Television After 9/11, Part 4D: 24 Ends...And Ends...And Ends

 

After the glory of Day 5, it was inevitable that the following season would be a disappointment. I don’t think any fan of the series would realize how much of a disaster it would end up being. In contrast to the previous season where everything had been done right, everything in Day 6 was done wrong. There are far too many examples to go into, so I’ll settle for what was the most blatant. Within the first few hours of Day 5, it became clear that one of the masterminds behind the current plot was Graem, the man who’d led the cabal behind Charles Logan. The problem was the writers did so by telling us that Graem was, in reality, Jack’s estranged brother. As bad as this twist was – which honestly was almost the level of the appearance of the cougar in Day 2 – it actually got worse as we learned that Jack’s father, Philip, was behind so much of it. (Supposedly this role was offered to Kiefer’s father, the great actor Donald Sutherland who had to that point never shared the screen with his son. In an example of great judgment, Donald turned it down, leaving poor James Cromwell to do his best.) The plot got so bad I actually thought the writer’s realized their error and discarded it halfway, through. They didn’t, and I’ll spare you the remainder of details.

Redemption came in Day 7, which was on the right track in that it changed the setting of the series from LA to Washington, DC. (I guess by this time even the writers had realized that Jack could only save LA from a nuclear bomb so many times before it became ludicrous.) It wasn’t so much the change of setting that helped the series; it was the change of attitude. Due to the writer’s strike of 2007, Day 7 was postponed until early 2009 by which time not only the Bush administration was over but much of the detail of the War on Terror had become public. Rather than pretend this was business is usual, the writers made the sound decision to make it part of the plot.

Day 7 opens with CTU having been disbanded and Jack Bauer being called before Congress to testify before a subcommittee about basically all the extra-legal activities he had done in the six seasons prior. Jack’s initial attitudes toward Congress seemed openly unapologetic:

“Am I above the law?” Jack said in a contemptuous statement. “No sir. I am more than willing to be judged by the people you claim to represent…But please do not sit there with that smart look on your face and expect me to regret the decision I have made. Because, sir, the truth is, I don’t.”

You could read this as 24 thumbing its nose at the culture that now existed or directly implicated the fact that so many elected officials were willing to look the other way about what was going on in the name of national defense until it became politically expedient to condemn it. Either way, it would have been a brave stand. But the writers were willing to go further. Jack is called away from Congress by the FBI and an idealistic agent named Renee Walker to deal with a threat that they think only Jack can solve. (Lessening the machination is the fact this threat deals with the return of Tony Almeida, who seems to have gone rogue after faking his death and whose exact link to what’s going on are not clear until the very end of the day.)  Renee finds Jack’s methods repellent, but as the day progresses finds herself slowly becoming more inclined to his methodology – much to the horror of her fellow agents.

There are many brilliant segments throughout Day 7 – including extraordinary performance by veteran actors Cherry Jones and Jon Voight as new President Alison Taylor and Jonas Hodges, the billionaire industrialist behind much of the terrorists’ plots, respectively. (Jones deservedly won an Emmy and Voight should’ve at least been nominated for one.) We suffer the sacrifice of a truly noble character and witness the welcome return of Aaron Pierce, who retired from the Secret Service after Logan’s exposure, but has returned to aid Jack. And we watch in horror and sadness as Tony, one of the series most beloved characters betrays everyone and everything he ever believed in – on both sides- to get revenge on the man who was responsible for Michelle being murdered. It’s a heartbreaking moment because it’s probably the most understandable motivation for betrayal any character on either side has ever done.

But the reason Day 7 resonates the most is how it ends. Jack is poisoned by a chemical agent one of the terrorists is using and ends the series on what he is sure is his deathbed. In the final moments of the day, Renee asks Jack if she should torture the mastermind of the day’s events to assure his conviction and the arrest of his co-conspirators. In what is his most heartfelt confession, Jack says he will do anything, break any law to save the lies of fifteen strangers on a bus. He says he doesn’t regret his actions that day, but he doesn’t work for the FBI:

“You took an oath. You made a promise to uphold the law. You cross that line; it always starts off with a small step. Before you know it, you’re running as fast as you can in the wrong direction, just to justify what you started in the first place. These laws were written by men much smarter than me, and in the end, I know those laws have to be more important than those fifteen people on the bus. In my mind, I know that’s right. I just don’t think my heart could have lived with that. I guess the only advice I can give you is ‘Try to make decisions that you can live with."

Then Jack, who has never truly been a spiritual person, spends what he believes will be his final minutes with an imam he racially profiled earlier that day. He has made his choice. When Renee decides to torture the mastermind regardless, the series has framed it as the wrong decision.

Jack ended up being saved for Day 8 (Kim reunited with him and despite her father’s wishes) but I have always wished that Day 7 had been the series final statement. Would it have been dark and depressing for the series to end on Jack’s death? Maybe, but I have a feeling the fans would’ve been able to take it. And there would’ve been certain nobility to the idea of Jack dying for his sins – and by implication, the nations – that we certainly didn’t get at the end of Day 8 or the sequel to the series four years later.

More to the point, it would have ended 24 on a high note. Day 8 always struck me as a waste of time (pun not intended). It wasn’t just that there wasn’t anything new to the plot or that the series final episodes ended with Jack becoming the soulless killing machine the casual viewer thought he had been for the entire series. It was that the show had nothing original left to say. There was not a single story line or character within the entire day that had anything interesting or novel to it. The final hours are far darker than anything the series had done before not just for Jack but for everybody involved, but it just seemed like it was a series trying to play with all the switches before the power is killed. When we see Jack for the last time (we think) he is forced to go on the run for his actions over the last few hours and will never see freedom. This doesn’t seem fitting; it seems like a series that has run out of ways to handle its hero any more.

Many people were excited to see Jack and the show return for ‘Live Another Day’ in 2014, but for all my love of the series I truly wasn’t. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the series was 12 parts. As someone who recorded every episode and refused to watch the DVDs because I thought without commercial breaks you might as well call the series ‘18’, this struck me as betrayal from minute one. And while there were some decent moments throughout – Jack’s reunion with Audrey, now recovered from her trauma and remarried, some brilliant scenes with James Heller, now President and suffering from Alzheimer’s and just generally great acting from the always Yvonne Strahovski and Tate Donavan as new characters – by and large, the series left me cold. And the final statement it gave for Jack – being flown to a Russian prison to pay for the crimes he committed at the end of Day 8 – was really no more satisfying than the end of the series proper.  Live Another Day was basically little more than any sequel to an old franchise is these days, an attempt to get more ratings for an established property without having any respect for what made the original great in the first place.

