When Rock Critics Go Bad

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My daughter Margeaux and I were in the Asian Arts Center the other day to check out an exhibition by contemporary female Vietnamese artists. That's not completely true-- we went there, as we do whenever she's in town, because of its quiet, understated beauty, and the solace it offers from the hectic pace of downtown Dallas. This exhibit was new, and a pleasant surprise, with works ranging from jagged portraiture to delicate brush and ink renderings that captured the breeze dancing on brooks better than any photo ever could.

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When Margeaux views a piece, she quietly inhales it, letting it wash over her to interpret it according to her own life experiences. She never attempts to second-guess the artist's original intent, and she has no patience for those who do. That explains why when the volunteer tour guides appeared from nowhere, we hastily retreated to the second floor of the Center, to further peruse Chinese and Indian antiquities in a more meditative environment.

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In a roundabout way, it also explains why Radiohead:OK Computer (A classic album under review) reduces OK Computer to a fanboy exercise of pretensiousness.

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It's been ten years since Radiohead released OK Computer, and depending on who you talk to, it's either the seminal canon of all rock music, or a paranoid post-industrial Luddite's vision of a bleak future. The truth is, it was neither. . . and it was both. At the time, I really thought that Radiohead was potentially the Pink Floyd for the new millenium. Ten years later, I realize they're a footnote, albeit an important one, in rock history. And while I still maintain it was one of the most important albums of 1997, that's all it was. Tom Yorke and company have moved on with their lives.

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The makers of this documentary, however, have not. What we have here is a collection of Brit rock critics dissecting every lyric, every chord, every note in some instances, in a vain attempt to elevate the album to a Work of Art. It's a valiant effort, but not a very compelling argument. They take each song on the album, inject it with their personal world visions and come to the conclusion that it's a work that's way too heavy for mere mortals to grasp.

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It's the sort of thing that gives rock critics a bad name. Albums like OK Computer stand as seminal works only because they add something to the subconscious vocabulary of pop culture. It came out at the right time, much the way Green Day's American Idiot or Pink Floyd's The Wall or any number of rock albums did. They spoke to a moment in our culture--nothing more, and certainly nothing less. For critics of questionable credentials to place any album on a pedestal from which hinges the course of civilization is to do a disservice to the artist, the listener, and to the whole business of constructive criticism itself. Yet, that's what these pundits attempt to achieve on this disc.

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Radiohead: OK Computer (a classic album under review) adds nothing to enhance the listening experience of the album. It may be of interest to the diehard fanboy, but for the rest of us, it's a stodgy, academician take on a work best left to individual interpretation. It's the sort of disc that makes me understand why Margeaux has an aversion to museum tourguides.

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Is Mike Doyle the New Jack Bauer?

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I've been a diehard devotee of 24 from Day One (no pun intended.) For five seasons, I gleefully accepted every leap in logic, every defiance of time and space, every torture scene (I'm thinking all of Day Three's plotline here) that they could throw at me. I never waivered from my devotion to Jack Bauer, no matter how preposterous the plotlines became. After all, the writers were working on the fly, and even they had no idea where it was going. You have to get behind that kind of moxie.

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After the ratings triumph that was Day Five, it was screamingly apparent that 24 would be around for a while. Sure enough, FOX guaranteed it at least three more seasons, and made Keifer Sutherland an executive producer of the series. It also became increasingly obvious at that point that the series was about to jump the shark.

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Let's face it: Day Six has been an almost incomprehensible mess, full of plotlines that sprouted like weeds, and were discarded just as quickly. It's as if the writers realized they'd painted themselves into a corner when they shipped Bauer off on a slow boat to China at the end of Day Five. From the moment Day Six opened, with Bauer released after 20 months of Chinese interrogation, nothing felt right. Within two hours, he got a designer haircut and a shave, (presumably debriefed while he was being groomed) and set about to doing what he does best: killing bad guys in creative ways. And that was all in his first couple of hours of freedom.

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Sure, other things have happened--nuclear attack on LA with 12000 casualties, failed coups, dueling terrorists, near-martial law in the US, paranoid romantic intrigues at CTU--but they were treated as minor annoyances. Bauer got all that cleaned up with six hours to spare--plenty of time to thread a new set-up poised to place Mike Doyle center stage next season.

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I'm not privy to CTU memorandums or FOX board meetings, but in my own private spoiler world, I'm almost certain that Rick Schroder's Mike Doyle will be the new 24 action figure next season. That's not to say Bauer will disappear--he may become next season's CTU director, a position befitting a TV series executive producer. Bauer's days as a renegade lone wolf world savior are almost certainly over, though. He's getting a bit long in the tooth to make it even remotely believable. It's time for Sutherland to pass the torch to younger blood, ala Bruce Willis.

Bauer can still be menacing, even in a desk job.

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The Mike Doyle character came out of nowhere this season, a sort of young Jack Bauer whose dedication to CTU was beyond reproach. While other characters in Day Six come across as plot devices with no discernible motivation, Doyle has been fleshed out as the season progressed, so that now we see him as a man with a shadowy past who keeps people at arm's length as a defensive mechanism. We know he's a student of comparative religion, that he is not above bending rules in the name of the greater good, that his dedication causes him to be reckless on occasion, that he will get his mission accomplished come hell or high water. But most importantly, he's playing Robin to Bauer's Batman.

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When I add all that together, and couple it with the fact that both Bauer and Doyle are blond, grimace at inappropriate moments and have similar tastes in street-fighting clothes, it's not a major leap of faith to see Doyle as Bauer's heir apparent. It makes sense in other ways, too. Schroder has time to grow into the stress lines that are part of Bauer's character. Since there is a bit of a similarity between the two, his presence wouldn't have a jarring effect on audiences. Since he's mysterious at this point, the series writers have a new sphere in which to work. And as the new world savior, he could serve as the perfect foil to a more seasones, wiser, more beauracratic Bauer.

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I could be wrong, of course. This is 24, after all. Doyle could be killed off next week. WWIII might break out, making Day Seven a post-apocalyptic snooze. I sort of doubt it, though. One thing is certain though. CTU is too small for two blond bad boy world saviors.