It’s hard to fight off an invasion, what with the whole being dead thing. And he wasn’t really successful, either.

So imagine my frustration. I had come, at last, to the climax of this journey with my pretty new friends; I had laughed and cried, and been through the depths of despair; yet I still didn’t know what the goddam point was! Why am I in this story? AM I in this story? And if I am, does this story have an end? May we get there, please?

But then, I realized those funny movements the aliens were making earlier on the roof, and the movements they made whenever Buddy Jarrod and his better half were on the screen. Watching Jarrod fistfight a squid monster to defend his girl, I knew: They were protected by a Third-Act Forcefield. The Third Act Forcefield is that wonderful device which means the hero will never have to confront the villain until the third act. The villain must always remain JUST weak and slow enough to get us to the end.

As if responding to the other part of my brain that thought of this, one part said, “well great, but that doesn’t explain why we must care.” And the response: “maybe we will be given a reason shortly.” “You lie,” quipped the first. Had I not been drawn to the flickering screen, I might have found more interest in this inner dialogue. This was the climax, you see, and all kinds of flashy lights (albeit not Beautiful Blue) were sucking me in. And before I realized that the hero and his heroine had given up, the movie turned from a comedy into a dark horror movie.

I still don’t know how it happened, but before I knew it, the only people I cared about – who I stopped caring about – were now trapped in some hellish chamber. The heroine wakes up and finds the bodies of those near her being snatched up by giant mechanical arms, their skulls crushed with a chomp, their brains sucked out and spit into a tube of goo, and their bodies tossed into a blue vat. She looks around, hearing the chomping, one by one, of her compatriots, as the arms draw closer to her. She is surrounded by newly created monsters who are receiving new brains as if on an assembly line, and they stomp on by. And at last, Buddy Jarrod is taken from her, and his skull crushed, his body thrown aside. This is the end.

Actually, I thought this is when the film just started getting good. You take the most annoying sorority girl, dim-witted from head to toe, and toss her into this mess, and you bet your ass you’ll get some sympathy from me. But at least in movies like The Human Centipede, you only have to endure about twenty or thirty minutes with the most unsympathetic characters before they start to get real sympathetic real quick.

And so, in the final five minutes of the film, the point seems quite clear to me: Fuck Hollywood.

No, let me clarify that. That sounds cheap, but let me explain. What we have here are people who go to LA and wind up getting sucked into a machine that literally turns them into bio-mechanical robots that go out and do the same thing to everyone they can find. Their only strength seems to be size and a certain knack for wielding arresting amounts of flashy lights. If anyone even thinks of fighting back, they’re gonna find themselves with a squidy up their ass in no time. The worst weapons we can think of cannot bring the beast down, even when we ask the government to step in. They just rebound, and keep on making the lights happen.

In case you haven’t caught the drift, I’m talking about Hollywood itself. Being a filmmaker, I know an awful lot about the machine that is Hollywood, and how no one is going to crash THAT party. If you think you’re just going to go to Hollywood and change the game and start making art, think again. What they care about is the flashy lights, because that is all cinema is to them.

It is for this reason that I felt so dirty leaving the theater after seeing this movie. This film was never attempting to tell a story or generate any kind of emotion from me other than, perhaps, infatuation. Infatuation leads to dollars. But today, they just want our dollars, tomorrow, they may want our minds. Some may say the want this, too. Advertisers would certainly agree that your thoughts have monetary value.

And so, saving the most horrifying elements for the moment after the mothlight has trapped the heroine – this says to me that this film COULD have been an awesome movie. If there was some sort of a “fear of fatherhood” statement to be made here that might introduce some sort of human element, it was lost on me until the final moments. There certainly seems to be in the end, since Beastie Jarrod saves Pretty Elaine from becoming Beastie Elaine.

I don’t think the makers of this film intended any of this, but nevertheless, it’s what I get out of it. I have looked into the light and come out on the other side. I have seen the existential horror that is Hollywood, forever destroying all that is beautiful by directing our attentions towards that which endeavors to consume us.

But at least they are not destroying pretty people.