A new ‘day’ (yet another 12 hour series) this time without any Jack Bauer at all aired in 2017 and it seems likely that another revival will come in the future. Even if Kiefer Sutherland is attached to the project (and seriously, shouldn’t Jack Bauer be the well-kept member of AARP by now) I see no reason to give it the time of day (again pun not intended)

 In truth, I think the moment for 24 has passed. It’s not that the series no longer fits the era; it’s that the era no longer fits the series.  24 was one of the last truly great series before the era of binge-watching truly began and in a world where everyone demands instant gratification, there’s no patience for a series that demanded you wait an entire week to see what happened at CTU next. The fact that the last two incarnations of the show were only twelve episodes indicates another problem – no one is willing to commit to the twenty-plus episodes it would take for a series any more, not even a series whose entire foundation was based on this premise. 24’s approach of slow revelation doesn’t work in a world designed by shows like The Blacklist or Scandal where the viewers expect – nay, demand – a game changing revelation every ten minutes. The sad truth is there is no place for Jack Bauer any more, in the world of politics or television in general.

And it’s probably not a coincidence that when the series ‘ended’ in 2010, the next wave of new and complicated antiheroes were beginning to fill this void. And to explore this world of realpolitik, Howard Gordon and many of 24’s writers would change their approach entirely. In the next article in this series, I will explore Homeland and how it looked at the War on Terror

The Reason So Many People Watch Succession. And Its Not Because Its Extraordinary

In the last two years, millions of Americans and critics around the country have celebrated HBO’s Succession, the drama series about the battle between the Roy family to take over the communications company Waystar, run by eighty year old Logan Roy (Brian Cox). While I will admit to a certain fascination by the brilliance of the performers, I have never understood why so people are enraptured by a group of truly horrible and unlikable characters behaving badly. Indeed, millions of fans seem to actually love the series because of those very reasons as a recent New Yorker article detailed. And I’ve been baffled why so many awards shows seem determined to give recognition to these performers and writers rather than series such as The Crown, This is Us and Better Call Saul – which also have complicated characters, but generally have far fewer choices than the Roy family have – and will acknowledge it over more brilliant series that are better written and directed. (I was particularly irked in 2020 when the show knocked out series like Big Little Lies and Mr. Robot which were infinitely better written and performed.)

I was planning to write a more complicated article about what Succession about the nature of America that it claims to repudiate the rich and powerful yet basically hangs on every word of the Roys, who are basically everything that people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have spent the last decade raging against. Then it occurred to me that reason so many people love this series is actually simpler and more basic than that.

Consider: Succession is a series about a very wealthy family and all their associates who spend every minutes of every day trying to manipulate each other to positions where they will have more wealth and powers than the others and creating brilliantly creative insults as they do. Does this sound familiar to any of the older viewers in the audience? Anyone?  Fine, here’s the answer class: this is the fundamental setup for any of the popular 1980s broadcast hits: Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing…you name it.

Wait a minute, the Succession fan is saying. But this is a far more cultured series, dealing with issues about how utterly out of touch and clueless the rich and powerful are! Isn’t it pretty to think so. I admit the writers do occasionally bring in some more relevant issues, but let’s not consider them for anything more than what they are: plot devices. That’s all what the climax of Season 2 really was: an excuse for Kendall to betray his father instead of fall on his sword. It may have seemed more elaborate than sleeping with your sister’s husband or whatever else  the Ewings and Carringtons were up to, but a betrayal is a betrayal no matter how well-scripted or acted.

But the critics love this show, the fan would say. Not entirely true; I vividly remember an Entertainment Weekly review panning the series more than halfway through the season, and I would remind you a lot of fans hated it for much of the same reasons they now claim to love it. As for the awards show recognizing it, do I even have to explain how so many of them follow rather than lead.

And honestly, what’s the difference between Succession and Dallas or Dynasty? Basically, the fact that insults delivered by the former series have more obscenities. It’s basically a series where a bunch of rich white people insult each other and struggle for power. Actually, I’d argue that makes Succession look worse in context; so many of the 1980s series were admonished for having next to no minority characters. The fact that an HBO series – particularly from the network that brought us The Wire, Insecure and Lovecraft Country  - clearly looks like a step backwards for the.

So if all of this is obvious at first glance – and second, and third – why hasn’t anybody picked up on it? For the same reason so many men in their youth (like me) hid the real reason we watched Cinemax late at night and the same reason so many women for decades were afraid to admit they liked soap operas: guilt and shame.

Reader, a confession: when I was teenager I never missed an episode of Melrose Place. I knew at the time it was utterly unrealistic even by the weak standards of ‘90s soaps and was so ludicrous in its plotting that one my very first attempts at writing criticism was about how sloppily it was written. None of this stopped me from watching it all the way end and reruns for more than a decade after it was written. At some level, I found the pure trashiness of it fascinating and dare I say, enjoyable. Even as my tastes have improved, a part of me has always had a place in my heart for trashy TV – hell last year I actually advocated for Fox’s Filthy Rich, a series with absolutely no redeeming values. Because I feel that there has to be a place for guilty pleasures in this world.

The thing is, in the era of Peak TV, so many viewers can’t bring themselves to admit that like TV for its pure soap opera qualities. If we did, we’d have to explain why we were spending so much time watching Scandal instead of The Americans. So for that reason, too many creators try to put value and meanings behind series that clearly have none.  There are reasons people want to watch a series like Empire or Bridgerton – they’re just not the reasons the creators want to admit. So their creators will say that the show is talking about some kind of deeper values or more historical ones rather than the simple fact: it’s a soap opera, pure or simple. Or that The Mandalorian has some deep story values; no it’s a live action Star Wars video game.  Or that Outlander is a rich, lyrical story about history and love; pfft, its high class porn.

And I don’t blame these creators or viewers for wanting to have a higher purpose. I’ll confess that I’ve fallen victim to it myself over the years. I spend an unforgivable amount of time trying to justify my fascination with Desperate Housewives when it was really just Melrose Place not even bothering to take it self seriously. There’s no reason to be ashamed for liking trashy TV. And some trashy TV actually is good enough to merit awards – hell Desperate Housewives got a lot of them before the Emmys felt guilty about what it was doing and stopped nominating everybody involved.

