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 5: 4 a.m. – 5 a.m.

So having that week off was unusual — stupid Billboard awards. But the break provides a nice pause, not only from the weekly rigor of writing this, but within the context of the show. I was discussing this last time; I think that the fourth episode provided a certain measure of closure which, among other things, signals a certain repurposing of the action. The things that were becoming tiresome in the past four episodes can now be overhauled as we redefine the direction the stories take. Teri and Alan can stop driving around and go to find the first daughter, altering their quest; Jack knows his daughters' kidnapping is related to the assassination attempt, altering his quest; we can be moderately sure that Nina's not the mole, providing a break in the action at the office; Kimberly is no longer with the punk boys but with the (so-far) head terrorist, Gaines. After the next four to six episodes, expect a similar stopping point and reordering.

That was an extra-long recap, another side effect of the narrative slowdown. Which also means these turning points are going to be great times to pick up the show if you've never seen it before, but I don't think Fox advertised it like that.

People — other writers, some friends of mine — were suspecting that Alan wasn't really Janet's father, but his recognition of her under all those surgical dressings suggests that kind of instant paternal thing that an impostor wouldn't convey.

The Palmer family scenes are well done. It's a family unit somewhat at peace, compared to the fracture of Jack's family. Good foils. Well, it's not that they're at peace; the Palmers' turmoil is internal, as opposed to the city-spanning grief of the Bauers. That really provides a nice contrast.

Mrs. Palmer's iBook has an Apple logo oriented in the opposite direction of the one on my Powerbook — mine's right-side-up when closed, hers is right-side-up when open. Must be the TV promotional model; an inverted logo just wouldn't do.

I just missed whatever Jack said to Nina; the primary problem of this double-duty watching/reviewing. But the show has established a history of being necessarily redundant, so I'm sure I'll pick it up on the flip side.

OK — everyone is too perfectly coiffed. Jack in particular. After five hours of nonstop running, particularly after theoretically having been up since early the previous morning, he should look much more haggard, but that's a problem with filming 24 hours of television over six or seven months: There's always a make-up artist available.

When I first started these, I said that the last real-time movie I remembered was Nick of Time. Many people wrote in to remind me of Mike Figgis' 2000 movie Timecode, which was not only in real time, but featured split screen — but, again, a more traditional, split-into-quadrants split screen than "24"'s roaming frame compositions. Between those two films was also Josh Becker's 1997 Running Time, a low-budget first feature starring Bruce Campbell, and James Toback's 1997 Two Girls and a Guy. Timecode is the most interesting of these, since it was shot in real time — each quadrant was a single take, courtesy the flexibility of digital video.

Notable historical real-time narratives, all equally acclaimed, are Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 and, the granddaddy of them all, Fred Zinnemann's High Noon.

Um, more on this in a minute, or, depending on how things go, a later week. Back to the show.

The show's well-thought-outedness continues to impress. The scene between Kimberly and Gaines, where she tries to attract attention by beating on the windows and he lazily turns the gun towards her, was a nice moment. The preceding scene between Jack and George Mason was another strong moment, particularly since we've established that we don't know if George is trustworthy.

Jack and Teri, as played by Kiefer Sutherland and Leslie Hope, are pretty believable as a married couple. They have the rhythms right, even though the great majority of their "scenes" take place over the telephone and were probably done without even the telepresence of the other actor.

Ah, fun with limited narration by not letting us hear what Jack tells the suspect.

… And a good payoff, too! That's as clever as anything they've done, by faking that confrontation between Jack and the suspect so that Jack can slip him his cell phone number, allowing the suspect to call him privately as if he were his lawyer instead of publicly interrogating him. And the lawlewssness being invoked — an illegal tap, a possible jailbreak. All good; that better sets up the idea of this being a big frame-up at the expense of Jack, because how indefensible will his actions be if he springs a cop-killer connected to the conspiracy? They'll probably have to kill Nina as well … things are definitely in motion.

The cop who wants to play the arrest by the book so that his partner's murderer is properly prosecuted — again, these nice little character shadings by association, by employing clichés.

He did it; he freed the suspect. That's such a bad idea that it fits in with how run ragged everybody must be, and yet it's clearly the only option.

Actually, that's interesting: TV doesn't do quite the job of setting up the impossible circumstance the way film does — one two-hour burst of narrative hurtles itself forward relentlessly, making every decision seem inevitable. Television always seems more free-form, more full of possibilities — always time for a commercial, to step away from it for a week. Anything can happen, including flipping the channel — it seems looser, which makes it a more difficult medium for such suspense.

Whoa — the reporter revealing her sources! Holy cow; no way. Palmer didn't put nearly enough of a pinch on her. The scene ended well, but for her to acknowledge that a doctor broke his confidence? No way. Sharing the piece of physical evidence would be one thing, but bringing up the doctor? That's staggering. That's hard to swallow. Not to seem like I believe in some innate nobility of reporters; almost the opposite, that they clutch their limited rights so close to their breast that it practically takes the jaws of life to loosen their grip on them.

Of course, I know a lot of noble reporters. I'm not trying to cast asperions.

But, to stop and process this information: The doctor coming forward seems like it has to be a node of the greater assassination plot. Is it actually the doctor? Is it the real doctor, but he's lying? How strong is the physical evidence, really? Did the doctor even come forward, or are the conspirators playing Palmer by working directly through the reporter, who's a family friend? Again, without the locomotive narrative propulsion of movies, it's easier to lose sight of the ever-constricting noose of the conspiracy, to allow for a greater belief in coincidence — six days and 23 hours is a long time to try to sustain the audience's paranoia, and that's not something that, say, Alan J. Pakula ever had to deal with. Definitely a significant difference that the medium forces onto "24." It will be curious indeed to see how it plays on DVD; I wonder if it will seem really overstuffed.

I feel like I've used "overstuffed" as an adjective in these reviews before. It will be interesting to look back when the season is over and see which words and clichés leap to my fingertips when I write extemporaneously like this. I think "trope" is going to come up a lot.

Are Jack and George going to get along that easily after everything Jack just did? It either sets George up as a reluctant sidekick or the mole himself. If nothing else comes from Jack's interference with the prisoner, at least the LAPD is not going be helpful to Jack after this. But still, I really had expected more of an explosive response to such an extreme action on Jack's part.

Can you really get around L.A. this easily? "I should be there in 10 minutes." I guess at 4 a.m., maybe.

So here's my prediction: Gaines kills the greaser kid and the other one escapes and tries to spring Kimberly.

What did I tell you? (Well, the springing will clearly happen in a later week.) And of all the characters, Dan the greaser was definitely the most played out, the one who could be easily shepherded out of the story to correspond with this change of narrative direction. These will be the intervals at which established characters die; Walsh's second-episode death doesn't count because the story was still just getting started then, but just wait — from here on out, every death of a significant character will coincide with a major turning point in the series.

Having Janet flatline is a little cheap for a cliffhanger, considering there was never any indication that her situation was close to critical. Expect it to be not a thing next week; just a last zinger before dropping this week's curtain.

" … Take his hand, you'll be surprised/ Give a little bit, give a little bit of my love to you …." I can't go off on another tangent about those Gap ads, but I still thinks that's a ponder-worthy choice for a holiday song. Seal, Alanis, Macy and Loudon — that's the weirdest Gap line-up yet.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)