Skip to main content

The 24 Mystery

One of the delights of having acquired Netflix (see previous post) is being able to take a look at films and TV shows that caused a big buzz when they came out, but I never got round to seeing. Last night I watched the first two hours of the first season of 24.

As everyone said at the time, the real time format is very clever and engaging. What's more, how sweet all their antique 'modern' technology is. Jack Bauer is using my old phone! But I desperately need a 24 fan to explain to me the logic of the bad guys in those first couple of episodes.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Okay, it's clever of the writer to make us all think the photographer is the killer to start with. But come on. WHY does the following happen? What the bad guys want to do is replace a top photographer with a ringer, who can then get close to a target and kill them. Fair enough. The photographer is flying in to LA. So they wait for him to get off the plane, kill him and replace him quietly and efficiently? No way.
  1. They blow up the plane with the photographer on in mid-air. So the people involved in this highly secret plot think the best way to keep things secret is to blow up a 747? Nice one, guys.
  2. Their evil agent takes the photographer's ID and jumps off the plane before it blows up. Okay, so their ringer can now turn up with a real ID. Great. Only this is real ID for someone the authorities know was blown up on the plane he was arriving on. A little thinking through required here, guys.
  3. The evil agent (after sitting around with no clothes on, as she appears to be a naturist), buries the ID with a radio beacon before being taken to their evil lair. About five seconds later (this is real time, remember) someone else on a motorbike with a detector for the radio beacon digs up the ID. This newcomer then hides the ID and extorts money from the rest of the baddies. But why did they bury it and retrieve it seconds later? What possible advantage was there to burying the ID and having it dug up five seconds later?
Someone please explain!


Image from Wikipedia

Comments

  1. You're asking the wrong question. The right question is ... when will Jack shoot someone in the leg? JACK, SHOOT THEM IN THE LEG!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...