All that I ask from everybody who loves series like Succession – stop pretending there’s some more elevated reason for liking the show. It’s a glorified soap opera – that’s fine. I don’t judge. But stop pretending that series like these – and Bridgerton and far too many others – are works of art. It’s acceptable even in a world where there’s too many great series to keep track of to want to watch something where you can just turn your brain off.  Hell I’ve spent my life loathing Shonda Rhimes but I loved Private Practice even though it was hated by pretty much everyone. Sometimes you do just want to watch actors you like even if it’s in subpar projects. Just don’t confuse it for art, and don’t try to convince the rest of us it is.

 

Author’s Note: For those Succession fans out there convinced I’m deluded, watch Season 3 of The Crown and the most recent season of Better Call Saul. Then take as many words as you want to explain exactly why Brian Cox and Matthew MacFayden deserved Emmy nominations over Josh O’Connor and Bob Odenkirk for Best Actor and Jonathan Banks  and Tobias Menzies for Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Then watch Season 4 of This is Us and make a similar argument for Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz over MacFayden and Snook. I hold grudges longer than the Roys.

 

When You're In Big Sky Country, You're In For Great Television

 

In a messy broadcast season, the best series to premiere in 2020 was Big Sky. Featuring two of the most brilliant female leads I’ve seen at any network drama in years, PIs Cassie Dewell and Jenny Hoyt (Kylie Bunbury and Katheryn Winnick) became meshed in a kidnapping that quickly unfolded into a corkscrew mystery that featured some of the greatest villains I’ve seen in years. When it ended in a climax with Ronald (Brian Geraghty) on the run, Jenny taking a bullet in the chest and Cassie hot on his trail, you really wondered what was happened next.

In typical David E. Kelley fashion, the story has jumped ahead six months with no sign of Ronald or the equally twisted woman he fell in love with, Scarlett. Cassie can’t bring it on herself to let it go, but Jenny is trying, in her own way, to move on. She has left the PI field and taken up the badge again at the Montana PD. Given how this series works, it’s inevitable that the two worlds were start aligning. And they do in the opening minutes of the Season 2 premiere. Four teenage children (including a girl who babysits Cassie’s young son) witness a car crash with one man dead and another dying. They find drugs and money and take them both – moments before a cop shows up and shoots the survivor dead. They decide not to tell anyone and one decides to keep the money. Even if you don’t your mysteries you know this won’t end well, especially we met the babysitter first and her boyfriend is a piece of work who is just this shy of abusive. We know there’s no way this ends well before one goes to the cops and recognizes the man who was there, and two visitors fly in from out of state.

The world may have forgotten Ronald, but the show hasn’t. Somehow, he has ended up in the possession of Big Rick’s twin brother, Wolf. John Carroll Lynch was quite magnificent as Big Rick last season, but he’s even more remarkable as Wolf, a man who is completely opposite in his brother’s behavior than Rick was. He is kind, generous and does everything he can to offer Ronald a hand up. Ronald, of course, has no interest in it and continues to act just like the monster we know him to be. Where are Ronald and Scarlett? Will Cassie and her team find out where Wolf is? And most importantly, how much of the Legarsky meanness is in Wolf, despite his certainty that his brother was a monster?

If it were just for all of the great performances, writing and direction Big Sky would be one of the greatest procedurals anywhere since Justified. It is based on a series of novels by C.J. Box and a lot of the characters do have a certain Elmore Leonard feel to them – there’s definitely the same feel of the Wild West (where we actually are) there’s US Marshalls involved and PIs getting in the way of law enforcement and there are always the colorful characters. We just ran into Ren, an out of state drug dealer who clearly has panache for sex and death that the bets villains do. Its stylish has great action, and whip-snap dialogue.

But what really makes Big Sky sing - and honestly makes it among my candidates for one of the best series of 2021 -   is that unlike almost every procedural I’ve seen in my years of watching TV, it’s all about the women. Yes, there have been countless procedurals with women in charge and female leads – The Closer and Major Crimes are among the most popular – but I don’t recall in my years of viewing a series which has so many female characters simultaneously kicking ass and taking names and fighting for respect simultaneously. Cassie and Jenny are bad-ass women who can beat men up and handle a gun, but they keep fighting for respect against a world that will never respect them – and they want to have casual sex just as much as the male protagonists at the center of so many of these dramas.. And it says a lot that after the clichéd opening of the two of them beating each other to a pulp in the Pilot, there’s a real friendship in her that’s born in blood and real respect.

And it’s not just them. There are remarkable women all around. The most impressive is Jerrie Kennedy (played by breakout talent Jessie James Keitel), who started out as a prostitute kidnapped by Ronald way back in the Pilot and through her experience and relationship with Cassie and Jenny has become a force in her own right. She now seems to be a woman in charge of her own destiny and someone that Mark, a U.S. Marshal helping them (and sweet on Cassie) can talk with mutual respect. I don’t think there’s been a character like that in any series in the last twenty years. Indeed, you can make an argument that almost every story involves women trying to take control of their own destiny. One of the girls in the storyline at the center of this season clearly has doubts about their activities, but she wants to help her mother and is clearly in love with one of the other girls.  It might be an exaggeration to call Big Sky something of a feminist procedural, but none of the characters – heroes or villain – fall under the archetype of ‘strong female protagonist’ that lead so many women-lead series (including the Shonda Rhimes series like Grey’s Anatomy that Big Sky follows)

This actually brings to me the one character that may be holding the show back. Ronald has never for a moment struck me as the kind of character who could blend in anywhere. You just spend a minute with him and its makes your skin crawl. Maybe there’s a message that the writers are trying to say with Ronald’s character – he’s one of those angry white men who makes up so much of the horror we deal with today and that it’s the job of women like Cassie and Jenny to bring him down.

It’s not too fine a point, though, and it will not get a way of your loving this series. When the HCA gave its first awards for Best Network Drama, Big Sky was deservedly one of its first nominees. As awards seasons begin again, I hope that they start recognizing all of the remarkable performers at the center of the show, especially John Carroll Lynch, who deserves a nomination yet again. I hope the Shondaland bump that helps series at 10 O’clock works here, because Big Sky deserves it. I have a feeling we’re looking at one of TV’s true masterpieces.

