24
Fox
Tuesday, 9 p.m / 8 p.m. CST

Fox's "24" is an action-espionage drama that unfolds in real time — meaning that the hour it takes you to watch it corresponds to an hour in the lives of the characters. Correspondingly, Flak will be providing a written-in-real- time-alongside-the- show review of "24" each week for the duration of the series or until the gimmick of the review becomes tiresome.

Episode 18: 5 p.m. – 6 p.m.

People have written in asking if the writers have changed over the past two episodes — because the quality of the show has, to their mind, dipped — and I can't say that I know, not having tracked that information. But show co-creator Joel Surnow told Salon lo these many moons ago that the writers didn't have a firm outline for the show; they have sort of been making it up as they go along. The extent of their improvisation (or lack thereof) is not clear, but they have thoroughly painted themselves in a corner.

The best evidence? This Stockholm Syndrome stuff with Kim, which is so weak. The tension between her, Rick and his girlfriend lacks … everything. This is the filler-iest subplot of the show to date.

And, more evidence, the doctor who's visiting the amnesiac Teri is a former near-paramour. As Gomer might say, sooprise, sooprise, sooprise.

Here's the good, meaty stuff: The Palmer debacle. David wants to turn the tape over to the press, his wife Sherry wants him to destroy it, and David's advisor Mike wants him to use it as blackmail against his backers. This development lacks the propulsion of the show's other wrinkles — David has already been compromised, a little, so there's not as much tension in him sullying himself a little further. But that's a minor dramatic gripe, in light of what else we've put up with.

Now, this is interesting: Tony, who has defended Jack in the past, is willing to lie to him now under George's orders. It's good character stuff — he's believably in the middle. He's not one of Jack's crusaders, but he's strongly governed by loyalty. But George neglects to tell Jack about the situation with his family; what's he governed by? Is this just vengeance against Jack for the rough treatment in the first episode? Or something else?

Nitpick: Why did Jack try to get the safehouse number through Tony/George if Nina, who he's with, has had the number of the main CTU agent at the safehouse this whole time? That's really sloppy.

Ooh … good split screen, with the flag fluttering behind David as he has this heart-to-heart with Keith that David might like to use as leverage to convince Keith to bury the tape. And Keith's response? To dramatize, through the story of his own "screw-up," the come-forward-or-not decision that, unbeknownst to Keith, David has to make now.

The show's use of split screen, and other "24" techniques harped on so often here, got props from The New York Times this weekend, in a piece that largely criticized the show for its two-dimensionality — it called "24" the height of the medium overwhelming the message, with the show being built strictly on mechanical thrills and not on character stuff. That's overstating the case somewhat, but the argument can certainly be made. Similarly, a poster on the Home Theater Forum railed against what he perceived as the show's misogyny. Another reasonable claim; there's been a lot of damsel-in-distressery. Both pieces are worth checking out.

The fun thing about network TV is the gestalt of it — across the country, millions of people are thinking the same thing. Right now, it's that everyone wants to throttle Kim, whose puppy-love overtures have just gotten her emprisoned at Rick's house until some alleged big score goes down, which won't go down without the money that Dan's older brother expected Dan to bring back from Gaines. Except Gaines killed Dan. Oogh.

Where's the rush-hour traffic? It's 5 p.m. in Los Angeles! Los Angeles!

This has been one of the few times that "24" has withheld information: Teddy, who apparently has a bad history with Jack, has been assigned to back Jack up at this liaison at which Jack is subbing in for a hitman killed an hour ago. On the phone with Jack, George feigns a lack of control over this, when he obviously ordered it — though we didn't witness it. Do they think so highly of us that they expect us to intuit it, or do they think so poorly of us that they expect to surprise us with it because we didn't intuit it?

And, wow, is Teddy a bad actor, and a bad character — Jack got his partner arrested, or something. Painted into a corner, they're now gnawing through the walls.

What's Sherry up to? Ah, she has gotten her mitts on the sole copy of the tape. Tired of playing Lady MacBeth, she's now going to take direct action. Hide or destroy? If she destroys it, Keith is going to have duped another copy (another example of the show withholding information). If she doesn't, it's the only copy. And the fate of the tape was determined in the real time that elapsed during the commercial break — which is a good use of the show's formal characteristics.

But the David/Sherry flare-up is going to come to a head right now! That's different. This is the sort of development that the writers sit on to draw it out over the course of two hours. (She said she destroyed it; as a corollary of the above, that means she didn't actually destroy it.)

Oh, even better — and I was wrong about this — David didn't put the real tape in the envelope because he's didn't know if he could rely on Sherry not to destroy it. Those are the kind of trust exercises that kill relationships, and everyone knows that … and, wow, what an ugly scene between the two of them. David's trickery was vindicated, in the meanest sense of that word.

In fact, they've taken most of the steam out of this scene with Jack trying to make the hand-off. And Teddy's awful conception, dialogue and performance only makes things harder to swallow. Not to mention the ever-increasing transparency of George's uncleanness.

So the doctor consulting with Teri suggests she has dissociative amnesia. Earlier, I said this was highly unlikely; someone wrote in to say that if Teri wasn't mentally traumatized, that would be highly unlikely. So for the tiebreaker, I e-mailed the guy who taught psychology at my high school and communicated everything that has happened to Teri in past 16 hours. His conclusion: Dissociative amnesia is unlikely because it almost never happens in a blink. Is it possible that it would have happened? Yes, it's possible, but extremely unlikely. Much more likely, he said, would be that she would be in shock. (Thanks, Dave.)

Of course, six hours of catatonia would be bad TV.

Also, how about the assassin, the CTU agent and Teri all arrive at the Bauer home within the same 10 minutes? Because that's super likely, and would make up for all of the suspension of disbelief they've put us through so far.

And we're closing on the meeting between Jack and whomever, but they've sapped almost all the energy out of the development. Oh, and look, Teddy screwed it up. Gee willikers.

I've been extending the show the benefit of the doubt for too long, waiting for the successive episode to redeem the excesses of the previous episodes. But now it's foreclosure time: The show is on the outs with me. There's going to be a brief hiatus between episodes 21 and 22; I expect that the last three episodes to be of a piece, a coherent, gripping, sensible ending. But this last stretch of road before that happens is potholed indeed.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)