Time Starts Now
Last night’s fourth season premiere of 24 ought to have satisfied the shows’s fans; it’ll be interesting to see if the ratings show it hooked many new ones as well.
There’s a good review of the series to date, along with a solid interview with co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow and co-executive producer Jon Cassar here. They touch on where the series has been, where it seems to be now, and where it might be going.
Note: If you haven’t watched the series and think you’re likely to try to do so from the beginning on DVD, you should know that article contains spoilers. Including the tragic climax of the show’s first season. Personally, I watched knowing both that and another big twist, and don’t think it hurt the experience at all (that’s how good it is), but let the clicker beware.
I was especially pleased to see that they are conciously echoing, but I hope not reprising, certain emotional notes from the previous series.
Now that I am fully caught up with the show’s first three seasons, I find myself for the first time going along for the ride from the beginning like everybody else. It’s too soon to say which new characters I will like and which I won’t, but one thing that’s hard to miss is that the acting is still of the highest calliber (it’s especially nice to see Shohreh Aghdashloo from House of Sand and Fog). Although, I do miss Carlos Bernard as Tony and I’m pleased to read he is to return along with one or two others from the previous seasons’ cast.
I was also pleased to see Surnow’s response to the protests of some over the show’s presentation of an Arab-American family as a terrorist cell. As some of you know, the presentation of minorities in film and television is of an interest to me, but I’m satisfied with Surnow’s remarks. He seems sincere, and as he says, on 24 perhaps more than any other series, “what you see at the beginning may not be the whole story.”
He doesn’t point out (although he could) that 24, unlike some series that have been similarly critisized, can point to three years worth of the use of minorites in both minor and major roles, including the aforementioned Bernard and (now former) President Palmer. It’s not the reason the show is good–that’s the writing, acting, and overall production value–but it’s a small but signifigant something I appreciated. And one that brings the show closer than most to that laudable goal of actually reflecting the colors of the country the characters serve.
I wonder where all those characters (old and new) will be in “24 hours”…
