24 Episode 6.10 - "4:00 PM - 5:00 PM"
Airdate: Monday, February 26th, 2007

I have a very special place in my heart for great journeymen television actors.

Don't get me wrong--I enjoy good performances in any form they take, whether it's a platinum god writ large on a movie screen or some aspiring student in a play up the road.

But great actors who find themselves most often working on the small screen, in roles that fill in the background of the world they inhabit, who bring decades of experience and buckets of talent to what can be thankless roles with horrible writing--when they shine, it's like a diamond in a pile of poo...or in the case of an actually good show, like 24, a diamond in a big juicy steakburger with American cheese and freedom fries on the side.

24 actually has a gift for attracting these types of performers, who are probably excited not just for the juicy roles but also the relative stability--after all, unless you're playing Truck Driver #3, a show that takes place over 24 hours doesn't tend to need many one-episode guest stars. In fact, guest stars seem to keep getting dragged back into the action.

(Of course, characters also tend to get shot and blown up and nibbled by cougars on a more-than-average basis, so it's a push.)

I've written previously about my love for Peter MacNicol, who in this episode does a lot with a little--he's tied up in the corner of some strange boiler room in the President's ultrasecure emergency bunker, which apparently is so ultrasecure that not only can a random security consultant get in pretty easily, but he can then take up residence in an OPEN BOILER ROOM TO BUILD A BOMB WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING.

Anyway, MacNicol's got to emote while crouched on the floor in this gritty space, and also while black tape covers his mouth. He gets to gasp a few lines, but mostly it's increasingly intense, frantic gawks. And damned if he doesn't sell it to the cheap seats every time he's on camera.

Then there's Carlo Rota, who sounds like he should be an Italian film score composer but instead is a British actor from Canada who manages to create the impossible on a weekly basis--a man who you could actually imagine being married to Chloe O'Brian. His Morris adds diarreha of the mouth to the character Chloe's already nailed down pat, the persnickety computer tech who has all the attitude of those IT guys in your office who treat you like the idiot because the computer stopped working. Except these arrogant jerks are in charge of securing the safety of the free world. Nice.

But this week, it was all Gregory Itzin's show. This guy's got 134 credits on his IMDB listing, and that's just the shows he's done--it doesn't factor in how many episodes. Or trivial bits like the fact that he's played five different characters on three different Star Trek series.

He's also done nearly 30 episodes of 24 at this point and an Emmy nomination to show for it, so he knows his way around the block. What's intriguing is that, after playing President Logan as sinister last season, he gets a chance to completely flip the paradigm and bring us a Logan who seems to be contrite, prayerful and holy...or is he? The beard certainly doesn't help matters; he looks creepy as hell with the beard.

Itzin plays it straight up down the middle, pulling totally back to deliver a Logan that isn't totally warm and fuzzy good guy, but also seems just sincere enough to be believable. It's sketched on his brilliantly blank canvas of a face, which remains neutral through even Logan's protestations of "seeking forgiveness," and it's there in the tiny details--the moment of hesitation Logan shows at a photo of him and his wife; the casual way in which he picks up a bible from a shelf during an idle moment and simply begins to randomly read.

The actions of a patriot reborn, or an evil mastermind scratching to be free? We don't know. And that's thanks to not just the 24 writers, but to actors like Itzin, who bring in da noise AND da funk.

Okay, so they bring neither. Fine. Sue me for trying to be "hip" and "now" with you "kids." Let me just go back to my Victrola and my Edsel and leave me be, you hippies! Get your hair cut and get a real job.

iTunes Links

24 - Series
24 - Season 6
"4:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M."