monkey nonsense

WARNING: may contain 24 spoilers

i’ve never been a big fan of 24. but i’ll watch it because i watch pretty much everything on tv. it’s usually fairly entertaining. there’s always been a lot of suspension of disbelief… you have to overlook A LOT on that show. but i started getting used to overlooking such things and enjoying the show just for the action and drama (however unbelievable) that it produces.

however, i feel like this season is the worst of the seasons i’ve watched (i think i’ve seen parts of 1,3,4 and 5… though really i only know for sure that i’ve watched all of season 5 since that’s the only one i followed on tv… wait, i don’t think i watched the end of season 5 because tina went back to taiwan… anyways…)

maybe it’s just that i’ve started to notice things that have always been there, but only now annoy me. there’s always been some dumb things about 24 - how there’s always a mole… how they always accuse the wrong person of being the mole… how the minor CTU field people always get killed and jack has to do everything himself… how the “real-time” timing of things just isn’t realistic (driving in LA traffic, no need for sleep/eating/pooping/peeing, instantaneous recovery from wounds, etc.) but i felt like as long as you ignored those plot problems, the overall story was compelling and the characters interesting enough that you could get into it.

now i feel like the show is getting worse. i don’t care to watch; i fall asleep during episodes; i don’t care if so-and-so gets killed by terrorists. the writers drop storylines episodes at a time (where has president logan and mrs. logan gone??  what about jack’s dad!?) the character development has become so predictable and corny… i feel like the writers are forcing these characters on us… that we’re supposed to like this character because they show him doing this or that and we’re supposed to be suspicious of this character because of that or this. they introduced a new character this season, doyle (little ricky schroeder from silver spoons!) and i find him so boring that whenever they try to introduce some of his back story, i just don’t care. in fact, i’m turned off by his character because i feel like they’re trying to make him out to be like jack… there’s only one jack! and it’s not because i feel like doyle is infringing on jack’s character (i don’t care about jack that much…) it’s more i feel like the writers are being lazy by making his character just like another character whom they know everyone likes.

and what’s up with CTU employees developing high school like crushes on coworkers so quickly? so they’ve always had CTU romances… like tony and michelle. but they’re going overboard now… with bill and karen (whom i think are a cute couple but c’mon!! do i really care to hear their lovey-dovey phone conversations?!? i watch 24 for the action!) and now milo and nadia with their on-again-off-again, do-we-acknowledge-don’t-we-acknowledge relationship that developed over like… 2 hours! and the biggest thing with these relationships is because the writers do such a shotty job at developing the characters individually, do we even care about the characters when they start relationships?! i don’t!

the only character that seems to be developed is jack. maybe in seasons past, they had other characters that were equally developed and interesting (i.e. chloe in previous seasons… this season she just doesn’t seem to be interesting). but everything became so jack-centric that they stopped developing the other characters so now the show is almost entirely dependent on jack. if jack’s not in the scene, it seems to drag… characters talking mumbo jumbo, who cares? where’s jack?! there’s no way the show can survive if jack has to do everything (ok, arguably it’s survived 5 seasons with jack doing everything… but at least there were some other people minorly developed). it’s a vicious cycle… by focusing on jack, none of the other characters get developed. because none of the other characters get developed, no one wants to see a scene without jack so the writers will of course write more jack scenes.

the state of tv saddens me. ON a side note: looks like 7th Heaven is FINALLY getting canned! maybe there’s some hope