*At what point does a building collapse under the weight of a monster of the same size? Go back and watch this and tell me what you come up with, because I was sure those buildings were coming down at some point.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Mad Men and Glee are the Same Show

If I say that Mad Men and Glee are the same show, you’d probably think I was joking, but you’d be wrong. Aside from the fact that one is a drama and the other a comedy, there is little to distinguish the two, other than cosmetic differences like art direction, music, style, tone, etc. I know you’re not going to see Peggy Olson running down the halls belting “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” any more than you’ll see Sue “The Rock” Selvester crying her eyes out in the ladies room because one of the boys touched her in the funny place. What I’m talking about is the narrative core. The moral compass that guides the shows, and they can both rest comfortably on the same foundation like a house with two designs.

The meaning of life on Mad Men seems to be this: Those guilty of the greatest sin are those who live their lives and behave in ways true to others yet contradictory to one’s own personal beliefs and desires. Following the dogma of society instead of staying true to what you know is right – to what you feel is right in your gut.

And wouldn’t you know it? That’s the meaning of life on Glee, too.

*****

Glee is not just about some idealistic teens going through some trivial, You-Just-Don’t-Know-Me, outcast, Breakfast Club kinda thing. If it was, the teachers and parents would either be villains or would hardly factor into the equation at all. Fact is, they are just as big of players as the kids on the show and they seem to act like the kids -- and usually less mature, not more.

But Glee wouldn’t work as a drama. Rachel’s character, for example, is a control freak driven to such an absurd degree that no one would put up with her, even if she does get a slushy in her face everyday; they barely put up with her as it is. But in the hyper-reality of Glee, her pain and passion endear her to the audience and make her sympathetic, especially given how naïve she constantly proves herself to be. Puck would appear more out-of-place than he already is in the Glee club, Finn’s inability to man-up would come off as annoying, and Mercades, Kurt, Tina and the literally insane but comically hilarious Britney would all wind up being stereotypes that serve no purpose but to disappoint us. No, they work great as stereotypes BECAUSE it is comedy. How else could you realistically bring all of these identities together (at all, much less to sing and dance) unless it took place in an absurd realm?

And that, very clearly, is the real fantasy that brings us to the tele, isn’t it? The fantasy of us all just dropping our nonsense and one day getting to be who we want to be, love who we want to love, and no longer kowtow to spurious notions of society’s approval. That’s a tall order, even for folks on Glee. What holds them together as friends at all is an intangible proof (the Glee club) of connectedness, yet when they hurt each other, it is out of fear of societal retribution (i.e. “I’m a cheerleader and that makes me popular and I can’t lose that,” or “I say I’m doing what’s best for Glee club, but really I just want the spotlight because if I’m not in it, they will think less of me,” or the more obvious, “If I’m in Glee club, the football team will beat me up.”).

At the beginning of the show, no one is where they should be. Will is in a suffocating and, at times, traquilizing marriage, Emma is spineless, Ken is a douche, Rachel is hopeless and broken and Finn is a tool.* There is actually a good deal of cruelty on the show when you think about it. The first episode is like walking through a house at night just after the power goes out, and then at the end of the episode, the kids do their first number without the help of Mr. Shuster. They pull it together by the former representation of cruelty himself, Finn, and like the lights suddenly coming on again, the kids all sing together with heart. They wear the same costumes, as if no one is more important than the other and everyone brings something to the table. All the shame and pain is left at the door for the first time ever. Our social anxiety goes away, and for once, we get to be somebody.

*****

For adults, the men of Madison Avenue are a more palatable expression of the same anxiety, but there is little reprieve. Yes, in reality, adults really are just as petty as kids are often given all the blame for. Because, think about human history: traveling to faraway places to say, “mine!” upon stepping on each bit of land and disregarding its inhabitants? Slaughtering an entire sect of religious folk who pray to the same invisible man in the sky as you, but kinda differently? Slaying kings, and even denouncing monarchy altogether, only to relish in the spoils of aristocracy inherited by our gluttonous bourgeois ancestors? Sounds like kids playing in the sandbox to me. Any time can look at the time before it and go, “ha! How childish we were!”

