March, 2006

“Oh my God! They killed Edgar!” I can almost hear Kyle and Stan saying.

If you’re a fan of “24” on Fox, then I’m sure that you’re as surprised as I am that the show’s writers decided to have Edgar Stiles die in a nerve gas attack on CTU. And you’re probably wondering why they didn’t use this opportunity to eliminate some other character – like that mousy Chloe O’Brian. Edgar at least had some character - by which I mean he did something other than making pouty/scowly/frowny faces all the time. Chloe, on the other hand, is just annoying.

Seriously, it doesn’t matter what is happening in a given scene or what the dialog is – she always makes the same expression. Consider the following situation: “Chloe! We’re under attack! I need you to hack into the mainframe and access the schematic diagrams for a nuclear bomb!” (This kind of stuff happens in EVERY episode of “24”.) Pretty tense and exciting, huh? Probably as good a time as any to do some acting and try to appear determined to solve the crises at hand.

Instead, what does she do? She makes her pouty/scowly/frowny face that makes it appear that what SHE heard was “Chloe! We’re starving! I need you to run down to the corner deli and pick up some pastrami on rye sandwiches for us. And don’t forget the coleslaw. And a bag of BBQ potato chips. I’ll pay you back next week.”

One of the show’s producers was on TV recently and said something like “Hey! We’re doing a show about terrorism and good people get killed by terrorists.” Hah! A likely story. What’s more likely is that certain actors were asking for more money only to find that they were one nerve gas canister away from contract termination. I can see it now…one minute they’re telling the producers ”We want a raise and we’re going to walk off the set if we don’t get one” and the next minute they’re being escorted out of the studio by security as the show’s production expenses are cut in half.

Whatever happened to the good old days of quality television? It’s almost as if the writers for this show never saw any old episodes of Star Trek. In that show, you knew that the “regular” cast would always triumph over any threat but if an extra had a single line of dialog or was a member of a landing party then the odds were that you wouldn’t be seeing them in any future episodes.

While I’m on the subject of TV, can someone explain to me what’s going on over at The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel? It used to be that I could watch an actual surgical procedure being performed on someone’s brain or see a documentary on the building of the Hoover Dam. Nowadays, the closest thing to surgery you’ll see is someone getting a tattoo or a boob-job and the documentaries are about building motorcycles. I mean, really, how many shows do we need with the word “Monster” or “Extreme” in the title?

Now, where was I? Oh, yes…getting back to “24” on Fox: I suppose there’s always the possibility that the writers will pull some stunt to bring Edgar back to life like say that he didn’t get a fatal dose of gas or maybe they’ll bring Tony Almeida back with some similar explanation. Or they could do the classic “dream sequence” where Jack Bauer wakes up one morning only to find that this whole season had been a figment of his imagination. (Of course, if they do that then I won’t watch another episode.)

Then again, it’s possible that the writers for “24” on Fox will be having lunch in the cafeteria and run into the people from The Learning Channel and we’ll end up having Jack and Chloe getting his-n-hers matching tattoos and riding off into the sunset on a motorcycle built by the Teutuls.

It could happen.

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