I must agree with the thrust of the posting.
...Before Hollywood started working for al-Queda my biggest complaint with them was how left-wing cliches were killing films and television. Once you know how the simple liberal mind works once you crack that code you can see plot-twists coming from a mile away. Liberal purity has created more cliches and ruined more thrillers and action films than I can even begin to count.
I dont know the man, but Surnow seemed to consciously understand that over the decades a liberal socialization had taken place with television audeinces which would allow him to create truly shocking plot twists by playing on what weve expected from liberal Hollywood for decades and then turning those expectations on their ear.
Black presidents torture? Torture works? The bad guys really arent white? A black first lady is the villain? The hippie kid really is a snivelling punk? The protagonist loves his country? The guy who played John F. Kennedy is torturing his own son because his country comes first? Terrorism is always a bad thing? Non-white people are terrorists? Guns do good? And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
There have been many complaints that 24″ wasnt truly conservative. True. But again, thats a good thing because ideological purity ruins drama. You never knew what was going to happen on 24″ because the the plot wasnt beholden to any ideology and this freed the creators to keep the twists coming from any direction.
It was the same thing with Law and Order for the first five seasons. L&O wasnt a conservative show then, what it was was illiberal, and therefore dramatic and intriguing because you never knew where it would end up. Its unwatchable today, not just because of its political correctness and strident case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, but the utter predictability of the plots which come with all that baggage.
But Surnows understanding of how to twist the genre conventions didnt stop at ideology. I knew 24″ was something special during season one when Jacks wife agreed to be raped in her daughters place and then it actually happened. What a horrific and anguishing moment that was, and in any other show the rape never wouldve happened because weve become so socialized to the conventions of the genre we all knew the good bad guy would stop the rape (because weve seen it a hundred times before) or something else contrived would save this character we cared about from such a terrible thing. But she was raped and it solidified our sympathy making her death at the end all the more heartbreaking.
More importantly that moment told us all bets are off; anything can happen to anyone. It completely undermined our sense of security about the entire cast. Nothing was sacred. Nothings off limits. And that is drama.
