24 Days of "24": Drinking the Kool-Aid

As defined by Wikipedia, “Drinking the Kool-Aid” means “becoming a firm believer in something: accepting an argument or philosophy wholeheartedly or blindly.”

It’s an expression I’ve used more than once to describe “24” Executive Producer/Showrunner Howard Gordon. Every time the show comes up with a storyline that doesn’t quite make sense, Gordon refuses to admit it.

The worst was in Season 6, the worst season of the show’s run. Everyone knew that the show had gone off the rails, but Gordon wouldn’t admit it. Only now, has he finally started to say that they made mistakes.

So whenever Gordon says something is good, I take it with a HUGE grain of salt. But lately, I’ve been buying it all. A few weeks ago, a fellow fan asked me to explain why President Taylor would go along with President Logan. I told her it was all about preserving her legacy after losing her family. She laughed and told me I’d been “Howard-ized.”

And then, low and behold, when a reporter asked Gordon that same question, he gave the exact same explanation I gave her. He even used some of the same words.

Yep, I’m drinking it…

For the record, here is his explanation: “It’s really interesting because it was a profound and nerve-wracking and long and lengthy conversation we had. But it’s one we sort of knew we needed to get there. There were a couple of things that really just pushed us over the edge here. The real time thing didn’t help any, but the fact of the matter is President Taylor has lost her family, this is really the crowned jewel of her administration and, frankly, her own legacy, and that desire was so profound that we believed it could distort her otherwise really clear, straight vision and throw her off this moral compass. Charles Logan seemed like a great devil on her shoulder, a great Iago.

The opportunity to have those two actors influence over each other – again, I have to say that seeing the end really will help answer this question better, but we all were aware of it. Cherry [Jones (Taylor)] was anxious playing it. By allowing that complexity, I think we got to take this character away from just her. Frankly, otherwise it gets to be kind of monotonous if she makes all the right choices of which, until this moment, she has. But it is like a momentary backslide, and you see how that one moment, one lie begets another until, like Lady Macbeth, she finds herself too far gone and too steeped in blood to really go back again. So that ensnaring, that excretion of mistakes we see happening, she gets caught kind of in her own web. And again, its resolution is pretty exciting, and that is what we’re working toward.”

By the way, if this post reminds you of a filler episode before something great happens, it is. Tomorrow, I’ve got something really special—my conversation with the show’s music composer Sean Callery.

So Stay Tuned…

Photo Credit: Kelsey McNeal/FOX