We look at the Fifties the same way, gawking at our gross errors. If we look at ourselves today, we can’t take TOO seriously how childish we still are, but back then

Don Draper is about the most masculine guy on television. Just ask
these guys. For men, he’s certainly a fresh character to replace decades of sitcoms featuring the babbling buffoon of a husband who is always overshadowed by his far more intellectually superior wife. No amount of Die Hard movies can stave off the hunger men have to be men in today’s day and age. Whenever you see a man in a current TV show opening closet doors or looking through drawers or cabinets (like Mr. Shuster), he’s probably looking for his balls.

Having said all that, it may seem strange that a man can find this in a show which accentuates the moral destitution of being “masculine.” Perhaps this is because it also accentuates the moral destitution of being “feminine.” It’s disappointing by today’s standards to see a woman so willingly treated in such a tawdry fashion. It’s bad enough to see a woman victimized, but a woman who is a participant in her own malady? Well, if not for origins of this in early patriarchal society, it might have been different. Fact is, women have always been thought of as property by men. I don’t like it any more than the next person, but it’s the truth. It warms my heart to think that I live in an age where this paradigm is shifting, but it puts men in very awkward position as a result.

I have only seen a few episodes, but so far, this gender issue plays on the center stage. Other matters, though, like race and class, are also at stake. For instance, how can one prattle on with his buddies in the presence of a probably-Negro servant who says nothing, and continue in that act despite the fact – and probably because of the fact – that his silence and compliance is expected by and required by the beliefs of the group? How can one be made to feel good about doing this except that he has learned a creed which contradicts his biological tendency toward compassion? He’s standing right there. He’s a human being, not a plant. But, there are consequences to reaching out to the one who is perceived to be the most inferior in the bunch (even when everyone is white and male). Sounds a lot like high school, actually.

Take this picture: Don Draper’s wife is depressed, and we 60 years later know why. Don probably knows why too, but the cue he gets from society is, “send her to a shrink.” So he does. He probably doesn’t want to because he knows it won’t help, but he does. Guys like him get paid to whisper sweet nothings into every woman’s ear from sea to shining sea (and by whisper, I mean plaster onto billboards everywhere). So if he can’t believe that any real happiness exists for her, how can he expect her to find it at all? And how can he truly be happy when she so clearly isn’t?

The point is that the problem would not exist at all if neither played by the “rules.” The rules are the problem in Mad Men and also on Glee, making both shows very postmodern. Take a bunch of America’s most typical yet admittedly ridiculous character-types and throw them all into a high school, shake, garnish with a mint leaf and serve on ice. What a tasty treat! No wonder this show is so goddam popular. Nobody likes what all of these rival ideologies have turned into in this country, but it’s what we’ve got. By their own admission, the women’s lobbies in Washington have very little left to do. The government only has jurisdiction over public jobs and spaces, and laws have been made to protect women and minorities in all of those areas. They accomplished their goal. Now, all that is arguably left is the cultural space and the private sector. But postmodernism is all about offering up for scrutiny any and all traditions, beliefs, trends, histories and systems.

Glee clearly satirizes the concept of democracy in favor of a more sensible Take-Off-The-Funny-Hats-And-Just-Be-Reasonable approach. When asking Emma on a date, Ken says, “I’m a good man, Emma. I’ll treat you right and I’ll put up with your crazy. They won’t fire me ‘cuz I’m a minority so I’ll always be able to provide for you.” Gawsh! What a charmer. And Sue Sylvester is a feminazi willing to invoke the sexism card because some of Shuster’s students used her copy machine, just like Terri thinks her hopes and dreams are being trampled on because she and Will can’t afford a fancy grand foyer for the house they shouldn’t buy (but ultimately shall if Will doesn’t open the right drawer and find his balls in time). All of this, as if to say, "This world is insane, and I can either get comfortable and be invisible or rock the boat and be hated."

