"24": My Faith Begins to Falter...UPDATED
I’ve been playing around on the Internet, working on some other things while I figure out what to say about tonight’s “24.”
I could talk about the ramping up of the B-story, or Tony’s near breakdown or the fate of Renee. But the truth is tonight’s episode lost me within the first ten minutes when it made one of the biggest continuity errors I’ve ever seen…
There were two major villains in season five: President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) and Christopher Henderson (Peter Welling). Henderson was the man who “killed” Tony. It’s a name that I will never forget because I was upset that the writers gave the man who killed one of my favorite characters my last name. Every time I heard it that season—which was A LOT—I winced a little.
So imagine my surprise when both Emerson and Jack referred to a Christopher Anderson when they were talking about how Emerson got Tony out of CTU. When Emerson first mentioned the name, I didn’t know who they were talking about, but then when Jack repeated it, it was clear they were talking about Henderson.
During the first commercial break, I rewound the tape to make sure I heard correctly. I even turned on the closed captioning. And sure enough there it was. Christopher Anderson.
How could the writers make such a terrible mistake? Where was the Continuity Director? As much as Henderson’s name was mentioned that season, how could they not catch the error? It’s even in the recaps on the official “24” website, for goodness sake!
And that glaring error completely soured me on the rest of the episode. It’s bad enough that the explanation of how Emerson got Tony out wasn’t very convincing (and a little unnecessary in my opinion), but to get something so wrong? That’s just ridiculous…
I don’t think I have to tell you that this does make my faith in my beloved show falter a little bit…
Actually, that’s not true. It makes it falter a lot…
UPDATE: So my second favorite Canadian, RT, who is my source for all things "24," assures me that I'm wrong and that they did say Henderson. Since she has a MUCH better TV than I do, I'm going to trust her. But somehow, that doesn't make me feel much better about the episode...
And I was so distracted by the whole Henderson thing that I forgot to ask why "24" feels the need to pick on Kidron, Ohio. As most people know, that's the heart of Amish country! And since I've been through there many times I can tell you that I've never seen a chemical or nuclear power plant there. Just a lot of buggies and cool furniture and cheese shops.
That evil Colonel Dubaku. What does he have against the Amish, anyway?