My score: 5 stars.

i'm Still Wild About Harry: The Sinner Is Back With A New Twisted Mystery

 

You always knew that after following Harry Ambrose, the grizzled psychologically worn down detective at the center of USA’s incredible mysteries The Sinner for his last three cases, that there was going to come a time that the darkness of the job would become to much for him. And after the tragic conclusion of Season 3 – where he was forced to kill the disturbed Jamie and then had to watch him die – Harry took the advice of his fellow cops and has handed in his papers. He’s following his new love (Jessica Hecht) the troubled artist he encountered in Season 3 to an island in the Bay to try and relax.

But we know Harry too well. From the beginning of Season 4 we know he’s in bad shape. He’s not taking anti-depressants any more. He has insomnia. And given the sex scene we see early in the first episode, he’s not in a good mental place.  We know things are going to go wrong for him and that’s before he sees a young girl he briefly met – Percy Muldoon jump off a cliff.

Before you start getting the idea of Cabot Cove and Jessica Fletcher, this is a different kind of story, even different than the ones were used to for The Sinner. For starters, the police drag the river but can’t find a body. And soon afterwards, Harry begins to doubt the evidence of his own eyes. It’s inevitable, of course, that Harry will be drawn into the case by local law enforcement and that there’s more to Percy that what we seen. There’s the possibility of some kind of bizarre behavior of the missing girl and maybe some kind of cult involved. But the fact that there’s a chance that Percy’s alive is the biggest twist and arguably the most welcome one – after starting every season so far with a death and a suspect in custody, its intriguing for there to be a mystery where they’re actually might be someone for Harry to save – other than himself.

For its clear that Harry is lost, and that he can no more retire from police work then the families in this town leave fishing behind. As Sonya notes very clearly in the first episode: “I haven’t seen you this energized in awhile.” We know from past experience this is not a good thing. Harry can not escaped the demons in his head any more than any of the people he tries to help – this time, the series makes it literal by having Percy literally appear to him in his head. It’s not a gimmick, we know this is just as much a sign that Harry may be losing his faculties not just to age but to all the demons he’s amassed over the years.

Much in the same way that Bryan Cranston was born to play Walter White and James Gandolfini Tony Soprano, this is Bill Pullman’s role of a lifetime. For decades, he was basically Hollywood’s everyman actor, usually supporting, sometimes the lead, but always fading into the background. Pullman is Harry Ambrose in every fiber of his being – grizzled, troubled, weary, wanting not to believe the worst in people and inevitably disappointed. There are a lot of good actors around in the current season of The Sinner ­– I’m particularly riveted by character actress Frances Fisher playing the missing girls mother, a matriarch of the community – and there’s clearly an interesting subtext between the Muldoon family and the Lams, a rival Chinese family that wears the stain of outsider and whose son loved Percy once and is still drawn to her. But the eye can not be drawn away from Pullman as Harry. It’s no coincidence that this season has the victim appearing to Harry – once someone gets in his head, he can’t let it go until the truth comes out, no matter how much damage is does to him. You wish that Harry could somehow find peace, but you know too well it’s just not going to happen. As long as the series has Pullman and Harry, I’m along for the ride.

My score: 4 stars.

Television After 9/11, 24: Part 4C: The Best And Worst Presidents in TV History

 

As important as the story of Jack Bauer was to 24, it’s worth noting that it would have been nothing without the political dynamics. More than any other series in the post-9/11 world, this series gave some of the most memorable and gripping portrayals of Presidential politics in the 21^st Century.

Of course how many Presidents served during the course of 24 is a question not even the series can answer with accuracy. Perhaps the reason America knows so much about the 25^th Amendment is because of how 24 used it throughout its run – frankly, to the point of excess. The first time it was used in Day 2, it was an extremely powerful moment; by the time it was used three separate times in Day 6, even the most die hard fan of the series was thinking the framers of the amendment had never thought it could be a tired plot device. As a result, its possible as many eight Presidents served during the show’s run – and that’s not counting Die Another Day. But for the focus of this article, I will center it on what I’m relatively certain fans agree are the most memorable ones. One ranks as one of the greatest Presidents in pop culture history; the other is almost certainly one of the worst, but for sheer drama, both gave the series – and TV as a whole – its finest moments.

The focus of Day 1 was the assassination attempt on David Palmer. Before we get there, a little backstory on Dennis Haysbert who is probably more unfortunately known these days as the face – and voice – of Allstate.Haysbert was an exceptional actor well before he got cast on 24. It’s hard to imagine this is the same actor who played Pedro Serrano in the brilliant comedy Major League when he was much younger.  And I actually knew who he was even before 24 aired. One of my favorite one season series was CBS’ Now & Again, a sci-fi- action -comedy series that was impossible to describe – the Pilot begins with John Goodman getting pushed off a subway platform in a slow-mo choreographed scene and wakes up in the next ten minutes in Eric Close’s body and it just gets weirder from there. Haysbert played the NSA scientist-handler of Close’s character and actually demonstrated a fair amount of wit and sarcasm that he almost never got to use on 24.  It was a brilliant series, and one that I’ve never really gotten over it being cancelled. (Though considering how much success both Haysbert and Close would enjoy afterwards in television because of the cancellation, one can hardly say it didn’t work out.)

David Palmer spends most of Day 1 dealing with a story that is about to come out about a story that’s about to be published about his son murdering the man who raped his sister several years ago. The series takes place on Super Tuesday, so it’s pretty clear this will end his political career. In the midst of this, he finds himself attacked on every front, most notably the fact that he is a target for an assassination that seems to be done by Jack Bauer.

There are two key elements to the day that have to be discussed to truly understand David Palmer’s character. The first comes when, after learning Jack’s role it becomes clear he knows the name – two years earlier Jack led an operation to kill a Serbian warlord that led to the death of his entire team. He then goes to CTU where Jack is being held for everything he’s already done and pretty much cuts through the red tape to see him. For the first time, Palmer and Jack are in the same room and its one of the great scenes in the series’ history as they very quickly realize that both of them are on somebody’s list. They make the connections they need to, and Palmer gets Jack reinstated for the rest of the day. This is the foundation of a friendship that will last until Palmer’s death – and beyond. The key moment comes when Palmer says: “I misjudged you,” and offers his hand to Jack. The two shake.

