| | 24, Lost, and MTV reality showsI finally started watching the 4th season of 24 this week. I started watching the series on DVD about a year ago and went through the first two seasons fairly quickly. My brother borrowed them and got hooked on the show, and over the Thanksgiving weekend we took advantage of sale prices to buy seasons 3-5. I watched the third season late last year but left the fourth sitting on my shelf for several months before I finally opened it and plopped in disc 1 Sunday night. So far I'm six episodes in and it's an exciting season so far, much more fast-paced than any of the first three (season 1 didn't even begin to pick up steam until sometime between episodes 3 and 5). My only wish is that they would dispense with the whole pretense of having all the events in each season take place in a single 24 hour period, because that became pretty ridiculous after the first season. After six episodes, I'd rate the season at least an 80 out of 100 on the implausibility scale. The Secretary of Defense is kidnapped and his secret service detail is killed, and within about 20 minutes the Islamic terrorists who have him have managed to leave Los Angeles and drive out to a secret compound outside the city. Even less likely, the very first episode begins at 7am and it still looks dark as night without even a hint of sunlight, by the time the episode ends at 8am, it's so bright it looks like it should be noon outside. Eventually the good guys find out where the Secretary of Defense is being held and Jack Bauer goes on a daring rescue mission alone to get him, because he is about to be executed for all the world to see on the internet and an incoming group of marines won't be able to get to the scene for 15-20 minutes we are told. They eventually do arrive on the scene, after Jack has almost single-handedly killed off a dozen or so of the terrorists around the compound, and less than 30 minutes later all the carnage and bodies at the scene have been neatly organized and Jack and the Secretary are back at CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) headquarters in Los Angeles. So really the series has long since past the point where it should be called 36 or maybe 48 because it would take much more than 6 hours for the events that have happened so far to take place. Also, episode six ends with the revelation that a certain character is a traitor working with the enemy (unless later events show this is not the case). At the time I was thinking, "Come on! Who didn't see that coming?" Especially with the way the character was introduced and shown to be as duplicitous as anyone who's shown up in that season. That, and anyone who watched all of season 1 shouldn't be surprised at the possibility of someone at CTU being a mole. Who is doing background checks on these people for CTU? From what we've seen in the first four seasons, we can conclude that CTU's background checks are only slightly better than the ones the Texas Board of Nursing conducts on prospective nurses, but worse than the ones Hogwarts conducts on potential Defense Against the Dark Arts professors. With season 7 being bumped to next January because of the writers' strike, I've got plenty of time to catch up with the 2 3/4 seasons between where I am now and where that one starts. ------ Lost just gets stranger and stranger. By next week we'll supposedly get to see how some of the survivors made it off the island, or at least we'll see the flashforward of them landing back on American soil. Jack's dad I think has now surpassed Ethan in the pantheon of dead characters who just keep on showing up, although Ethan was alive for much of the first season, while Jack's dad died before the plane crash that began the series and has only been seen in flashbacks when he hasn't appeared as a ghost or hallucination, or whatever he is at this point. Characters seem to have a hard time dying on that island. Season four has been confusing and mysterious, but I've enjoyed watching it, even though it's gotten to the point that with so many characters on the show, Jack, Kate, Juliet, Sawyer, Hurley, or Sayid will sometimes go multiple episodes without making an appearance. This is atypical of past seasons, where they, along with a few others who have since died, were the heart and soul of the series. Only three episodes left in the season now, with the last two being parts of a 2-hour season finale in three weeks. I honestly can't wait. It's been fun getting to keep up with the show while it airs for the first time, instead of watching it on DVD years after its first seasons originally appeared. ------ I went through a period last year where I got into a few MTV reality series. I watch that network only occasionally and had never watched an entire season of anything it produced until I randomly tuned to the premiere episode of the 19th season of The Real World. I ended up watching every episode of that season. The characters were mostly annoying and shallow, but it was all edited and put together in such a way that made it oddly absorbing. The same goes for The Hills, which I caught a handful of episodes of but never followed regularly. Then there was A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, which featured lots of people who not only had no concept of love, but who also, apparently, didn't have a real shot at it, at least not with the titular character. Why anyone would actually want a shot at love with a girl as ugly inside and out as Tila Tequila is anyone's guess. She claims she broke up with the "winner" of the show because her hectic schedule prevented them from spending much time together, although he claimed in a (very gramatically-challenged) blog post that she never called him after the show and that nobody would give him her number, which combined with a number of factors lead to allegations that the whole show had been a sham. Well now there's a second season airing, which is only a few episodes old and reportedly was in pre-production before the first season had even ended. I was taken in by the train wreck aspect of it and watched more of the first season than I'd like to admit, but have only seen a few minutes of either the first or second episode in the current one. That was enough for me. Sham or not, this is quite possibly the most morally bankrupt TV series I have ever seen. I'll just leave it at that. The current season of The Real World started 3 weeks ago, and I have better things to do than try and catch up with it, so I'll probably be tuning out MTV for the foreseeable future. |