*****

I noticed this parallel between the shows fairly quickly, but probably because I happened to have watched them back-to-back one day. I might have noticed it anyway, but I’ve since discovered this trend in most of the popular shows that are on television now, even if they don't have the same overall Meaning of Life as Mad Men and Glee. These shows have everything to do with living two lives: the one that makes you who you are, and the one that others want/expect you to have. It is this latter that causes all the chaos and conflict, because as I said, it is only when you are not being true to yourself that you are “at fault,” according to the ethics of the show’s universe.

Breaking Bad is a good example. It starts off much the same way as Glee: an emasculated man whose dreams are being crumbled by sanitized suburban existence. The show’s grand gag is that to be good, you have to break bad. It defines good as being alive and in control, even of one’s own death. Especially of one’s own death, which will NOT be cancer - not if Walt has anything to say about it.

On Dexter, the hero only feels alive when he’s got someone seran-wrapped to a table. He witnessed about as much horror as one can, and as a small child, so it is very difficult for him to take the ethics of society all that seriously. He has his own code, the Code of Harry, which he sticks to. Much of Dexter’s character arc results from his willingness and ability to stick to this code. He is also another fantasy of ours: the man who doesn’t just let killers and rapists slip through the legal cracks; he gets ‘em. We all know it deep down while we watch, just as we watch the Glee-clubbers be who they really are, that we wish we could do the same.

For Mad Men, easier comparisons can be made to shows like The Tudors, where the caste system literally determines how people should speak to and interact with each other. Everyone wears funny outfits and those at the top are frivolous, loquatious punks. It does begin with Henry VIII after all. I don’t much care for The Tudors, but the show still carries with it the absurdity of following tradition (war and monarchies) versus following what’s best (peace and democracy).

I would also point to The United States of Tara, House, Dead Like Me, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and, begrudgingly, Weeds for main characters whose heroism comes from their disregard for traditional morality and their ability (or inability) to be who they want and struggle with life’s questions in their own way. The effect on each of the characters is much more limited on these shows than it is on Glee or Mad Men, but it's there.

The meaning of life on House, for example, is: Everybody lies. Start with that, says the show. To that end, ONE of the characters (House), as a result, goes to great lengths NOT to listen to anyone because everyone’s full of shit. He has an obsessive interest in any case concerning sociopathy, psychopathy, schizophrenia, asperger's, autism and tourette’s. Why? Because they are all social conditions whereby the patient is no longer expected to behave by social norms – which is more or less how House lives his life anyway.

*****

All this is to say that the popularity of these shows suggests something about us as a people. We seem to be generally dissatisfied with who we’ve become, or rather who we still are. The shows don't say this, the popularity of them says this. To some degree, I think this has been the case for a long time. Probably as far back as the dawn of civilization. Really, this is all to do with the Hero's journey. He is the one that goes beyond and into the forbidden territory and brings back the boon for us all to have. He goes into the territory we would never dare go, and when he comes back, we can go, "see that wasn't so bad." That is why we watch shows where the hero acts more like a villain but is still a hero. He's rude, he breaks the law, he lies, he cheats, he swindles, and still he's the hero because he does it so we don't have to. But all of these things are only bad in the context in which they are done. Jesus was crucified because he was seen as a villain in his time. Remove "his time" from the equasion and what do you have?

These shows are popular, I think, because we get to see what it's like if a certain alien belief system (a misanthropic doctor, a drug-dealing science teacher, a kingpin with anxiety, etc) were suddenly dropped into the current spectrum of acceptable thought. We don’t watch Mad Men because we like looking at our dirty laundry, but because we are miserable. If Don Draper is the best ideal we can strive for, and he lives in a time and place we clearly ought not to return to, what does that mean for us? It probably means we fear the future, or the pain of having to change. Men don't want to be castrated any more than women want to be property, it's that simple.

And it’s good that we can find humor in the absurdity of public schooling and modern adolescence, but why should the optimism of Glee be just a fantasy? We all know that kids are cruel, and maybe that will never change, but we can at least see our own general intolerance and cruelty reflected in such an environment. Like saying, "ah, yes! Great that we are not racist anymore. But those sand-niggers... fuck those guys!" Muslim kids, like ALL kids, just want to be liked and loved, like everyone else. That is just that simple, too.

