Reply #20: More of my concerns of 24 this year... [View All]

[cascadiance]

... center around how the show is moving a bit to the right in its sympathies.

I lived in Turkey for 5 years of my life as a kid back in the late 60's through early 70's, and I'm concerned that they don't make all of the Turks unsympathetic like they have the couple here initially. I've had many good Turkish friends and know many of them to be decent and civilized people. I'm concerned a little about the plot so far, but 24 has a habit of twisting and changing plotlines quite a bit through the season, so perhaps the Turkish kid will turn out to be the ultimate good guy in the end too, even though his parents are pretty evil.

Hollywood in general hasn't been kind to the Turks. Even good movies like Midnight Express show an unflattering view of that country. One of these days I hope someone does a picture equivalent in scope to Ghandi about the life of Attaturk that would really bring a balanced view of recent Turkish history to Americans.

Back to my concern... I think that this season has shown things like Secretary of Defense Heller in more sympathetic light, even though his posture seems to mirror many of the cabinet officials of this administration. And his rebellious and anti-war son is drawn up as an idiot in the beginning, which in a way paints that more of a stereotypical viewpoint of the anti-war movement than I was seeing against Muslims. It will be interesting to see how the plot unfolds on who exposed Hellar's whereabouts to see if this series is truely moving towards the right. The second season I thought was pretty significantly anti-Bush in its subplots, etc. with the coup-like elements of the government facing the more sympathetic president at that time. We don't know the new president in this series well enough to be sympathetic or not to him.

We'll have to see more as the season unfolds. I hope Fox isn't trying to wield it's right wing influence over it's TV show producers more now. Shows like 24 and X-Files have been decent shows in the past without them poking their nose in the plots too much.