A very good friend of mine, and one of the few colleagues whom I respect as a near intellectual peer has written 24 off as too unrealistic. According to him, it is no longer possible to suspend disbelief regarding Jack Bauer and how he ekes his way out of disaster after disaster.
Yet my friend's favorite show is Battlestar Gallactica, and he eagerly awaits the season finale of Heroes.
Contradiction? Of course.
Bauer does nothing impossible. What he does is highly unlikely, but not implausible. The irony is that this guy supports Darwin's theory of evolution--the highly unlikely theory that consciousness was born via random genetic mutations. To use a C.S. Lewis analogy (for a different purpose), believing in evolution is like suggesting that if you spill a carton of milk, the splatter will form a map of England.
Bauer is awesome. He is unlikely, sure, but he's my modern-day fictional hero.
Sure both Battlestar Galactica (BSG)and Heroes are science fiction. In direct comparison it seems like a no-brainer that 24 should win hands down in realism. Yet the fact is that those two shows, set in different realities, follow the rules and laws set up by that reality. BSG is full of realism. It is a drama that deals with real human issues, war, betrayal, faith, human rights. Throw in some cool space battles and some fantastic CGI and you have a very cool, very realistic show.
ReplyDeleteHeroes is not real, but it was never meant to be. The rule in Heroes is that there are people who are special because of their mutated genes. That's the one thing you have to accept to believe everything that happens. The writers follow the rules that they set up in the pilot.
24 however does not. They have these crazy 24 hour scenarios that continually have one man faced with the same situations over and over again with different players. How many times has Jack died and come back to life? Three now I think? Maybe more? How many times has Jack been in an impossible situation where he will surely be killed by the bad guys and escapes through the tiniest margin due to some vast amount of luck or incompitance by the bad guy? About 1 to 2 times a week? How many times has his hot daughter appeared in the show this season? About 0? I'm not interested.
I'm not saying that any of the stuff Jack does is impossible. But study the probabilities. You would have a greater chance of winning the lottery 5 times in a row than having anyone do what Jack Bauer has done in the last 5 seasons of 24. That is why I feel it is unrealistic. Now put him in a cape or a cool spandex costume and I might be more apt to believe it.
Long live the Galactica!!
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