24 Hours to Kill

What does a Great American TV Series look like? It can make you think, cry or laugh, but only for a second. It can make you frantically search for the remote, just to hit pause or fast forward through frustration or rewind for remembrance. A finale should make you want to order pizza, pop popcorn, or open a microbrew.  It’s as bloody as the red on Old Glory’s stripes or the Scarlet in the end zone of the Horseshoe. It’s riddled with bullets and gore, and bandaged together by one compelling story. The simple, believable plot is as timeless as it is awe-inspiring; that one man with the help of the 2^st Amendment and balls the size of hand grenades can right the wrongs of government, war, social disparity, and greed.

There are the good; the characters that are charismatic, charming, and witty. They win our confidence and guard it for a series and some of the spin-off. There are the bad; the characters that question the definition of corruption, darkness, and disorder. They push us to question choices and selfish motivations. Then there is Jack.

On 24, there were 2 Black Presidents. Lost had zero. LOST is racist. Let's look at the black people that have been on the show.

Mr. Eko ~ an African warlord posing as his dead priest brother crashes on the island in a plane full of heroin, hidden in figurines of the Virgin Mary. Ends up being murdered by the Smoke Monster for no apparent reason.

Michael - Sells out his friends to save his own ass and the respective ass of his son. Sails off the island only to return estranged from his son and with a death wish. Dies in a huge boat explosion
Walt - the magical son of Michael. Fades to obscurity but reappears periodically to offer vague clues about how stupid the show is. Gets old and is not longer "adorable"

On 24, our Jack would have killed or tortured Sawyer, Ben, Locke, Michael, that weird polar bear and all of the Others within the first hour.  Then he radio’s for an evac 20 minutes into the second hour. That’s how you do a Series Finale.

On 24, all loose ends are cut. Literally. Jack Bauer literally had all of the armed men, women, and children in New York (and, from what I hear, that’s the entire population) hunting for him and he still managed to steal a Helicopter, shoot/stab/maim his way to the truth, and finally don a Batman-type body armor suit to abduct a guarded, corrupt ex-President. What have you done with your day?

On 24, Bad guys definitely don’t make it off the island. Every person who attempted to or succeeded in hurting any of Jack’s friends ended up wearing their insides on their outsides, all of them far from the Manhattan island border.

On 24, there wasn’t just one smoke monster. There were several. Jack witnessed or defeated several smoke monsters. You know what he called them? Mushroom clouds. I could go on about bright lights and water, but I think the words “hydrogen bomb” say it all.

           

On 24, Jack’s father wasn’t a “Christian Shepard”. He was a “Dickish Traitor” who killed Jack’s brother, kidnapped his grandson, tried to bring down the government, and had Jack sent to a Chinese torture camp for over a year. For Father’s Day, Jack is giving him a bullet.

On 24, Jack doesn’t need food, water, or shelter; just a 9 mm and a satchel full of clips. The last man to call it a purse ended up holding a good amount of those bullets for Jack, the hard way.

On 24, Jack answers all questions in one day. Jack murders about 160 terrorists in a single day and somehow, miraculously, people start to give him answers. Who knew? Do you know what Jack calls a cliffhanger? A terrorist that refuses to let go. Jack’s cliffhangers are never a 2-parter.

An Open Letter to All LOST Fans

Dear LOST Fans:

Your show sucked. I know what you’re thinking, “I love LOST so I’m going to stop reading and go watch some YouTUBE clips of the Jack-Sawyer-Kate love triangle over and over again”. I ask you to pause, hear me out, and reserve your judgment for another time.

