Spencer Ackerman of Salon does a literal and figurative bang-up job of exposing how Fox’s 24 plays fast and loose with the realities of politics and science in order to advance its ever-more-outrageous plots. Ackerman comments:

Many of the show’s central elements strain plausibility to the breaking point. Every good genre show requires some suspension of disbelief. “24,” one of the best, demands a cryogenic freeze.

The implausibility of the show is only matched, in Ackerman’s mind, by the vacuity of its language:

In one of the show’s finest word salads, the CTU chief instructs her staff to “double-source all intel through Homeland Security and CIA,” which is sublimely meaningless.

The article is peppered with Ackerman’s conversations with expert and high-level sources (”a knowledgable former senior administration official”). The best part of it is not their debunking the fiction of the show, but their admission that they themselves love the show because of its lack of realism:

Adds Roger Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism aide in the Clinton and Bush administrations who admits to TiVo-ing the last couple of episodes: “Although the real world doesn’t offer anything nearly as fast, or as good or bad, it’s entertaining as all hell.”

As an avid watcher of 24 myself, I would have to agree. For me, though, it’s not that the situations are faster or more compelling than real life. It’s that they rise to the level of camp. 24 is ultimately addictive because its outrageousness invites interaction — laughter and a lot of throwing up of hands in I-can’t-believe-it semi-exasperation. It’s even better when you are watching in a group.

This might be a very postmodern way of thinking, but, as Henry Jenkins would say (see Chris’ previous Survivor post), it’s more agency than we usually associate with TV.