Weekly "24" Rant: Conservatives Aren't Terrorist?!

I love watching 24. The problem I have is that I happen to think when I'm watching a TV show or movie. It takes a lot to get me sucked in to a program as to make me suspend all disbelief. 24, it would seem, seems determined to never, ever let me stop thinking about how stupid it is.

For instance, in this week's most recent episode, CTU analyst Nadia Yassir was flagged by the government and made to jump through extra-hurdles in order to do her job, just because she's of middle-eastern descent. Upon hearing the news, "Floor Manager" Milo said something pretty much like "But she's a registered Republican, for pete's sake!" (not verbatum). So... Homeland Security just hast to filter their results for Democrats of middle-eastern descent? I..... am amazed by the show.

Secondly, 24 seems content to never, EVER have more than 4, 5 people in the DC plotline, EVER. On a day that has seen one or two homicide bombings and the detonation of a nuclear bomb on American soil, the DC plotline has: President Palmer II, Karen Hayes and Tom Lennox. And, that's it. And this week, we sent Karen Hayes on over to LA, because... they could. Or, because they hired Chad Lowe to play a political guy, so they needed to trim the budget for the B-plot. One way or another, I'm sure. This now leaves Wayne Palmer with Tom Lennox and the former Mr. Hilary Swank to save the day. But, Lennox is an EVIL conservative, because he doesn't like the constitution at all. And Hayes was forced to resign from office, because she believes in just trivial things like the law. And she let Lennox win! She may be a "bleeding heart liberal" but she's also the character that makes the most sense on the show this season. Mainly, because she applies logic to the situation. And now, she'll be out of the picture for a while. Ggggrrr...

And, Jack Bauer's father made a "surprise" entrance in this week's episode. Thanks, promo monkeys, for ruining that for us. And he seems to be good, but has done some terrible, terrible things, somewhat unwittingly. Basically, he's like Jack Bristow from Alias. (But played by James Cromwell and not Victor Garber, who would have been hillarious as Bauer's dad!) And, what's up with the spelling of Graem's name? Seriously, I thought the week before that my closed captioning kept messing "Graham" up and kept garbling out "Graem". "Graem"?! How very Californian.

The Cougar Plotline Award of the Week: This week's shout-out goes to the D-plotline involving that rich white guy driving around with his foxy girlfriend. He's on the phone trying to find a nuclear scientist who wants to arm four Soviet suitcase nukes, and being quite vocal about it, actually. And the girlfriend keeps complaining that they're not outside of the fallout radius. (Which, would probably upset me to, but girl, it's been what, an hour? Get over it already, it's 24!) This plotline is moving slow, drags on and better lead up to something good because it's just a bloody distraction at this point in the season.

Next week: Graem turns the tables on his family, minutes after lecturing his brother about why he should be loyal to family. And hopefully they'll explain that either Graem or Jack were adopted, because Paul McCrane certianly wasn't cast in the role because of his similarity to Keifer Sutherland...