For starters, LOST does indeed suck but in the best way it knows how to suck. LOST isn’t necessarily plagued by bad writing like some other shows on TV (I’m talking to you Law and Order, and Desperate Housewives). Also, isn’t necessarily full of boring characters trapped in developmental limbo, like Full House or Family Matters. Yes, we all did the Urkel and shed many a tear when Uncle Jesse arrived late to his wedding only to perform “Forever” like a pro. The problem with LOST, or more specifically why it sucks, is the fans. Hubris has haunted the show since the beginning. Remember that old children’s book, The Emperor’s New Clothes? The one where the Emperor gets tricked into spending a lot of money to purchase "invisible" clothes? Well, LOST fans are going along with their invisible sundresses for a solid 6 years. What the rest of us are missing is that their show is the most amazing thing since sliced bread and if we don’t get that, we can all go to Hell.

            
                A friend said something on Facebook today that stuck with me. She said she was ok with LOST not answering all of the questions because “defining the island would be like defining the meaning of life”. And no disrespect to her, but it stuck with me because when I heard it, I wanted to run out into traffic. I wish I lived in a world where I could in essence take Gillian’s Island and get paid millions of dollars to throw the most random things on to said island with the enthusiasm of a colorblind 3 year old finger-painting in a liquor store. But no, that wouldn’t be enough. I would then have the balls to carry on this way for another year before I set about telling the world’s media that my show was not the drunk-stumble sorority house shit show that it appeared; I actually had a very carefully orchestrated plan for my piece of shit masterpiece that would tactfully bring things to an end after only 6 years. 
               WHEW! “Wait, they bought that?” I would mutter under my breath as I took a swig out of my moonshine flask. And Yes, they would buy that and continue to buy it every season until the horrible horrible end where about 1/4 of the cast without other obligations agreed to sit in a room under the guise of a previous agreement to meet up before they all "moved on". Fuck you, LOST! I know when I'm being shown an awkward cast wrap party as the final scene.


           Much like Video killed the Radio Star, DVR killed the Network Superhit. Like a 6 that hangs out with fat 3s, the TV networks would play these bar room games with us where they would put a mediocre show on a night without competition. Real quick: tell me what show rivaled LOST during its first season? Cookie for anyone who gets that right without the research. DVR and Online viewing allows us to now pick when we want to watch a show rather than play by the VP of Programming's game. My real point is, any show with the right exposure, social climate, and timeslot can generate a popular cult following. Remember Felicity? Say what you want about my girl Feli Fel, but THAT finale was a humdinger. HUMdinger.


Eat it, 


Jays

Jarred Lightening

You gotta begin with the end in mind. I feel like I begin each one of these with that idea and then try to get lost in it. I start lost and work backwards. What’s more reasonable than that? I’ve found, the best kind of writing is the kind where the words are sitting on the edges of a finger tips, waiting to be beat into keys only to have their reflection forever trapped in a screen. Words aren’t tools. They’re wild animals to be domesticated, each one differing by temperament and size. Some are large and complex, while others are small and straight to the point. They start off appearing one way but by the end of all that is said and done, they become something much different. They evolve into a phrase, a question, or a paragraph. Because of the nature of the beast, words trapped on screen and paper will never be as strong as the animal that inhabits a spoken word, statement or speech. The fun of it all, of writing, is to trap the lightening in a jar and power to something otherwise limited in scope.

Trapped?

The truth is that no one will admit to wanting to be trapped. The rest of the truth is that there is a certain amount of security in that feeling: in that trapped feeling. There’s a guilt in the conflict between those two ideas, a denial of human nature and an affirmation of limitations/ Here’s my example. I got on the train this morning and saw a baby. It was one of those limp babies wrapped, enclosed, enveloped in one of those baby holding things. I use to always think to myself that it must suck to be that baby. You can’t go anywhere, move around, explore. The strange thing is that the baby always seems to be content or, worse yet, sleeping. I think this is where we, or more specifically I, find the truth. That is that babies get it and I did not. I’ve come to understand that you have to come to terms with a certain amount of the inevitability in the monument before you can ever have a hope of changing any of it. The truth is a baby biding his or her time until the next fight not a kid giving up. I know the feeling, little bald baby. I know the feeling.