Tendentious

Now I understand that a major part of the appeal of the show 24 is its daffy audacity. The show relentlessly piles one improbability upon another, playing with the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. Those are the show's ground rules.

But tonight's show was even more over the top than usual. We are expected to believe that a rioting mob of prisoners will take a time-out from a chance for some good, satisfying, wanton destruction...to set up a game of Russian Roulette with other prisoners? Huh?

I say again...Huh?

Didn't they ever see The Deer Hunter? (Since, clearly, the writers of this silly ep, apparently requiring some cheap dramatic tension as filler, did). It was such a hollow, phony moment that I couldn't even take any pleasure in watching the guy who played the annoying Forrest character from Season 4 of Buffy shoot himself.

Meanwhile, the show's heroic Democratic President is debating a cartoon Republican who, like all Republicans, is only interested in investigating people's private lives. This moment brought a sigh of relief out of me; apparently, the bizarreness was over, and the show was, reassuringly, back to normal.