At Entertainment Weekly‘s Popwatch blog, Christian Blauvelt wonders if a TV show about robust counterterrorism will still resonate with with a viewing public that’s been becalmed by the ambidirectional hope-and-change healing waves of Barack Obama:
Is 24 relevant anymore? Debuting in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the show — with its apoplectic mixture of hawkishness and paranoia and its Constitution-be-damned, torture-prone tragic hero Jack Bauer — reflected back our anxieties about the war on terror and its toll on our civil liberties. But the political landscape has changed dramatically over the last several months, and as we spoke to cast members Sutherland, Jon Voight, and Cherry Jones, along with executive producers Howard Gordon and Jon Cassar (who’s also Redemption‘s director), we wanted to get their takes on the show’s prospects heading into the Obama era.
Well, in the last 24 hours of the “Obama era,” al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a new threat to America; the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran has enough nuclear fuel for a bomb; Somali pirates, working with Islamists, seized a ninth ship in the Gulf of Aden; and U.S. drones killed 5 al Qaeda and Taliban members deeper inside Pakistan than we’ve ever struck before. Christian Blauvelt may think it’s time to replace a spy show with something from Oprah Winfrey’s stable of self-help gurus. But the Obama era kind of feels like the Bush era to me. In other words, it feels like “the immediate aftermath of 9/11.” Except now we’re awake and fighting back.
Maybe Entertainment Weekly‘s primetime tastes have changed in the seven years since 9/11, but the global forces that have built up and mobilized over the course of decades haven’t been influenced by the reality TV explosion. And the “political landscape” has not “changed dramatically over the last several months” just because a young eloquent personage made his wife proud of her country. Take a look at Obama’s picks and tell me about me about the “dramatic change.” They all come from the “Clinton age.” In fact, so do extraordinary rendition and the other creative methods of Constitution skirting to which Blauvelt takes offense. Seems to me the show will be a perfect fit with the times. I haven’t watched it, but I may start.