And of course, you can’t discuss David Palmer without bringing up his wife, Sherry, masterfully played by Penny Johnson Jerald. They appear to have the perfect marriage, but as the scandal begins to unfold Sherry makes it very clear it is more important they get to the White House then the truth be told. It’s actually something of a stretch to believe that a marriage could implode over the course of a day, but the longer we observe Sherry, we get the very clear picture that the roots have been there all along – David was just too blind to see it.

David ultimately does tell the truth about the cover-up and it ends up with him sweeping Super Tuesday, but perhaps the most meaningful moment comes when David decides in the final episode of Day 1 to divorce Sherry despite all the potential fallout. And there will be a lot of that.

I suppose this should be the part of the story where I have to mention that David Palmer was an African-American and therefore you might see the roots between Hays Bert’s portrayal and the election Barack Obama six years later. While I’ll admit that it may have played a role in people being able to accept the idea of a black President, I don’t think this is a case of correlation equaling causation. The main reason is, the series never made as much a point of this. In fact, Palmer says so directly when he learns the nature of the plot: “This has nothing to do with me running for President…or me being black.” That being said, the overall brilliant ethics and morals of Palmer and how he was willing to put the good of the country well before that of his own makes him a model portrayal. And I think the reason he resonates with me more than Jed Bartlet in The West Wing is that Palmer mixed his idealism with realpolitik in a way I just can’t ever say Bartlet doing.

During Season 2, David Palmer is suspicious of the Head of The NSA hiding intelligence of him on a terrorist plot. He goes to one of his Secret Service agents who have experience with ‘enhanced interrogation’. He tells him very clear that what he’s about to do falls outside his charge and tells him he wants him to question Stanton. The agent asks: “If he resists, how far am I permitted to go?” Palmer essentially tells him to do what is necessary. Without hesitation. For the next hour, the agent tortures this government head. At one point Palmer walks in and asks him for information. When the man is still resistant, he turns to agent with one word: “Continue.” Immediately afterwards, the man breaks and provides details vital to every aspect of the plot.

The stories of David’s family would become less evident during his ‘term’ (Seasons 2 and 3 were spaced out so then when the third day took place, Palmer was running for reelection) but it was clear throughout the series about the loyalty of the friendships he had. Two in particular stand out: his friendship with Mike Novick, who ran his campaign and would become his chief of staff in Day 2. Mike was completely loyal to David throughout Day 1 and stayed faithful through much of Day 2 – which is why, when the Vice President had doubts about Palmer’s leadership and decided to invoke the 25^th Amendment, Mike’s betrayal no doubt hurt the fans (especially me) immensely. Palmer didn’t hesitate at the end of Day 2; he would forgive his Vice President and Cabinet, but demands Mike resign. (The two would one day work it out; I’ll get to that later.)

The other and, in my opinion one of the great friendships in any TV show was that of Palmer and the head of his Secret Service detail Aaron Pierce. Glenn Morshower has had many brilliant roles throughout his career, but this is his crowning achievement. Pierce started out determined to protect the President more than anything (and he would actually form a friendship with Jack as well) but as the series went on, it was clear that the two men respected each other in a way beyond the most powerful man in the world and his bodyguard. No matter how small the role Pierce had in Day 2 and Day 3 whenever he and Palmer were in the same room, you could tell there was mutual respect in a way that I’d rarely seen on TV before or since.

Eventually Palmer’s character would face an ethical challenge he could not bring himself to overcome and choose not to stand for reelection. But as we would see, just because David Palmer was gone, his shadow would linger over the series for a very long time.

The representative of the worst we see in executive power on television – at least until the rise of the Underwoods on House of Cards almost a decade later – came slowly and wasn’t apparent at first.

As I mentioned in an earlier article in reference to Day 4, Air Force One ended up getting shot down. The President was left comatose and unable to fulfill his duties. (In one of those cases of ambiguity the series often left, we were never sure whether he died.) Vice President Charles Logan, played by long time character actor Gregory Itzin assumed command. And it was clear from minute one, that he was unsuited for it.

Throughout the remainder of Day 4, Logan came across as an incredibly weak, easily cowed man – not unlike so many of the Vice Presidents we’ve had over the years. Forced into the kinds of decisions that his predecessors were capable of making, he waffled and when they were defied, he went against common sense. As a result, the mastermind of the conspiracy escaped. Broken by this, David Palmer was called into act as a proxy for him – which unfortunately led to Jack invading the Chinese embassy and murdering their council. This would lead to a nemesis that would stalk Jack for a remainder of the series. At the end of Day 4, the Chinese demanded Jack is handed over. Because of Logan’s weakness, his chief advisor Walt Cummings told him that they should kill Jack before that happened. This led to Jack faking his own death and walking off into the sunset at the end of Day 4.

Day 5, in my opinion one of the great achievements in TV history (the Emmys for a change agreed with me, giving it 5 wins including Best Drama and a Best Actor prize for Sutherland) started with one of the biggest shocks in TV history. David Palmer, the man who had been the foundation of the series as much as Jack Bauer the first four seasons was assassinated in the first five minutes. Less then ten minutes later, Michelle and Tony now out of CTU were involved in a car bomb. Michelle would die instantly; Tony would be seriously wounded and linger. (He would eventually be ‘killed’ halfway through, but in a rarity for series that didn’t do fake deaths, he would come back in Day 7. Were the writers playing fair with us? I will say they used the word ‘allegedly’ in a lot of publications the next year.) This led to Jack being drawn back in.

Day 5 took place involving the signing of a peace treaty with the new Russian President and Logan seemed fixed on it. But it was clear that even after more than a year; Logan was still the fundamentally weak man he was when he was a scared Vice-President. He refused to back away from his treaty even when hostages were taken, he seemed cowed when his chief advisor was recognized behind the plot, and in one of the most memorable scenes the series would ever do, he allows an attack on the motorcade of the Russian President going back to the airport – even after his wife, who knows what’s coming, decides to accompany them back. Throughout the first half of the day, Logan was inevitably compared to Nixon (Itzin’s resemblance to the President is striking) and the series even had a direct reference when a fraught President asked Mike Novick (Novick has since become his chief of staff) to pray with him. Logan seemed a man who was incapable of making a decision no matter how great the pressure – indeed, when his Vice President Harold Gardener came in the second half, he seemed to walk all over him. (I really wish the series had decided to make more use of Ray Wise, because you could smell the sulfur coming off him. Would’ve been better than who ended up serving in Day 6…but I digress.)

