Recently in TV Category

The other day Terri and I were watching this reality show on MTV called "Sixteen and Pregnant." What's really ironic about that is, I'm willing to bet a lot of the girls in that show are pregnant, at least in part, BECAUSE of MTV. To sit through the commercial breaks that play during the show is to be confronted with the media imagery that influence these young people's behavior in ways that are permanently, life, altering. And then MTV makes a reality show out of their plight. It almost defines exploitation.

I think one of the reasons we so often abandon New Year Resolutions is because we make them based on results that feel good to imagine, not on work that feels good to undertake. So ultimately we abandon our resolutions for the same reasons we make them in the first place: it feels good at the time.

Another reason we abandon our resolutions is because, in a weird way, we don't forgive ourselves when we fail to hold true to our resolutions. A New Year Resolution is like a decision that we make to try to improve ourselves which, once we first lapse on it, we abandon until the start of the next calendar year. What I mean is, I think we abandon our New Year Resolutions too easily, after backsliding only a bit. If I resolve to lose weight, and find that I have gained weight in February, I abandon the resolution for the rest of the year. In Christian terms, that means I refuse to forgive myself and abandon myself to iniquity for the rest of the year. By forgiving ourselves, the way Jesus does, we can resolve ourselves to our goals once again, even if after we relapse in February. And then by December 31 something may have actually improved.

People often ask why there will be yet another season of this or that TV show which stopped being good a long time ago, or that is morally repugnant, or is just plain not good. The simple answer is the economic principle of supply and demand. As long as demand exists for stale, morally repugnant, or terrible television, big media producers will continue to pay for stale, morally repugnant, and terrible television -- because it makes money. The best way to ensure that a show does not return to the airwaves is to ensure that it stops making money -- i.e., to not watch it. I, for example, do not watch Jersey Shore.

Providing viewers with nine fantastic years of action, romance, terrorist plots, idiot plots, suspense, extreme measures, melodrama, personality disorder, and office pettiness, Fox's hit '24' is finally getting cancelled at the end of this, its eighth, season.

That means we the Jack Bauer faithful have twelve precious weeks to enjoy watching the counter-terrorist extraordinaire, played by Kiefer Sutherland, kick some evil-doer derriere. Read about it here, here, and here.

The moral value of the program has been a subject of debate among Catholics and other Christians, and rightly so. Certainly Jack Bauer does some things in the film that would be, were he a real person, not entirely licit. Torture of terror suspects, for example. Some consider that a deal breaker for the show. Oh, and the fact that he kills literally dozens of people each season.

But for me it is not a deal breaker because, well, it is just plain entertaining. It is fun to watch Jack Bauer save the world, year after year.

Also, there are merits to this show that are sorely lacking in way too many television shows these days. One is the presence of clear-cut good guys and clear-cut bad guys. It's tempting to say that in real life people don't neatly fit into such cookie-cutter categories.

But the heroes in 24 clearly have their own flaws, their own failings. Jack Bauer is the clearest example. The bad guys, similarly, have their good points.

But there is never any doubt that one set of characters is fighting ultimately for good, and the other set is ultimately fighting for evil. The fact that there is even a good-vs.-evil struggle immediately sets the show apart from countless banal reality shows and sitcoms where all the characters care about is themselves.

Also a big part the progression of the character of Jack Bauer over the years, which I have particularly enjoyed watching, has been his gradual rediscovery of his own soul. I have noticed in this most recent season that Jack, even as he is still racking up kill after kill, is beginning to find some redemption for all the things in his past that haunt him. It is kind of redemption that he is seeking, and even beginning to find.

There's a lot to admire about Jack Bauer. His refusal to compromise. His ability to overcome adversity, to play hurt. His commitment to saving the lives of noncombatants. His love for his family.

And, of course, his ability to squarely wedge his boot in the posteriors of and strike fear into the hearts of evildoers. Here's to twelve more weeks of Jack Bauer throwing down for freedom.

Oh, and the expected movie, in which I predict everyone will finally have discovered that they should always do what Jack Bauer says, allowing the movie to take place in real time, and be called "3."