We may never see any Muslims in Glee club, but hey, at least we're not living in the fifties!

*For those who haven't seen the show, only these last two are students, and they have gone through the most change on the show.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

I Kinda Hate 24 (updated)

We’re coming down the home stretch on 24. The bizarre messege is so crystal clear to me at this point, the only real question I still don’t have an answer for is Why do I still watch this damn show? It’s like slowing down to get a good look at a car wreck, I suppose. A bucha howlin’ injens doesn’t need to be the biggest reason to watch a John Wayne flick either, right? Or does it? You gotta admit that it’s the flair that the other stuff just doesn’t have. I could easily get my terrorist-casualty quota met by the likes of McQuade, McLane or even McQeen, but nobody does me like Bauer do me. He does that thing I like.

It’s true that Jack acts out our revenge fantasies so that we don’t have to. If you were in a room with Bin Laden with the door locked and windows drawn, what wouldn’t you do? You’d probably melt like snowflake on the Tucson asphalt, that’s what you WOULD do. But let’s pretend, just for the moment, you had some balls. THEN, what would you do? Pretend you could dig deep down into the Reptilian recesses of your peanut brain and act on your instinct. You’ve got a screwdriver. You could pluck his fingernails out, one by one. You could pop his eye ball out, that might be fun. Or, with a hammer, you could break each bone in his body, starting with his toes.

Maybe you’ll get only so far in this Himmler-esque Gedanken experiment before you feel compelled to stop. Maybe that’s why they are canceling 24. It’s just no fun anymore.

I never thought the torture was fun, which is the first reason to wonder why I ever thought the show was any fun at all. From a filmmaker’s standpoint, I love the concept of a real-time drama, and I love the editing. The amount of work that goes into each episode, particularly in post-production when they have to organize all the canisters and log each clip and figure out just when and where to put each clip on the screen – it’s pretty damn impressive. There are often really good performances as well, usually from the minor cast. President Logan was really fun to watch, though not nearly as great as President Palmer in the first two seasons. And of course Chloe. Ahh, Chloe.

In the beginning, the show spent a good deal of time on each big decision or event. The successful detonation of a nuclear bomb over the skies of Nevada in season two was one of the best. There weren’t very many casualties, but that wasn’t the point. Then, the show didn’t need to rack up deaths to get us to think about serious matters. The event was critical to the resolution of another subplot, too: Jack’s suicidal tendencies after the death of his wife. Everything gelled then in a way that they don’t anymore. Contrast this with the season six premiere: The terrorists successfully detonate a nuke over California. This was the beginning of the end for 24, in my opinion. Why bother watching the rest? The worst has happened, so what is left? Well, I guess that is why the last season is about international conflict.

With begrudging masochism, I trudged through the season, and now, before it has even reached its close, I can no longer shake this frustration. In AA, they say the hardest part is admitting you have a problem. I have a problem: I hate this fucking show and I can't stop watching it.

Let me step back for a second, though, and deliver vital info unto the privileged masses who have been spared from the nuclear fallout of 24: Season 8. The neocon leanings of the show’s political philosophy need no analysis here, it’s pretty blatant. What’s not so obvious (though is becoming increasingly obvious) is the ultra-sexist patriarchal values. Women ruin EVERYTHING on this damn show!

For those who haven’t seen the show/season, here’s a recap (including many season 8 spoilers): The president, Allison Taylor, wants to finish a middle-eastern peace agreement, but an assassination plot of the President of the fictional Islamist Republic of Kamistan (which might as well be Iran) by oppositional forces in his own government has canceled the talks. Jack’s crazy girlfriend, Renee Walker, is brought in because of an undercover op she did years ago with the Russians. The terrorists successfully kidnap IRK president Hassan, and before Jack n’ Gang catches up with the terrorists, he is slain in an online broadcast. Now, it turns out the Russians were behind the whole plot because they want to sabotage the peace agreement. Oh, and in keeping with tradition, this season had a mole who was working for the Russians, too.

