Caught myself up on the first season of House of Cards this past weekend. I know, I know. But, better late than never, right? After all, isn’t that the advantage of on-demand viewing? Nowadays, a good series is always available to be discovered.
Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood in “House of Cards”
There are shows that I tune into and consciously try to like, and then there are those that win me over midway through their pilot episode without any premeditated cooperation on my part. House of Cards falls squarely in the latter category. It’s a classic Institutionalized story, which Blake Snyder defines as any tale about the “crazy” or self-destructive group dynamics of an institution—in this case, Congress. Washington is well-represented in political television drama at present, but I certainly haven’t seen a series in which power plays are an end unto themselves: The movers and shakers that populate House of Cards make no attempt to justify their self-serving agendas with hollow allegiances of fealty to the Republic. And protagonist Frank Underwood’s stylized, Shakespearean asides to camera—a tough trick to pull off (Kevin Spacey makes it look so natural, hence his consecutive Emmy nominations for the first two seasons)—lend an intimacy that endears the audience to a character with which we might not otherwise be predisposed to empathize. (He works for Congress, after all, and have you seen their approval numbers of late?) Like most serialized protagonists, Frank is comprised of five key traits; I’m eager to get on with the second season, so let’s take a quick look at them:
This is the first in a series of posts on characterization, in which I reverse-engineer a psychological profile for an established fictional character.
Four years ago, the clock ran out on 24, the groundbreaking “real-time” television drama starring Kiefer Sutherland as indefatigable counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer. A writer on Lost once told me how much he loved 24 for being such an immersive entertainment experience: It made him completely forget, as he watched it, that he was both a television scribe and a liberal! Indeed, the series remained so reliably entertaining throughout its initial eight-season run that its often outlandish plot twists never seemed to irrevocably strain the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief, nor did its occasionally controversial depictions of both Muslims and the use of torture overshadow its legacy as an evolutionary pioneer in serialized television.
A 21st-Century Superhero
From the outset, 24 was a bit of an anomaly: a high-concept television series in a medium predicated far less on concept than on character. Speaking broadly, feature films exploit a premise to elicit our interest; there’s an implicit What would you do? embedded in a movie’s central conceit that compels us to engage in its finite dilemma and vicariously explore the ramifications. Television, by design, isn’t finite—it’s open-ended; a foundational premise needs to be built to last—across multiple seasons, ideally—rather than burn through all of its permutations over the course of two hours. In TV, concept supports character: We come back week after week to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital to check in with Meredith and McDreamy, to Downton Abbey for a visit with the Crawleys. 24 is no exception. And the only character to have appeared in every episode—or even, more generally, every season—is Jack Bauer: He’s the common denominator—the reason we keep coming back. The innovative real-time format is why we came to 24 back in 2001; Jack is why we’ve stayed with it through 2014.
More than even its nonelliptical narrative, Jack is the show’s key component, as 24 fits firmly in the Superhero mold. For the uninitiated, a Superhero story need not be strictly about a costumed crime-fighter; Blake Snyder defines it as any tale about a character with a special power (Jack is the country’s foremost counterterrorism expert), a nemesis (in the case of 24, the literal villain du jour), and a curse (on account of the reliable efficacy of his superpower, Jack is solely and repeatedly called upon to do the dirty jobs and make the personal sacrifices to save the day, day after day). Jack is what Snyder defines as a “People’s Superhero,” like James Bond and Olivia Pope.
Jack’s Back
“Jack, simply getting your life back isn’t gonna change who you are… and you can’t walk away from it. You know that. You’ve tried it. Sooner or later, you’re gonna get back in the game.”
Secretary of Defense James Heller in “Day 6: 5:00 a.m.–6:00 a.m.”
Superheroes are routinely called back into service for the greater good—such is their calling and their curse—and Jack isn’t immune: He’s blazed back into action in this summer’s limited-run revival series 24: Live Another Day. Though the threats he faces have changed with the times—it’s drones and hacktivism now—all the time-honored tropes that made 24 such crackerjack entertainment are present and accounted for: Infiltrations! Exfiltrations! Mass-casualty detonations! Botched undercover operations! Presidential assassinations! Traitorous machinations! Everything we loved, just as before.
Also exactly as before: Jack Bauer. He has been one of the most consistent protagonists of any contemporary long-running series. Not predictable, mind you—an analysis of his five governing characteristics shows him to be a deceptively unconventional hero—but consistent. Let’s deconstruct him, a trait at a time.
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