Posted on 01/16/2007 6:06:00 AM PST by rintense
"How much longer? I hear someone," says the nervous terrorist with a heavy Middle Eastern accent, just before U.S. agents storm a warehouse where a nuclear device is being assembled. Confusion reigns, drama builds, the device is detonated and a mushroom cloud looms over Los Angeles. Such is primetime television in the age of terrorism, or as some critics charge, has "24" gone too far?
"It's the closest television comes to roller coasters," said David Bianculli, television critic for the New York Daily News. "It works well dramatically, and as far as feeding fears, that's what '24' is all about."
Sut Jhally, co-producer and co-director of the film "Hijacking Catastrophe," says the dramatic action in the show creates a dangerous climate in which the public loses some of its perspective on what's real and what's not. Of course that may be a minority opinion given the show's enormous popularity.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Yes, they are not sequential 24 hour days. Months or years pass between the timing of each season.
I borrowed past seasons from my library and it didn't cost anything but the gas i drove to pick them up. :)
How do you think I feel? I believe the blast on the show happened on Mill Valley Rd. in Valencia, which is only 3 streets over from me..LOL :)
That's not what you learn. The family was right to intervene at that point. What you learned is that if that same person turns out to be a terrorist, you cannot give in to their demands, no matter what the cost.
What I learned is this:
When a terrorist pulls a gun on you and your family and demands you deliver a package, you do what he says. Climb in your car and drive off.
Then park it at the end of the block, get your .38 out of the trunk, walk back and blow his head off. It's not a sin to lie to a terrorist, to paraphrase TROP.
I vaguely recall that and it was a lot more than 12 years ago- IIRC it aired during Reagan's first term.
That episode left me in tears. Poor Mason....
You're dust by now. LOL.
I dumped tv just under ten years ago. I just knew it was before that so I added a couple of years...
Just three shows on the tube for me- Jericho, 24 and (don't snicker) Battlestar Galactica.
What's up with Wayne Palmer whispering all the time!
I can't understand a word he says.
This new season takes place two years after the last season ends. In the last season, President Palmer was a FORMER President who was killed. The President at that time was Logan, a weasel, who looked for all the world like Richard Nixon. He betrayed the country, and was found out, so in the following election, a year or two later, I guess Wayne Palmer ran and got the sympathy vote because of his brother, who apparently had been a popular President.
I didn't know they had done that show, too. No wonder the set of "24" looks so familiar! One of the heads of CTU in an earlier season, the one with the daughter who had emotional issues, had also been head of the group on "La Femme Nikita" at one time.
I only wish Fox/ "24" had set off the nuk AT the Golden Globes...
I mean if we have to get our heard thinned ...thats the herd to thin
The story was that some 'anti-nuke' radicals detonated a nuke on a navy ship in Charleston harbor. It was another in the anti-nuke movies that proliferated during the Reagan administration.
Then, showing the devastating effects of nuclear war was ever so important, because the political objective was unilateral disarmament. With 24, it is being tough on terror, so suddenly they are so squeemish.
From Wiki:
"Reaction
On the night of its television broadcast (Sunday, November 20, 1983), ABC opened several 1-800 hotlines with counselors standing by to calm jittery viewers. After the film's broadcast ABC also aired a live and very heated debate between scientist Carl Sagan, who openly opposed nuclear proliferation and Conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., who promoted the concept of "nuclear deterrence". During the debate, Sagan discussed the concept of nuclear winter and made his famous analogy, equating the arms race to "two sworn enemies standing waist-deep in gasoline. One with three matches, the other with five." The film's effect was also felt in Kansas City and Lawrence. One psychotherapist counseled a group that watched at Shawnee Mission East High School in the Kansas City suburbs, and 1,000 others held candles at a peace vigil in Penn Valley Park in downtown Kansas City. ABC News knew that the peace vigil was staged with Hollywood extras, but omitted this fact from their broadcasts. In Lawrence, a discussion group called Let Lawrence Live was formed by the English department at the university, and several dozen more people from the Humanities department gathered on the University of Kansas campus in front of the university's Memorial Campanile and lit candles in a peace vigil.
The film provoked much political debate in the United States. Some argued that the film underscored the true personal horror of nuclear conflict[citation needed], and that the United States should therefore renounce the 'first use' of nuclear weapons, a policy which had been a cornerstone of NATO defense planning in Europe. Those arguing for a nuclear freeze also relied on the sheer horror depicted in the film for support.
now if the bomb had gone if in West Hollywood THAT would have been something
http://bauernuked.ytmnd.com/
Our two older sons are HUGH fans of Battlestar Gallactica. I just never got into it that much.
That wasn't a miniseries, it was a TV movie called "Special Edition". The network ran disclaimers across the bottom of the screen all during it so that folks just tuning in wouldn't think it was a real news show.
It didn't work either considering that charlston's telephone grid locked up for hours during and after that show.
I have that on VHS at home actually. Not a bad film.
Of course nothing beats "The Day After"; that is a classic piece of anti-nuke propaganda.
We still have a VHS tape of "Special Edition". My hubby was fascinated by it. "The Day After" was simply depressing.
Students were invited back to school that night to watch it as a group, and then talk to teachers/counselors about it. I stayed home and watched with my family. I remember my grandfather saying something like, 'f'ing commies' as he peeked from behind his crossword puzzle.
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