Given that the “24
” writers are the only ones in television attempting something like this, I suppose it’s not surprising they do not seem to feel the need to improve on their writing from the first season. The real time gimmick is still a big enough gimmick that they seem to be coasting on it.
And that’s a pity. The writing in this second season of “24” is flabby, silly and typically telegraphed miles and miles off. Fans tuning in looking for edge of their seat thrills aren’t going to find them here; they’d be better off switching from Fox to sister station FX and “The Shield.”
The very first hour telegraphs things that the characters will be blissfully ignorant of for several hours — Hey, there’s a conspiracy inside the White House to subvert the president’s authority! Hey, this cartoonishly evil bully Kim works for isn’t going to just let her get away with defying her authority! Jack is mad and he’s a loose cannon!
Plot elements seem to have been lifted from online fanfic: When running from the evil father, Kim runs, not into the crowded public street, but into an alley empty of people; Kim is an au pair instead of a nanny despite the fact that most people have no idea what an au pair is and despite the fact that she neither seems to be a foreign student nor a college student at all; an expensive sports car’s trunk conveniently springs a leak in time for police to investigate the sudden gusher of blood despite the fact that even the cheapest car trunk won’t drip a drop if you spill a 2 liter of soda back there (learned the hard way); no one seems capable of getting along with each other, and instead White House officials and intelligence agency officials alike have to snarl half-threats at each other and refuse to do even the most rudementary cooperation; this bizarre inability to connect with each other extends outside the workplace — instead of calling up his estranged son and saying he’s been badly hurt on the job, the humorously named George Mason has his son arrested and brought in wearing handcuffs, in a failed attempt to win the Father of the Year award.
If they cut most of this nonsense out — along with the entirely pointless Kim storyline — the show would be half its length, which just might make it tight enough to watch. As it is, this is a rental, at best. Flabby, slow and silly.
Hardcore Aliens fans can find a lot to dislike in “AVP – Alien Versus Predator,” although anyone who has found “Alien3” and “Alien: Resurrection” to be causes worth championing likely doesn’t have the sense of humor to enjoy this film no matter what.
There’s a lot of wasted potential in this film — a great haunted house setting apparently inspired by “The Thing” is almost entirely wasted and the site is abandoned except for the destruction of it at the end; two of the three Predators are fumbling idiots and the last is a relatively cuddly guy who seems unaware that his relatives hunt and skin humans for sport; the tie between the human pyramid cultures is simply tossed out there, without anything being made of it, including how a “heat plume” could be spotted by cultures prior to the 21st century — but overall, it’s not a bad film. It has the requisite number of Aliens hissing and drooling acid, it has facehuggers and chestbursters and it has a pissed-off queen tearing up the joint.
There’s a token attempt or two to tie this into Aliens lore — the father of robotics’ middle name is Bishop, and is played by the same actor as played the robot of that name in Aliens — but mostly it’s “hey, these things are kewl!” and tossing them all into the blender and hitting puree, without worrying much about the logic of what comes out.
For someone waiting years for the next part of the Aliens saga, this is a disappointment. For someone who went in knowing it would be dumb fun (like, say, Predator fans, or those who have been burned enough by science fiction franchises enough over the past few years to learn their lesson), it’s dumb fun, incapable of offense.
This is a rental for most folks.
There should be an award for “best metaphor.” Tonight, I said that the chocolate and peanut butter of Ontario and Hesperia politics have mixed before.
Fake being impressed, please.
In other news, I may have (really) developed arthritis at age 36. I may be asking you to suffocate me with a pillow if the pain in my joints doesn’t ease. My hand resembles a flipper in the morning until I choke down sufficient Advil. Tests are being run by the GP here …
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