24 Episode 6.12 - "5:00 PM - 6:00 PM"
Airdate: Monday, March 5th, 2007

Typically, when you go see a movie like The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear and they've got some goofy lookalike actor portraying Saddam Hussein, they'll offer a legal disclaimer at the end, something to the effect that any resemblance to persons living or dead is only a coincidence.

Maybe they run one of those at the end of 24 and I miss it every week cause I'm too stoned on paint fumes by the end of the hour to notice. If they don't, they might want to think about it--Powers Boothe is treading lightly on libel territory with his performance as the Vice President.

Which is, of course, what makes it such wicked fun. At best, 24 is a political mess; it's fairly common knowledge that co-creator and exec producer Joel Surnow is an unrepentant right-winger, which he underlined and put a big exclamation point next to by virtue of his exec producing job on that AWFUL conservative-slanting Daily Show ripoff that came out and hopefully has since gone the way of the dodo. From my work in the past as editor of Confidential Dispatch, the electric newsletter of the Official 24 Fan Club (yes, that WAS me, you lucky devils), I know that other writers like David Fury probably lean closer to the left side of the aisle.

And that brings us to the Vice President this season, who is a broad and vicious parody of Dick Cheney, right down to the flat accent and the blank, sinister face. He's the current villain of the piece, and maybe even the season's "big bad." He's a walking slam at the current Republican party, wandering around inside a series that is practically a weekly infomercial for the Republican's rule by fear and loathing.

See? That's good stuff. That's why 24 has more teeth and more complexity than it ever gets credit for. Oh sure, maybe past seasons leaned a bit too hard in the direction of the Bush White House, but this year, it's a fairly crazy split/mix between liberalism and conservatism on the spectrum. Which to me makes it just good fun action drama that you can contemplate if you like, but you can also just sit back and enjoy the ride.

How great is Powers Boothe as the Vice President? FREAKING great, that's how great. Also great, though not as heavily used, is John Noble as the creepy dude at the Russian consulate in Los Angeles. I could NOT remember why he automatically freaked me out, and then I remembered--he played the wormy Denethor in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Here, he's a weasel yet again, except one that gets smacked around far more than Denethor, thanks to Jack Bauer's patented torture techniques. It's a small part, but a fun one, and I definitely enjoyed the squirm.

Oh yeah. There was actual PLOT on the show this week too. More and more, however, the minutiae of what actually happens on 24 seems less important than the fact that it's happening at all. It's just one big mad dash to the finish line, and toward saving the greatest nation from the greatest threat in its greatest existence, and the beats and details are pretty inconsequential. So you lean back and let your stomach do meaningless flip-flops, and you enjoy the morsels that make their flavors known amid the crazy stew, like the poor man's Dick Cheney and Denethor with a Russian accent.

iTunes Links

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