The Catcher in the Sand

The curtain has fallen upon the 8th season of ‘24′ and the producers claim that this was the final one. I keep a certain dose of skepticism about this, as the main character – Jack Bauer – was still as alive and as in bad shape as in most other final episodes of the previous seven seasons. It may be for the big screen feature that was announced, and I am quite curious to know what format that film will take as an alternative to the real time 24 x one hour episodes in real-time, which were the trademark and the principal gimmick pacing the series for the whole duration of the eight seasons. This format imposed a certain gradation of the development of the action and of the characters in the time-frame of each episode and in the time-frame of the season, which became the duration of a full day in the life (and sometimes death) of the characters. Here relies much of the strength but also of the weakness of the formula, as after placing aside the bigger or even smaller credibility questions (like when do the heroes eat, sleep, go to the bathroom?) the fans of the series learned the pace and the rhythms and knew in many cases what to expect next with a precision of minutes.

(video source FoxBroadcasting)

‘24′ was said to be the ultimate post-911 series, and it raised serious moral questions about the approach of members of the CTU in fighting terror attacks and terrorism threats in a period when the American society and the whole world was confronted with the same type of questions. The other dilemma the main heroes faced permanently is between individual action and the trust in the system – a system we quick learned is completely corrupt (in the eyes of the authors) to the point that any character from the rookie agent in the CTU to the President of the United States can be a suspect or eventually a traitor. There are few certain things in the world of ‘24′ – the ‘do not kill (your people)’ taboo is broken in the second season, the trust in the institution of the presidency in the 4th or the 5th, even the complete dedication of Jack Bauer to his country is put under a big question mark in the last season, when he seems to engage in what looks like a personal vendetta at the expense of the world peace. What is left is maybe the protective love of Jack for his daughter and the friendship between him and Chloe – too little human feelings in such a savage world.

Yet, the human dimension is what stays for me from these series. After the eighth season I cannot remember how many times Jacj saved the world in 24 hours, I am pretty sure that atomic bombs were twice exploded in the US, that ballistic rockets were shot on the big American cities, and chemical and biological attacks happened several times and I cannot really distinguish between them. What I do and will remember is that I have seen in ‘24′ the first Afro-American president at work a few years before Obama,  I watched Nina’s treason and Terry’s death in the first season, I resonated with the start and tragic end of the love story between Michelle and Tony Almeida, I shared the dilemmas, achievements, but also mistakes and treason of several fictional American presidents. Actually the turmoil that engulfs president Taylor in the last season was one of the reasons to watch this season attentively – a season which I started as a viewer with a big dose of skepticism and some boredom, but which became one of the best, and not only because by mid-season we new it will be the last.

Or will it not?

My two preferred series on the US TV during the last few years ended last week. First the curtain fell on ‘Lost’. It started six years ago as what looked like a dramatized version of ‘Survivor’ with a group of people stranded on an island following a jetliner crash. Soon the island proved to be much more than a small piece of land lost in the Pacific Ocean, it had magical power and hid numerous mysteries, as well as other groups of people fighting for its control. The gathering of people also started to look much beyond coincidental, and the permanent alternation of flashbacks revealed their past and their personalities. As we came to know them better and better, to discover their strength and weaknesses, their qualities and flaws, their passions and secrets, the relation between the characters became the central strength of the series.

(video source minorityFILMS)

The following seasons made the series look more and more complex. At one point, during the third or fourth season the complexity of the situations and labyrinths of the action seemed to grow beyond control. The jumps in time started to be not only backwards, but also forwards and sidewards. Time travel and magic seemed to replace to a large extent the scientific and rational approach of the first two seasons. By the fifth season I had personally lost any hope to understand the whole action by means of logic. Luckily, the core of characters continued to be with us, and I and probably many other fans got to the point of relation you establish with family members or good friends – when you care about them you are ready to oversee their flaws. So the last and final season which was supposed to explain everything did not disappoint me even if I less resonate with mystical and religious explanations as the ones that were brought in by the producers and script authors, and even if some episodes seemed to carry (maybe intentionally) glimpses of Xena, The Fountain or Indiana Jones. What I cared about was the fate of Jack, John, James, Kate, Sayid, Hugo, Jin, Sun, and yes, even of Ben.

‘Lost’ was the best series of the 2000s – maybe at pair with HBO’s ‘The Wire’. It was not in my opinion the best TV series of all times as some consider it. I liked more the 90s hit ‘X-Files’. Yet it may have been the series whose characters I cared mostly about.

My two preferred TV series (and actually the only ones that I am following) are back on screens with their new seasons. The Israeli cable TV channel Hot 3 transmits the episodes one or two days after their airing in the US.

It’s the last season for Lost or so they say. It looked like kind of a dramatized ‘Survivor’ in the first season with flashbacks into the past lives of each of the characters, to evolve towards a combination of science-fiction and horror story in the 2nd and 3rd season. Then seasons 4 and 5 saw the story line getting more complicated, with multiple threads. The strike of the script writers crippled one of the last seasons, and with the number of episodes reduced to half, and the jumps into past starting to alternate with jumps into future as well as parallel presents generated by time travel, everything started to look more and more complicated. Sure, we became attached and some of us addicted to some of the characters, and felt like personal losses when some of them died, but at some moments the story lines seemed to become too many and too intermingled. For this reason I believe that the idea of the series producers to start the season with a look back into the previous seasons was very good. The prologue was really excellent, many of the blurry details from the previous season cleaned-up and became now more clear, some of the mystery characters found their places in the puzzle. The first two episodes aired last week start building up towards the final confrontation that will determine the fate of our heroes, of the island, and maybe of the planet. The good news is that with time travel and parallel life spans now well built into the logic of the script all characters have a second or third chance – even those we have seen dying in the previous seasons. At its pick ‘Lost’ is one of the best series in I have seen, getting close to the mythological ‘X-Files’. The thrill of great adventures that flows through good quality science fiction from Jules Verne to Spielberg is present here. Hopefully the great expectations will not be followed by a great disappointment.

24 has quite a different history. The best seasons were the first two ones in my opinion, as the concept of the 24 episodes telling in real-time one hour each of a story that happens during one calendar day was fresh. The initial team of actors were blessed with strong characters, and the intrigues in the halls of the counter-terrorist unit combined with the highest political level conflicts provided an interesting combination. As the show advanced in the next seasons the formula remained the same, so new thrills had to be found, new threats, new villains, new paths of treason. There is however a limit in how many ways the world can be saved in 24 hours, and after we have seen atomic bombs dropped on LA, ballistic rockets launched from the Mid West, dirty bombs contaminating DC, chemical attacks on the Big Apple, hostages at the White House and US presidents guilty of treason there is not much left even to the imagination. The problem with the last seasons of the show is that we almost can predict from start and with half a minute accuracy the murders, the lies, the cover-ups, and when will Jack Bauer torture and when he will be tortured. Unless something special happens  and there are no signs in the first four episodes of the 8th season, it’s time for ‘24′ to be put to rest.