"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Unlike the dominant prime-time premium cable fantasy genre narratives or broadcast political soap operas
24 Live Another Day this week continues the problems of secrecy in an international bureaucracy. The drones are being piloted by a conflicted Naveed whose lover Simone loses a finger by ruthless mom of the year Margot. Jack has taken hostages in the US Embassy in order to upload the evidence that the override device exists and the entire narrative is recapitulated to President Heller by Bauer during the hostage situation. Several betrayals are floating in the background as Audrey Heller realizes that her husband has been keeping Jack's role in this crisis a secret and Adrian Cross appears to have other ideas in mind which have yet to be revealed, By the end of the episode Agent Kate Morgan is more convinced of Jack's innocence and the misdirection to which we have grown accustomed in 24 emerges again with the problem of transferring the data on a portable disk drive (even the covert intelligence services have problems with a lack of Net Neutrality). What gets sacrificed are the larger rhetorical issues that justify drone policy as President Heller's speech to Commons seems to be successful but we have no real message that might actually point back more specifically to the failures of the current war on terror and of course 24's alternative history of nuclear explosions on US soil. One hopes the narrative will take some new directions less 24-formulaic in terms of the humanist moral imperative continually repressed in the name of expediency as Bauer's shooting marine guards in the chest knowing that they are wearing body armor is a sign of measured use of justifiable force.