24

Broadcast Tuesdays, 9 PM, FOX

Chris Dahlen

There are really only two ways to make people watch a television show every week. One is to be very good, like The Simpsons. That almost never happens. The other is to be addictive: to hit the viewer with long story arcs, cliffhanger endings, and crucial "turning point" episodes every sweeps period. Gimmicks usually associated with soap operas have crept into most other types of shows: even situation comedies take on long-term romantic storylines, such as the "will they or won't they?" arcs that NBC forces on most of its comedies. Though sometimes forced, story arcs are usually compelling. Even The Simpsons can be missed occasionally, because nothing will have changed the next time you catch it; but if you skip the wrong episode of The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you could become hopelessly confused.

24 doesn't have a story arc: it is a story arc, the same way a pit bull dog "is" muscle. The premise of the show is simple: CIA agent Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, has to stop a plot to assassinate the nation's first African-American presidential candidate. He has twenty-four hours to do it. Along the way, complications arise: someone is blackmailing the candidate; Bauer's daughter is kidnapped; and one of Bauer's colleagues is a traitor, and he doesn't know who. We also get to watch the terrorists, who are running into snags of their own.

The presentation is exciting. The show is shot in real-time, sometimes putting multiple frames on the screen so we can monitor different locations. It's not unlike a video game, or Mike Figgis' Timecode with a plot and no downtime. A running clock appears frequently, and it doesn't stop during the ad breaks. And did I mention the sex and violence? Anyone who thought "real-time" meant watching an art movie forgets that this is Fox, the network that once aired a soap opera about a co-ed L. A. fire department. There will be no dull moments on this show.

But more exciting is that every story on the show is connected. There are no one-off episodes and no irrelevant subplots. A storyline where Jack's daughter is out after curfew starts off as a distraction (albeit one filled with teen sex), but by the second episode we discover she's been kidnapped. Nothing interrupts the main story. Best of all, we also know that that story is going somewhere. The show has a built-in expiration date: we'll get cliffhangers all the way to the end, but by episode twenty-four, we'll get a payoff.

The show's brutal efficiency sets it apart from the other shows that use long story arcs. Most of the storylines on ER come and go arbitrarily: a regular character will suddenly get a sick relative or a screwy girlfriend, but after the plot runs its course, the character is pretty much unchanged. Friends hooked viewers in the first season with the Ross and Rachel romance—but eight years later they still haven't wrapped it up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel have well-drawn histories and storylines, but even they use one-off stories to fill up the mandatory twenty-two episode seasons. Watching a filler episode, even a good one, can be distracting when you want to follow the main story. The only show that comes close to the tautness of 24 is The Sopranos, which runs lean thirteen-episode seasons thanks to HBO's flexibility.

Of course, the structure of the show won't matter if audiences ever lose interest. The first episode started with a bang, setting up what seemed like a dozen connected storylines—and there's the sex and violence, to hold onto viewers who might be turned off by having to remember so much plot. Though sometimes the videogame-like exposition sounds contrived—"Take this card! If you have the computer read this card, you'll know who the mole is!!!"—the acting is very good, not only from Sutherland, but from the (so far) enigmatic candidate/target played by Dennis Haysbert, and from the uniformly solid supporting cast. It's too early to know if the show can keep up the pace, but so far it hasn't so much as paused. And don't forget the "good stuff": Mia Kershner as "Mandy the Terrorist" just can't stop taking her clothes off. Talk about putting a new face on terrorism.

Making a show this complicated may be too demanding: it may attract a cult audience instead of a broad viewership. In addition, the need to constantly advance the plot leaves little time for character development, political subtext, or much of anything else. But even if 24 isn't exactly the deepest or most intelligent thing on the air, Fox deserves credit for the courage to air a show that demands some investment from the viewer. If the gamble pays off, it'll be interesting to see how other TV dramas follow its lead: will subplots start to matter? Will interminable TV romances start to get deadlines instead of dragging on for years? And will terrorists keep getting cuter?

Related resources

If you've missed the first few episodes, Save the Robot recommends the recaps at Mighty Big TV as a way to catch up.

Some small design shop was probably kept afloat building Fox's official site for the show.

There are already a number of fan sites; this one provides links to articles about 24.