24: Legacy

Hopefully, with new characters, they DO shake up the formula a bit. But I'm not expecting it to be a complete reinvention.

Yeah, good point. We aren't gonna get the Bauer vs. Putin showdown they set up? They are seriously missing out. Doomsday, we should write it now that Rocky is going in another direction and we won't be able to option that screenplay.

If there's no Bauer, I'll only watch it if they make the cougar the main character.

This is one thread I demand to be tagged in.

Half this board were consistent participants in this shows thread on the laat board.

Miranda Otto? Wait, that's not code for Kiefer Sutherland? Meh.

She's the mole. Book it.

Hmmm, we'll see. Appears to be a generic rehash, but hopefully they've got more up their sleeve. I'll definitely watch.

24 is the closest thing Fox has to a CBS show. Safe. Formula driven. Built-in audience. I shouldn't watch it but I'm too invested at this point.

It's only the 2nd episode and they have Black Jack Bauer get pulled over by the police. I think they expected a different climate when making the show.

Well over the years they have made a habit of putting half-hearted #NotAllMuslims bits into their repeated storylines about evil muslims out to kill all Americans who must be stopped at all costs, but it's kind of starting to ring hollow.

Short answer: maybe they just shouldn't be using middle eastern terrorists as the villains in ridiculous shows that pit good against evil.  

Something that's actually realistic like Zero Dark Thirty is different, and I guess something like Lone Survivor is different too (though that movie is also problematic for slightly different reasons). There are ways to do this stuff right, but those ways tend to involve realism and insight, which are two things that 24 is pretty much designed to avoid.

I don't want to sound like a total PC scold and 95% of the time I tend not to be all that convinced by the notion that TV shows really affect public opinion but when I see all those people getting their lives disrupted at the airports and I see these insanely paranoid and misinformed opinion polls about it I can't help but feel like it's a little dangerous to be casually vilifying populations like this.