Rewatching "24"

We're rewatching the series 24 from the early post 9/11 2000's. I watched a few of the seasons when it first aired, then watched the DVD series in the very early days of cable-cutting. It's pretty amusing to watch some of these early 2000's shows because they frequently showcase cutting edge "tech" of the day, which somehow seems more primitive than stuff from the 1960s compared to what we all take for granted now. 24 was also the heyday of quality cars. The American car makers were trying to compete with Toyota and Honda quality at that point. Jack drives a Mercury Grand Marquis, many of which are still on the road 20 years later.

The show is actually quite critical of the MIC. When I've thought about the show in recent years, I remembered it as a sort of propaganda work that promoted the use of torture and military power, but it's actually quite a bit more subtle than that and casts a lot of doubt on the government, and authority in general.

In the show, the government and Jack have a very weird relationship. Jack's a perpetual maverick renegade, which is necessary, because the government he works for is a corrupt, incompetent shit pile filled with traitors and self serving sleeze-lords.

24 is also a good example of the reason woke identity politics action dramas don't really work. Jack needs to be a maverick character because he's not fighting against people; he battles against cosmic forces who sometimes manifest as human characters. Jack's fight is a true battle.

The woke drama reduces the hero to a whiny bitch that's fighting against mere people. The identity politics bullshit doesn't work in that hero context.