I Wish Everyone Else Was Dead

April 27, 2016 11:17 AM

Pretty Good, episode 7: 'I Wish Everyone Else Was Dead'. Jon Bois looks at 24.
posted by kmz (21 comments total)

"Jack Bauer's America was a death cult."

This is amusing, thanks. I had no idea Jon Bois was doing anything like this.
posted by nubs at 11:37 AM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm breathing heavy because I scanned this and saw the words "Dead" and "Jon Bois at 24" and became very scared for a second.

I was just watching ep 6 a day or two ago and wondering when the next one is coming, so I'm happier now.
posted by neonrev at 11:39 AM on April 27, 2016

the craziest thing about 24 wasn't a supreme court justice using it as justification for our torture circus, it's that it was originally pitched as a comdey about 24 hours before a wedding.
posted by The Whelk at 11:41 AM on April 27, 2016 [16 favorites]

I cannot wait to watch this. I spent way too much of my time in college caring about what sort of asinine antics Jack and the gang would be getting up to from season to season.
posted by codacorolla at 11:48 AM on April 27, 2016

I think it's important remember, during our Great Derangement, that the top levels of government where openly endorsing a television show that was, on a good day, an absurd sadistic masturbatory carnival of self-justified torture and human misery . It got them all so damn hard.
posted by The Whelk at 12:13 PM on April 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

I'm getting bored slogging through the body count. Does he eventually step back and note that it's mostly just “That Dog’s Gonna Die” revenge porn?


/What's the name for the phenomenon where the best cite you can find on the Internet for something is a previous comment you made?
posted by benito.strauss at 12:18 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I encourage you to watch episode 6, "THE DUMBEST BOY ALIVE." The last two minutes are pure existential genius on a Samuel Beckett level.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:53 PM on April 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think it's important remember, during our Great Derangement, that the top levels of government where openly endorsing a television show that was, on a good day, an absurd sadistic masturbatory carnival of self-justified torture and human misery . It got them all so damn hard.

They stopped showing reruns of La Femme Nikita (original series) right after 9/11. Even "we need spies to do awful things but Jesus Christ the people involved are all monsters" was too nuanced at that point.
posted by praemunire at 1:07 PM on April 27, 2016

The "Presidents" section had me rolling. If you have not previously enjoyed Jon Bois' episode recaps of season 9, well, you should go enjoy them.

episodes 1 & 2 | episode 3 | episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 8 | episode 9 | episode 11 | finale
posted by Errant at 1:12 PM on April 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's a shame that 24 aired midseason while Dexter aired in the fall, otherwise we were this close to having two shows with serial killers as hero protagonists airing simultaneously.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:23 PM on April 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

One of these days I plan to rewatch the entire series, including the seasons I skipped over, because I honestly am not sure why I loved that show so much anymore and the Jon Bois recap is equal parts nauseating and hilarious. (Bois can take all the credit for the hilarious bits; the nauseating bits are all on 24.)
posted by chrominance at 3:17 PM on April 27, 2016

So, what's the deal with these podcasts-that-arent-podcasts? Can we please not do that?
posted by schmod at 3:37 PM on April 27, 2016

I'm getting bored slogging through the body count. Does he eventually step back and note that it's mostly just “That Dog’s Gonna Die” revenge porn?

Literal answer: he slogs through most of the video doing a body count with some grim quips. The "That Dog’s Gonna Die" trope is vaguely implied, but he doesn't credit a source. The last 10 minutes or so is a political/cultural analysis of how '24' reflected the essential psychotic sickness of the GWB administration.
posted by ovvl at 4:47 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I tend to disagree that we are much more sane than we were while we were cheering on Jack Bauer. The "essential psychotic sickness" of "America as a death cult" just got less subtle until a certain celebrity turned Presidential politics into Reality TV. I also hold out hope that someday we can collectively identify "The Walking Dead" as the "24" of this decade, the only major difference being the use of a non-existent "other" (Zombies) as an analogy to build up our collective fear and hatred of ill-defined "enemies". The "supervillain as protagonist" is probably "24's" most persistent effect on TV; Jack Bauer begat Tony Soprano, Walter White and Hannibal Fucking Lecter. The fact that "24" was critically praised (at least in the early seasons) was a major early step in the de-humanization of "quality TV", of which "who's gonna die next on Game of Thrones" is just another element.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:47 PM on April 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I kinda want to know how Jon stays employed. To be clear, he's a national treasure and in a more enlightened age there'd be no shortage of places that would keep him around because he makes the office more fun, and there's the off chance he wins a big prize.

But this is the dark 21st century, and yet he appears to have spent the last month making a video which has earned less revenue than I have cash in my almost empty wallet.
posted by wotsac at 6:36 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

So, what's the deal with these podcasts-that-arent-podcasts? Can we please not do that?

alternately, you could close your eyes. I quite enjoyed the visual accompaniment having only ever watched one episode of 24. I hated it. It was xenophobic pro-war propaganda. I hated it. So yeah, thanks Jon Bois for filling in some cultural blanks for me and reinforcing my notion that every hour of my life spent not watching 24 was an hour I'll never regret. Did I mention how much I hated the one episode I saw?
posted by philip-random at 10:01 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wish 24 had stayed more like the 1st season, it was so different than the later ones.
posted by coust at 11:09 PM on April 27, 2016

you mean like how Jack Bauer was a human being who was at least bound by natural laws, rather than an immortal superhero/supervillain who craved nothing more than sweet release from this unending nightmare
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:30 AM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

The "supervillain as protagonist" is probably "24's" most persistent effect on TV; Jack Bauer begat Tony Soprano, Walter White and Hannibal Fucking Lecter. The fact that "24" was critically praised (at least in the early seasons) was a major early step in the de-humanization of "quality TV", of which "who's gonna die next on Game of Thrones" is just another element.

Sopranos premiere date - 1/10/99
24 premiere date - 11/6/01

Season 1 Jack Bauer wasn't really an antihero. 9/11 and the cable antihero trend pushed the show in that direction in subsequent seasons.
posted by cnelson at 7:23 AM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Season 1 Jack Bauer actually seemed like a decent guy, the plot was also plausible (well plausbile compared to everything else that came afterwards), it was't the nth CTU mole and it felt that it really used the real time concept in an interesting way.

The show had some good moments in other seasons, I liked that Jack just breaks down crying at the end of season 3, but it did so MANY things so WRONG in so many episodes.
posted by coust at 9:56 AM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

In many regards, looking back at 24 reminds of looking back at the nineties. I seem to remember enjoying much of it at the time, but I'll be damned if it's not a little embarrassing to look back on in detail.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:26 PM on April 28, 2016