This actually brings me to another of the major highlights of Season 5 – Martha Logan. 24 always made superb casting decisions, but whoever it was that decided Jean Smart was the perfect choice to play Martha deserved a promotion. It’s not that Smart isn’t a great actress – the last year alone has demonstrated as much – its that at the time she was known almost entirely as a comic one. So whoever decided that she was perfect for this role was a genius.

We’re told that before the day began Martha’s mentally unstable and we are inclined to believe them pretty much from the moment she decides ‘I look like a wedding cake’ and ‘touches up her makeup’. We see her as a burden that her husband and the world have to bear. Slowly, however, it becomes clear that her paranoid delusions are actually accurate and Charles slowly begins to trust her again. Much of the brilliance of Day 5 is watching Martha and Charles slowly try to rebuild their relationship and you can see very quickly that the asset she might’ve been going forward.

And then, we get the day’s biggest twist. We learn that someone has set this plot in motion, and eventually we find out – it’s the President. What makes this twist believable is Logan does not turn into a Machiavellian genius but as a man whose clearly being manipulated even now, mainly by the man doing the work Christopher Henderson (Peter Weller) and in one of the series better twists, a group of men backing his campaign, led by the mysterious Graem (Paul McCrane finally got to play a proper villain instead of a power-mad egomaniac like he did on ER for more than seven years) All the way through the conspiracy, he’s trying to talk his way out of it. At one point, Graem to shoot down a passenger plane that has evidence that will implicate him and he tries all the way to back out of it despite the fact he will go to jail for treason and murder if he is caught. When the evidence seems insurmountable, he decides to take the coward’s way out and shoot himself. Before he does so, he asks Martha (who has since learned the details of his involvement) for forgiveness and she has nothing but contempt for him. Moments before he is about stick a gun in his mouth, an aide from CTU intervenes…but his problems are not over.

There were so many great moments in Day 5 that I can’t even begin to list them all. But one of my favorites is one that had no right to happen. Aaron Pierce, still with the Secret Service plays a vital part in Day 5, doing his duty for the President and protecting Martha. Late in the day, he becomes aware of the conspiracy and Logan’s guilt. Martha asks him what’s going on and he agrees to meet her. When she goes out to the meeting point, she finds only Aaron’s phone. I automatically assumed that Aaron was dead, after all, the series had been killing off regulars left and right all day, and there was no reason what was basically a third-string character should be spared. And indeed, Aaron was supposed to be killed.

Morshower read about this, and was heartbroken. He wrote an impassioned letter to Gordon pleading to let his character live. And wonder of wonders, it worked. Aaron is found late in the day having been tortured. Logan tries to be polite and offers to reinstate him and asks what do you have to say. Aaron is completely restrained, but for the first time ever on the series, you can sense contempt in his voice:

“There’s nothing to say. You’re a traitor to this county, and a disgrace to your office. It’s my duty to see that you’re punished for what you’ve done. Is there anything else, Charles?”

For a man who has put duty above country above all else, it is a stunning moment. To be honest, as brilliant as the last three hours of the series are – Jack foils another terrorist attack, kills Henderson out of revenge, and finally works together with CTU and his allies – which include Mike, Aaron and most memorably Martha herself – to bring Logan down – everything else from this point is somewhat anticlimactic.  Still the final moments of the day are sad, because even though CTU has prevailed and the plot exposed, no one feels any joy that they are bringing down the President. The fact that Logan will basically end up trading the office in order to get clemency makes no one any happier. It is a truly powerful moment that, for all of the show’s glories in the next three years, it would never equal again.

 

I’ve written a lot and I’m still not done. I think I’ll need one more piece to wrap it up – the 24 section, at least.

About The Golden Globes Coming Back: The Show Must Go On...Seriously?

Here’s a Zen/Hollywood question: if an awards takes place, and it’s not broadcast on TV and the stars boycott it, did that awards show actually happen?

This is a question that in all my years of following award shows that I never thought I’d even have to posit. The whole point of an awards show is to have stars covering the red carpet and everybody watching at home. And yet somehow, despite all of the abuse they’d taken in the past several months, the Hollywood Foreign Press seems to have decided to make what is arguably the worst decision in their association’s history – and this is, lest we forget, a group that one year gave the Best Musical or Comedy Film to The Martian and has let Ricky Gervais, a man who is abusive at best and barely seemed to care every time he showed up, emcee their awards show five times.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention. Earlier this year, after repeated announcements about the horrible problems with minority representation within the HFPA, several major stars announced that they would boycott the Golden Globes. Tom Cruise, who won three acting awards from the Globes and not normally known for making statements of this kind, publicly returned all of them to the HFPA. Not long after that NBC announced that it had no plans to broadcast the Golden Globes in 2022 and would reconsider doing so unless there were top to bottom changes within every part of it. And for awhile, we kept learning more and more stories as to just how unpleasant the membership of the Hollywood Foreign Press was, how much the companies that make film and TV hated having to suck up to them and treat them like kings, and how abusive they could be to actors and minorities in particular.  The membership of the Globes made numerous statements that they would enact the kind of changes they needed.

Well, we can all see how well that worked out. Because earlier this month, the Hollywood Foreign Press announced that they were going to have an awards show in 2022, even if NBC doesn’t broadcast it. I’m used to hypocrisy in Hollywood, but I’ve rarely seen it mixed in with some broad-scale stupidity.

Are these people – I’m going to have to speak in vague terms because even now I don’t know who makes up the brunt of the membership – really idiotic enough to think that somehow all of the issues that caused the show lose the station that has been broadcasting it for more than thirty years are going to make any network, even the most remote streaming service want to broadcast it?  Everyone got a very clear as to how toxic the Globes in the last few months. Who’s going to want to touch it?

Second of all, do you think that all of the PR firms that have since been very vocal about just how much they hate having to put their staff and clients through all of this, are going to just say, less than six months after the controversy became toxic: “Well, its October now. I’m sure the HFPA has made all of the long-term wide-spread institutional reforms they’ve had years to make but never have. Let’s give them tickets to a screening of Dune!”

And even allowing for the first and second possibilities to be realistic, how many actors and actresses are going to want to put themselves through this slog.  Its one thing to put yourself through this entire mess if the show was going to be broadcast on NBC – then they could at least make the argument that there was national exposure involved. But now all of this is going on, what is the upside to walking the red carpet? Even the most moronic paparazzi are going to ask some variation on: “After everything that happened, why are you attending tonight?” And keep in mind, a lot of actresses have been angry for years about only being asked about what their wearing. No one who dares to walk the carpet will want to answer that question.

