“24” finished its eight-season run tonight with its usual mix of melodrama, implausibility, adrenaline and, yes, violence. For a post-mortem on the series finale, read here. For an interesting video review of the series, watch here.
The show grabbed my interest right off the bat in 2001, and my attention wavered back-and-forth in subsequent seasons. Its premise, a TV season done in real time of a 24-hour day, was both ridiculous and captivating. Jack Bauer was an undeniably sympathetic character, especially during the first season when his wife and daughter were kidnapped by Serbs who wanted Bauer to facilitate the assassination of a presidential candidate. Bauer, as he always would, saved the day — but at a great price, ending the season holding the lifeless body of his murdered wife. In a just-published essay, Kathryn Reklis places Bauer within the long tradition of the “suffering hero”:
While many of the “good guys” who work for the fictional counter-terrorism unit have engaged in torture on the show, Jack is elevated above them all, both for his willingness to take the law into his own hands and for the brutality of his methods. … But the terror of his tactics is made palatable and even desirable as our sympathies are directed away from the body in pain to the body inflicting it. Jack suffers emotionally and existentially for the pain he causes.
The ability to engage the empathy of viewers was central to making Bauer’s actions acceptable, if not understandable. That, combined with “24’s” rush of thrills, made for a potent combination. And it opened the door for the use of tactics that previously would have been off-limits for a network TV hero. As “24” embraced an ethic of torture, justified by the perpetual ticking-time-bomb terrorist plots, it retained an audience that covered the political spectrum. Keifer Sutherland brought to Bauer limitless gravitas, somehow appealing to America’s self-image of its better angels while often behaving like one its worst. In the end, the use of torture became so regular that it was impossible to look past or explain away as the act of a damaged yet sympathetic character. Jane Mayer’s 2007 New Yorker profile of “24” creator Joel Surnow brought “24’s” embrace of torture into clear light; she also offers an excellent video discussion of torture techniques on “24” here.
But while the show is now over, it will live on in DVD rentals and sales (and video satire, above), and we will continue to wrestle with the legacy of the Bush-Cheney embrace of torture in the wake of 9/11. In that respect, “24” was a show of its time.
Update: Here’s one more tribute from a “24” fan, published at Salon.
Signs of Grace 