24 Day Five, Episode 20: Turbulence
Damn, being president his really hard work, but being a bad president is the salt mines.
Posted to Video by Victor Lana on May 2, 2006 12:22 PM
24 - Hour 19: Audrey, Bloody Audrey
In one of the best lines of the hour, maybe even the season – Mike says, “It’s been a strange night.”
Posted to Video by Mary K. Williams on April 26, 2006 01:42 PM
24 Day 5: 1:00 AM - 2:00 AM
Awww, look, the graphic violence warning fell asleep. Poor thing. It's had a long, hard day. The recaps give us the Cliff Notes version of the chase for the tape. Practice Essay Question: How is Audrey's love for Jack echoed in...
Posted to Video by Jeff Kouba on April 25, 2006 01:27 PM
TV Review: 24 Episode 19 - Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut
A question that has been posed throughout Season 5 has been the sanity, or the lack thereof, of certain characters. Most prominent has been First Lady MacDeath.
Posted to Video by Victor Lana on April 25, 2006 09:10 AM
TV Review: 24 - Hour 18, Truth or Consequences
Patton on the ground, Maverick, Goose and Iceman will approach by air and we’ll let collateral loss – Private Ryan handle the beach invasion
Posted to Video by Mary K. Williams on April 19, 2006 03:42 PM
TV Review: 24, 12 am - 1 am
As 24’s fifth season enters its final stretch, the nerve-wracking thrills continue to stack up and the body count spirals out of control. President Logan’s secret has become known to many, and those closest to him (Mike Novick, Vice...
Posted to Video by James Frazier on April 19, 2006 08:41 AM
TV Review: 24 Day 5, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM
Midnight! And the graphic violence warning just turned into a pumpkin. The recaps show us Evelyn and Jack in the car. It's really not clear if Henderson killed Evelyn and Amy. Though, hard to believe Henderson would leave them alive. We hear...
Posted to Video by Jeff Kouba on April 18, 2006 11:51 AM
Episode 18 of 24: Double, Double, Oil and Trouble
Lowguns and Nuts face-off in a scene that should make diehard 24 fans just drool, and during the heated confrontation Lowguns reveals the ultimate motivation for his acts of treason that day: oil.
Posted to Video by Victor Lana on April 18, 2006 09:30 AM
Article comments
1 - Mary K. Williams
Eric -
Thanks for putting this all together!
2 - Eric Olsen
thanks for doing such great reviews!
3 - Glen Boyd
Seperated At Birth:
President Charles Logan From TV's
And...
President Richard Milhous Nixon
From The World Wide Glen
http://theglenblog.blogspot.com
If the two night, four hour season premiere of Fox TV's hit drama 24 is any indication, this year's weekly cliff hangers promise to be the best yet.
But it won't be just the non-stop twists and turns that face Keifer Sutherland's back from the dead counter terror agent Jack Bauer, that keep me on the edge of my seat this time around.
Nope.
The guy who I'll be keeping my eye on is the character of President Charles Logan. You see, I first noticed it when then Vice President Logan assumed the Presidency on the tightly wound drama last season.
The guy playing President Logan (actor Gregory Itzin for those keeping score) is a dead ringer for Nixon. Seriously, it's uncanny. Check out the two pics I posted above. He's got it all. The jowls. The beady, shifty eyes. The slicked back hair receding from each side of his face. The Drabby Suit...
I fully expect to see beads of sweat dripping from just above his upper lip on future 24 episodes, just as Nixon's so famously did like clockwork in his own televised speeches.
From the debates with JFK all the way to his famous denials of wrongdoing ("I Am Not A Crook"), as the Watergate scandal slowly closed in on his presidency.
Well it seems somebody on the writing staff of 24 has also noticed the resemblance.
Because on this season of 24, the writers have apparently decided to run the Nixon thing right up the ol' flagpole.
The first signs are subtle...things like the fact that the Logan character is keenly mindful of his legacy and his place in history.
He persues his own version of detente with a Russian counterpart (in the form of an anti-terrorist accord) as the ultimate photo-op...even as a former President has just been assassinated and terrorists are publicly executing civilians in an airport on national TV.
"I realize that I'm ambitious", Logan remarks matter of factly, "But I didn't think civilians would be killed." Which immediately brought back memories for me of the Nixon Watergate tapes:
"We could raise the money," Nixon said in one breath, referring to paying hush money to the Watergate burglars. And in the very next, always mindful of covering his steps, came the qualifying statement, "...But it would be wrong."
Speaking of tapes, 24's President Logan keeps not only tapes of all recorded White House conversations, but transcripts as well. Which brings us to the ultimate Nixon tribute (at least so far) the writers of 24 have resurrected from the historical grave of the Nixon/Watergate era.
Thats right, it gets even better.
They've actually decided to resurrect Martha Mitchell herself as a character on 24 this season.
For those either too young, or perhaps even too old to remember, Martha Mitchell was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell, and a perennial thorn in the side of that administration.
Painted by Nixon's goons as delusional and paranoid, Martha Mitchell went to the press (and anyone else who would listen) often and loudly, with stories of government shenanigans branded as "conspiracy theories" at the time.
She was eventually silenced through medication (and worse some have suggested). But perennial "kook" Martha Mitchell was eventually vindicated when the Watergate scandal verified at least some of her louder, wilder claims.
24's First Lady Martha Logan, herself a medicated conspiracy theorist prone to emotional outbursts and wild mood swings is portrayed by actress Jean Smart.
My friends, to quote one of the man himself's most famous campaign slogans, Now More Than Ever.
Richard Nixon is alive and well.
Don't be surprised to see 24's President Logan hitting the bottle and having long, late night conversations with the other Presidents hanging on pictures in the halls of the White House before this season of 24 is over.
Remember, you read it here first.