DanMargarita.com

The show had it’s last episode last week after a very successful eight season run. For those of you worried that you’ll be jonesing (Microsoft Word is not recognizing “jonesing” as an actual word, damn) for some Jack Bauer antics, a movie version of the show is in the works. Since the name of the show derives from the fact that the show is shot in real time, 24 episodes at one hour each that make up events occurring over the course of one 24 hour day, they will have to come up with a new name for the film, I would think. If it’s 90 minute movie, the title “90” would seem logical.

Since the events on the show occur in real time, early on I couldn’t help but notice that neither Jack Bauer, nor anyone else on the show for that matter, goes through a 24-hour day and find the need to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom.

I realize that each season involves the characters trying to prevent some sort of horrific terrorist tragedy and thus they may need to put trivial things on the back burner for a while. That said, no matter the urgency of finding the terrorists before they can set the nuclear bomb to explode, one cannot completely ignore emptying a full bladder before it explodes.

24 star Keifer Sutherland as well as producers of the show have publicly stated that there is existing footage of Jack Bauer going to the bathroom. Well, not footage of him going to the bathroom but footage of him upon completion of an office raid, entering a men’s room and then the sound of a urinal flushing.

The show’s producers insist that the stated bathroom scene as well as a scene of Jack Bauer eating exist to answer this obvious illogical plot point, but that the network has always cut these scenes out. That’s not hard to believe, since one of the Fox Network’s top shows is right-wing loony Glenn Beck and if people will believe him, I guess they’ll believe just about anything.

This brings to mind another problem the show has…the right-wing confusing TV with real life. Political commentator Laura Ingraham, and other conservative pundits endorse torture or “tough tactics” because it works for Jack Bauer and “the average American out there, loves 24” and “that’s as close to a national referendum” on torture as there is, according to Ms. Ingraham (I figure the “Ms.” would add further insult to injury to her).

The only problem with this theory is that according to any reputable professional interrogator, torture doesn’t work as a questioning technique.

Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), himself a victim of torture as a POW in Vietnam, stated publicly that torture victims will “tell you anything they think you want to know, if you inflict enough pain on the them,” adding “It’s not like 24.”

The show has presented problems for military officials, who feared that some of their personnel were using Jack Bauer’s method to extract information from detainees. They brought in producers of the show to show them the actual methods use to gather information. Of course, a “ticking time bomb” scenario makes for more riveting TV then episodes of interrogators gaining the confidence and trust of detainees over a longer period of time.

As for me, I have little or no problem with the violence on the show because I realized long ago that IT’S A TV SHOW.

Perhaps when I was five-years old, I thought that when actor George Reeves put on a cape and jumped out the window in The Adventures of Superman he was actually airborne but I’m pretty sure at this point in my life that he wasn’t really flying.
This is reminiscent of actors who have talked about people approaching them on the street and confusing them with some horrible character they played. Gale Gordon, Lucille Ball’s foil in The Lucy Show (and just about every other post-I Love Lucy series) once relayed story of being castigated on the street by a woman who insisted that he stop being so mean to Lucy.

Who knows? Maybe the guy who squeezed the Charmin really did do that in real life.

If you’ll excuse me now, I have to go. I do mean, “GO” because unlike Jack Bauer, I have pee.