Drop the hacky sack! Drop it now!

It's great when the internet adds little touches to my favorite television shows. I'm thinking of the slideshows presented by the DP and costume designer for "The Sopranos" on hbo.com. Over the weekend someone told me that the 24 webpage has the resume of all their major characters posted, filling you in on some of the character's backgrounds off-air.

Since it's off the air, they get to have some fun with it. I love that, according to his online resume, the current "24" President, the cowardly, insecure and power-hungry Charles Logan, was was former House member who became the CEO of "Western Energy Coal & Reserve" (winning the "Energy CEO of the Year"), and left his energy company to become the Vice-President. Wonderful.

Those biographies add little neat details – First Lady Martha Logan has an Standford art history degree and worked as a fundraiser, a path about as Congressional wife as you can get. And my favorite, god bless them, is that Jack Bauer studied at Berkeley. I can't describe how happy I am filling in the blanks of my previous visits with Bauer running around Telegraph Street foiling hippies' plans in real time ("Audrey listen! These are plans for a drum circle! a drum circle!" tick tock tick tock).

Three things about "24": (1) For an actor, to say one line and then have to repeat it louder and more angry must be difficult to do all the time. Considering that is more than half of Jack Bauer's lines I genuinely respect Kiefer as an actor. (2) Isn't it weird to consider that Kiefer is a brat packer? He was in Stand by Me, The Lost Boys and Young Guns. Statement: Jack Bauer versus the entirety of the 80s brat pack movie generation. Through in everyone; Anthony Michael Hall to Molly Ringwald to John Cusack. Bauer wins, hands down.

(3) As a friend pointed out, if Jack Bauer asks you to go somewhere with him, don't go. He does just fine by himself, while it's about 99% likely you are going to die (if only so they don't have to write you into the next episode).

One thought on “Drop the hacky sack! Drop it now!”

  • While I'm proud to be the person who turned Mike on to "24", I also have to admit that I have stopped watching out of fatigue. It's a perfect example of a show that should have run for about 2 seasons – everything beyond that has been repetition. I mean, how terrible is the 6th season of "Prison Break" going to be? Either you break out or you don't already. Jesus.

    Anyway, nothing will ever top the final episode of the Third Season. Nothing. I have not watched regularly since then, but I sympathize with Kiefer Sutherland too. His role reminds me of Bill Paxton's description of working on "Twister" – there's only so much an actor can do with a script that read "RUN!" followed by 3 minutes of cgi animation.

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