All of this before we come to the awards show itself: Who’s going to want to submit their films and performers for nominations?  Would anyone have the stones to consider hosting this show? Who would they get to make the presentations for every award given all the controversy? Who would dare show up?

And I say this as a writer, by the way, who has spent more or less the last twenty years of his life, professional or otherwise, generally interested in the nominations for television awards and generally approving of both the nominees and many of the actual winners. I wrote several articles when the controversy was still fresh in which I made the argument that the Golden Globes had been far more on point with its recognition for TV awards in the era of Peak TV than the Emmys had ever been. It’s hard for me to find fault with an organization that chose not to recognize Game of Thrones or Julia Louis-Dreyfus and found the courage to do so for The Americans and Atlanta.  I ended my article hoping that Golden Globes would take this as an opportunity to try and rebuild and come up with an equitable solution to make people happy. Their decision to simply go on with another awards show this year despite all of this sends a clear message: “Ignore posturing, business as usual.”

I don’t know what the reaction of Hollywood will be overall. It will probably depend on just how many representatives from the media turn out when the HFPA announces the nominations and who they get to announce in the first place (or if it even gets covered by any network or cable channel, even E!). I’m pretty sure what my decision is going to be. Who cares? Now I realize that this whole affair is probably a tempest in a teapot that only a relatively small number of people care about, but considering that for a very long time, I was one of those people who cared passionately, it matters a lot at least to me. When the nominees are listing, I’ll go through the motions when it comes to TV at least, because I do still care about it. But I think it’s pretty clear by now that the reign of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as a force in awards is just about over. And just like so many vanity affairs, it’s the people who host it who are the last to get the message.

 

Television After 9/11, Part 4B: 24: What It Got Wrong and What it Did Right

 

 

Before I start with the parts about 24 I liked, I will deal with the most long-lasting effects of the series in regard to its two major features.

The first was the bias that the series repeatedly showed by representing almost all of its Muslim characters as terrorists, something that in the years to come Howard Gordon would actually apologize for having done over time. And given that the lion’s share of the series featured Islamic terrorist plots, it’s easy to understand. However, context must be given.

First of all, during the eight seasons 24 was on the air only half of the storylines dealt with Islamic terrorism. Day 1, as I mentioned in the previous article, dealt fundamentally with Serbian terrorism; Day 3 was essentially European; Day 5 dealt with Russian terrorists (indeed, much of the second half of storylines dealt with the threat of Russian terrorism, both outsiders and in the final days more politically motivated) and Day 7 dealt with a rogue African leadership backed by American industrialists.

As for the other half, which mainly did have Islamic terrorist at the center, I have to argue that the writers really went out of their way to differentiate between extremists and the average Muslim. In Day 2, a Muslim terrorist did lead a plot to detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, but was eventually revealed to be a patsy for American oil tycoons. (Those on the left who believed that was the real reason for the second Gulf War must have had a field day with that one.) In Day 6, by far the worst of the seasons because it was so heavy handed, the series did feature Islamic terrorists but tried far too hard to have a balance. (There was a badly handled subplot involving a detainee camp that was mercifully dropped early on, and the guidelines D.C was setting were actually shown to be hurting CTU itself. There was a Muslim-American denied access to intelligence even though, in a rare sly joke, ‘she was a registered Republican.’) Day 8, which was a slight improvement, dealt with separatists trying to assassinate a President of an unnamed Muslim country (all Middle Eastern countries in the series were never given names; another example of the writers not trying to blame specific nations) before he could bring about peace in the Middle East. And even in Day 4, which by far had the most direct Islamic plot of the series, the writers went out of their way to try and differentiate between loyal Americans and terrorist. In a scene I consider one of the series highpoints, Jack goes to a sporting goods store that is owned by two young Muslim Americans with terrorists on his heels, looking for weapons and ammunition. When the owners learn of what they are doing, they immediately offer to aid as well to help fight. When the fighting is over, Jack specifically tells the authorities to make sure the store and the boys are protected.

And even in a story which had a no-holds barred Islamic terrorist behind it, the writers still went out of their way to make it clear that these kinds of plots were never just the source of one faith. Throughout Day 4, American mercenaries were clearly helping this plot proceed in every fashion, including a man who went to great lengths to get into a plane in order to shoot down Air Force One. (It’s a measure of how truly detailed this plot was that this wasn’t the true goal of the terrorists. I actually said to a friend years later: “If the terrorists ever decide to get this involved in their plans, our country is well and truly screwed.)

This leads to the other problem that so many people deservedly had: the repeated use of torture as a means to elicit information. This is actually a more justified attack, as after Day 1 24’s go to move was Jack Bauer assaulting and beating anybody who might give him Intel. And I’m relatively certain that far too many people on the right did use this as a talking point to justify so much of what we now know happened in the years to come.

All that said I think far too many of the pundits and politicians viewed what happened in CTU as reality rather than what it truly was – a plot device. Even with far more innocent eyes, I never believed that the kinds of methods that Jack and his ilk would use were any more realistic than the technology that CTU seemed to have to instantly find whoever they needed to locate. I can hypothetically believe that a novice whose relative new to terrorism, maybe even a politician who doesn’t know better, might give in as quickly to Jack’s violence as they did on the series. But the idea that a man who has spent years planning for events of this magnitude will just give in seconds after you shoot him in the ankle?  I never bought that. Indeed, it was often shown that other intelligence operatives would spend entire episodes under extensive chemicals and physical attacks and never relent. Throw in the fact that during the series Democrat Presidents had no problem with this and Republicans had doubts about its efficacy and you have prove that we were living in an alternate universe. Does enhanced interrogation work? Probably not. Does it work in the way 24 showed it working? Absolutely not.

I get that 24 probably helped change how too many view Islam and torture. The difference is, Gordon and the other writers have offered a mea culpa. The politicians and pundits have not. And television may predict the future sometime – Homeland did so on more than one occasion – but if you seriously believe the Defense Department watched an episode of 24, collectively said: “My God, let’s try that” and the Memo to the Dark Side got written, then you don’t know history of the War on Terror. People might have wanted to do what Jack Bauer did, but I’m a cynic: I think they’d have done it if 24 had never gotten greenlit.