I never knew quite what to make of the show’s decision to have a woman as the president. Maybe they are prognosticating that Hillary will be president a few terms from now. After all, the first president on the show was black, and he was well-liked. Of course, that would mean a nuke going off on American soil, and several assassination attempts (and an ultimately successful one).

But it’s an odd choice because, even in 24 world, she’s a neolib. She’s motivated by a naïve platitude of international peace through talking. Maybe that is why recently she has become the real villain on the show. She would rather allow a dirty bomb to go off in the heart of Manhattan killing millions than give up Hassan to the terrorists and kill her precious peace negotiations. That’s pretty fucked up, but the show didn’t really see that as wrong, at first. BUT THEN, enter the revelation of the Russian plot and something changes. They have the season’s mole in custody and she’s willing to give up the names of high-ranking Russian government officials in exchange for immunity, and Jack wants those names pretty damn bad because they just had his girlfriend killed. Taylor decides, instead, to leave it alone and go along with the peace treaty as if there really was no Russian plot to assassinate IRK’s president made to look like an in-house job. She tells Jack, in person, that she will not have the peace process jeopardized and has him escorted to an Air Force base.

The show is pretty clear about one thing: you can tell other countries what to do, you can tell terrorists what to do, but nobody tells Jack what to do. In the past, those who listen to Jack unconditionally, like Chloe, are regarded as the good guys, even if he’s wrong. They are loyal. Jack has been nothing but loyal to President Taylor, and not will he not be given a chance to pursue his girlfriend’s murderer, he must be silent. At this point you have to wonder, Where is the big picture? Just how much can feasibly be sacrificed for this peace process before it’s no longer worth it? Jack knows. Oh believe me, Jack knows. He’s gone off the deep end, he’s been hooked on heroin, but he knows. If he doesn’t, then at least he thinks he does and he won’t abandon his principles. What a respectable guy. **tear**

Let’s cut the crap, though, seriously. Let’s just say it: she’s a bitch that needs to be put in her place. Into her place, you may also place any other woman on the show that doesn’t blindly listen to good men. Let’s go down the list…

The season’s mole, Dana Walsh, is a pretty blonde who spent the first season trying to evade a stalker ex-boyfriend. When she is revealed to be the mole, you might think “Aha! A strong female character!” But then when Jack literally smacks her around, she gives in. Why does he have to smack her? She would have said what she said anyway, that she would give up info in exchange for an immunity deal. That’s how it ALWAYS works with a hired hand. Jack knows this. You might say he’s getting payback for Renee’s death, but Dana didn’t kill Renee and probably doesn’t even know who did, or why. Here it’s not even torture, it’s just abuse. I don’t suppose there’s a difference, but at least there’s usually a reason for torture.

And Hassan’s family is a buncha bitches, let me tell you. I suppose Hassan’s biggest crime was not smacking his wife and daughter around more. But then, Hassan was the only thing holding the peace process together. His daughter’s main role on the show is to cry a lot. I think that’s in the script notes or something: “Meanwhile, Kayla Hassan cries. End scene.” Emmy gold. The damaged wife must accept her husband’s infidelity, too. Of course, by the end, when he gets killed, she cries too. She also takes her place as political puppet for America, like the good girl she hopes to be. After all, she only seems to wear her shawl like it’s just some trendy thing middle-eastern women do, so we know she doesn’t care TOO much about her faith. The season’s not over, though, and I suspect she will learn about the Russian plot, step down from the peace process, and all hell will break loose. Like Taylor, all of her brownie points will be lost.

So many women trying to DO shit. Why can’t they all be like Kim? At the beginning of the season, Kim said “it’s ok, dad, you go do what you have to do, and be careful. I love you.” She’s got a family now, and she’s incredibly supportive of her father now. She’s a good girl. She might still become terrorist-bait, but regardless, she’ll be the only thing Jack has at the end of the season. The good, baby-making wife.

