'24' Movie Brings Jack Back with a Noble Cause | Newsweek Entertainment

Indignity Index
5/16/2009 12:00:00 AM
12: So what if she was joking? If Rush Limbaugh had called Wanda Sykes "the 20th hijacker"—rather than the other way around—it'd be a scandal for weeks.
ENOUGH ALREADY
Tick, Tick, Snooze
Joshua Alston 1/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
Two years ago, I was so keyed up for the four-hour season premiere of "24" that I couldn't wait until the big night. Instead, I badgered a co-worker until he gave me his advance copy and I stayed up all night watching it. This year I got my own early copy of the "24" season premiere, its seventh—and this time I thought about badgering a co-worker to take it off my hands and watch it for me. For two weeks, it sat on my desk, a dreaded chore, not a savored treat.
Q&A
Hillary Will Be Soooo Jealous
Ramin Setoodeh 1/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
Another season, another administration takes over on "24." This time the president is played by Cherry Jones. She spoke with Ramin Setoodeh.
TELEVISION
Too Much Of a Bad Thing
Joshua Alston 1/3/2009 12:00:00 AM
In a recent episode of "The Office," clueless boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) decides to dispatch his workplace nemesis by planting marijuana in the man's desk for the police to find. "Does seem awfully mean," Michael says in a fleeting moment of doubt. "But sometimes, the ends justify the mean." Michael's plan ultimately fails, mostly because the marijuana he thinks he's buying is a baggie filled with basil-heavy caprese salad. But as funny as the plot is, what's funnier is how much it resembles storylines on dramas such as "Dexter," "The Shield" and an upcoming episode of "Damages." By now, we've seen plenty of TV characters wield illegal substances to accomplish their objectives. For the trope to trickle down to a screwball comedy just goes to show that in television, there has never been a better time to be bad.
THE ARTS
The Way We Were
12/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
If artists depend on angst and unrest to fuel their creative fire, then at least in one sense the 43rd presidency has been a blessing. Eight years is an eternity in the life of a culture, and when we look back on an era, we do it through pinholes: a movie here, a book there. What will stand out, decades from now, as the singular emblems of this moment in history? NEWSWEEK asked its cultural critics to pick the one work in their field that they believe exemplifies what it was like to be alive in the age of George W. Bush.
ENTERTAINMENT
Diversity Training
Joshua Alston
The August 2007 issue of Esquire featured a cocksure John Edwards next to the cover line: CAN A WHITE MAN STILL BE ELECTED PRESIDENT? At the time—say, before he dropped out last week—the question was revisionist sarcasm. But in the alternate reality of the hit drama "24," the question would be downright apropos. When the show premiered in 2001, the plot centered on the country's first viable black presidential contender, Sen. David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), and the efforts of dauntless counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer(Kiefer Sutherland) to fend off assassins. By the second season, Palmer had taken office, where he remained through the following season. In season six, the show had an echo of Robert F. Kennedy in the form of Wayne Palmer (D. B. Woodside), David Palmer's younger brother, who is elected as the second black president following David's assassination. The seventh season had its scheduled Jan. 13 premiere derailed by the Hollywood writers' strike, but when it finally bows, Tony winner Cherry Jones will play Allison Taylor, the franchise's first female president. In fact, the show's only white male president to be featured as a regular cast member was the duplicitous President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), whose complicity in the death of David Palmer couldn't have been good for his approval ratings.