Now that we’ve dealt with that, I’d like to talk about some of the things about 24 that made me a fan. And only a small portion of it had to do with Kiefer Sutherland. Despite the ridiculous fact that the Emmys only gave him acting nominations the first four years it was on the air, 24 was always an ensemble show. And I’d like to discuss so many of the actors and actresses that played some of my favorite characters over the years.

Let’s start with Kim Bauer. Poor Elisha Cuthbert. The writers really did her no favors. Throughout Day 1 the basic subplot was how much peril she was in as so many of the terrorists and basically the world tried to kill her. As the day went on, however, Kim demonstrated not just vulnerability but a quiet toughness that made you really see she was her father’s daughter. And then came Day 2 and the writers just forgot. Just go to a fan of the series and say the word ‘cougar’ and you’ve basically summed up everything the writers on this series could screw up beyond recognition. There was a sort of redemption in Day 3 when the writers had the good sense to have her working at CTU – we didn’t have to keep cutting away to see what danger Kim was in – but I think Cuthbert knew how bad things could get and cut her losses not long after. It’s a shame. The problems with her character were always the writers fault. No one else’s.

Then there were the other women in his life. It took a couple of seasons for the writers to work this part out, too. After Teri’s death in Season 1, there was a major subplot where a woman named Kate Warner (Sarah Wynter) who was adjacent to the overarching story was supposed to be a love interest. The writers never followed through. In Day 3, there was a love interest of an undercover storyline which was the backbone of the Day, but she died early on. The woman who lasted the longest and who was by far one of the series standouts was Audrey Raines, memorably played by future Grey’s Anatomy alum Kim Raver. The Secretary of Defense’s daughter and his chief aide, she was a vital part of the plot in Day 4, first someone Jack had to save, then as the plot unfolded, the relationship became complicated. Jack was forced to fake his own death at the end of Season 4 to escape assassination and Audrey was left devastated.

In Day 5 (which I will be going into in great detail as we go forward) she returned to CTU for the first time after Jack ‘died’. When it became clear that Jack was alive, the feelings that she had buried came out. At one point, Audrey asked Jack: “I thought you died not loving me.” Jack didn’t hesitate: “I never stopped loving you.”

Audrey was always more than a love interest. She was by far the most capable of all the women in Jack’s life and as the series advanced far more clear-headed. Particularly in Day 5 she was one of the most capable allies Jack ever had – which actually made the end of the Day such a kick in the teeth. Just as it seems Jack and she are about to walk off into the sunset, Jack gets a call from Kim – who made it clear during the day she will not forgive the betrayal of her father. With hope we almost never see on his face, Jack rushes into the next room – only to be drugged and kidnapped by the Chinese government, who he faked his death to escape at the end of Day 4. Audrey would go off in search of Jack, end up presumed dead, and found tortured and traumatized in Day 6. Jack, still not recovered from the events in between the two days, decided to go on a suicide mission to save her. (I already related the consequences in my first article; I won’t repeat or give the storyline of the so called ninth season. It just hurts too much even now.)

But of course, as great as all these performances were, they all pale to the greatest of them all, the real heroine of 24 and CTU. Ladies and gentlemen, the tech support queen of snark: Chloe O’Brien.

Jack Bauer would be nothing without his tech. There had been tech before him: few will forget the lanky Milo Pressman, played by a way too youthful Eric Balfour in Season 1 and there would be some recognizable faces along the way – Zachary Quinto, pre-Heroes, pre Spock showed up in Season 3 and even Janeane Garofolo offer some help and digs in Season 7. But can anyone compare to Chloe? It’s pretty clear the writers weren’t initially sure what to do with her when she showed up in Season 3 – she even disappeared for a good portion of Season 4 – but she eventually became, next to Jack Bauer, the series greatest face. Part of was due to the pure majesty of Mary Lynn Raskjub, a former comic actress who let just enough of that to be channeled into Chloe’s behavior. But there’s a reason that considering the people who ended up dying over the series run that Chloe ended up the last woman standing. It wasn’t just that there never seemed to be a tech problem she couldn’t solve, it was her utter bluntness and surety in herself. She wasn’t there to make friends; she was there to do her job. If she saved the world in the process – and make no mistake, she was just as vital as Jack along the way – that was all in a day’s work (ha ha)

The only character who ever rivaled her was, of course, Edgar Stiles. There were many fan favorites over the years. Edgar was beloved.  I think a lot of it was due to how Louis Lombardi played him. Edgar never pretended to be anything but an overweight schlub who never seemed to have the same confidence in himself that Chloe did. But he was her equal. Few will forget his finest hour in the middle of Day 4. Faced with an override of every nuclear power plant in the country, Edgar found a patch that he thought could stop it. In typical fashion, he had to be talked into it. And thanks to him, almost every plant went back online. Of course, because this was 24, the almost was the heartbreaker. His bed-ridden mother lived in the area of California which was in the path of the radiation. He called her to try and warn her, only to learn she was alone – and had already had taken a lethal overdose of her medication to prevent a far nastier death. In typical Edgar fashion, he tried to leave to save her. In typical 24 fashion, he had to be talked back to save the day and spend the rest of it in mourning.

All of which leads to what I consider not only 24’s greatest moment, but one of the great moments in television history. In the middle of Day 5, CTU is under threat when a terrorist has infiltrated the agency and left a canister of nerve gas there to kill everybody. (I’ll get into more details on either side of it in the next article.) CTU learns of it too late to do a proper evacuation, so the only thing Chloe can do to save some of the lives is to seal off as many rooms as possible to protect as many people as she can. In one of the most horrific scenes in the entire scenes, those who are safe have to watch as their friends and co-workers die horrible deaths right in front of them.

Then at the last minute, Audrey goes: “Oh no.” Poor Edgar is outside unprotected. He has just enough time to say a single word: “Chloe.” Then he begins to cough and double over. The last seconds of the episode freeze on Chloe’s face as she watches in horror as someone she really cares for dies. Then the clock goes silent (as it did when a character that was vital show died). Day 5 would witness the most regular or former regular deaths in the series history, but I know without even having to ask my fellow fans that this death resonating more in the entire series canon, and is arguably one of the most painful of all time.

 

Tomorrow I will wrap up my discussion of 24 by discussing the political aspect and how 24 may have handled Presidential politics better than any series in Peak TV – maybe better than any than those set in the Oval Office.