The only really independent female left on the show seems to be Chloe, but even she seems to be a pushover for Jack. That is why pitting Jack against Chloe in these final episodes will be interesting (yes, I’m in this to the end). I doubt she will pursue him for very long before she tells the upper-ups to fuck off. The DHS guy that appointed her, the slime-bucket that wanted to save his job, will get his end.

The meaning of life for women on the show seems to be: Listen to all of the men that are on this list: Jack Bauer.

If you are asking, Why do you insist this is a sexist thing? Isn’t that true of the men too? Not really. Tony, for example, has butted heads with him before. And so did president Palmer. Men are held to a different standard than women. Because men are (allegedly) always guided by some set of core principles, even if those are disreputable, you must respect them. The men who wanted to oust Hassan, or the Russians who want out of the peace process, or even Hassan himself, who, as it turned out, didn’t trust the Americans either and compiled illegally acquired intel on US operations.

When women want to speak, however, they are always seen as whimsical, flighty and naïve. Their only recourse is to obey their masters, and Jack Bauer is the master of this universe. Even when the writers had a golden opportunity in season 6 to make Jack completely batshit insane, Jack would have still been empathetic because of everything that pushed him to his insanity (he did spent 18 months in a Chinese labor camp, after all). At every turn, Taylor asked Jack what to do and she listened every time, and he was right every time. Now she’s going and making her own decisions all of the sudden.

One of the best female characters on the show was Michelle, back in the first few seasons. She did what she had to do regardless of what anyone said, including Tony. For that matter, the infamous Nina Meyers would count, too. She became a villain, but she was one that you could do business with like any other. Any 24 fan who’s been with it since the beginning knows there has never been a better villain than her.

Why can’t we have that again? What are the writers doing to me? I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. I’ve overlooked the 2D racism, the subtle sexism, the inhumane torture and even the jingoistic Realpolitik, but God save me from bad writing!

President Taylor was a good guy, even when she was willing to sacrifice half of Manhattan to her peace process, so long as the men approved. Jack knew what was at stake, and he supported her. Now that his girlfriend is dead, and the Russians seem to be involved, those stakes are gone. So what is the message? Killing American citizens is ok to justify peace with the Arabs, but killing Jack Bauer’s girlfriend is justification enough to resurrect the Cold War.

I hate this show.

ADDENDUM: 24's backwards moral philosophy is not only vindicated by the series finale, it is glorified. The neoliberal president tries to atone for not listening to Jack by stepping down from the peace treaty at the last minute and resigning for her crimes of high treason. And all the members of the Russian conspiracy are killed because they didn't listen to Jack when he said, "Die." That's right: he didn't torture them for information or evidence, because he already had the evidence. He just straight up killed people for revenge. And not quickly either. One of them took a while, the one they found with a hole carved out of his chest.

One funny thing I will point out, though, is how Chloe ended up voicing exactly what I said. Just before Jack is about to assassinate the Russian president, who is also involved in the conspiracy, Chloe reminds Jack that killing the Russian president will provoke a war, and that Rene wouldn't have wanted that. He does not kill the president, so I guess she's the only woman who truly escapes the "shoulda listened to Jack" law (of course, if we're expected to believe that Jack knows what he's doing, which we are because of the proficiency of his killing spree, how did he not think of the ramifications of killing the president of a global superpower?)

However, we never see Jack atone for what he's done. In fact, Jack sets up a webcam to say how proud he is. That's right, a little video that he made on his iPhone. He doesn't say that he should be judge and jury (although he actually says that elsewhere in the episode, while pointing a gun at someone's head), and he doesn't say "kids, don't try this at home." I think that's what I loathe the most about the show, it's what's not said. It's the implied good things. Our country is a great country, and although the show implies that it's good when Jack murders people in cold blood (since we get to watch the bad guys squirm 'cuz they know Bauer's gonna get 'em), it implies that our country is great, too! So, our justice system shows we're a great country, but it's also great when certain people **who share our political sympathies** take the law into their own hands. Well, it's a good thing I'm one of the good guys! I'm gonna go kill me an IRS agent.