Don’t remember where this comes from but there’s a saying that stories are based on conflict. In a melodrama one side is right; in a drama both are. I don’t expect all action films or superhero stories to jump into drama--sometimes good guys vs bad guys is no less dishonorable than merely funny comedy or for that matter the bulk of what actually fills newspapers--but often wish there was a bit more in that direction.
Case in point: Season Two of 24 which so far holds together better than the first season. The editing is tighter, the story more cohesive and there’s a feeling that more is at stake. But then this is only four episodes (disc one) and with twenty more to go there’s plenty that might run amiss. The flaw in Season One was that Jack was always right, not by definition a problem with thrillers but more so in one that pretends to be about murky realpolitik. (And let’s just drop the whole “in real time” claim; 24 has never been even remotely close to real time.) While last time it took almost the entire season for Jack to murder somebody, this go-round he does it right at the start. The writers made the victim a pedophile which apparently makes this OK, just as a somewhat less severe violation of civil rights was similarly justified on The Shield. If you think about it this type of character doesn’t fit into the story but probably a more plausible accountant or low-level thug would have given Jack a less clear moral problem. Following this approach, the NSA head is presented as more a self-serving obstruction than somebody who might be genuinely doing what he thinks is best. So President Palmer gets to make a “save lives” decision that could conceivably cost more in the long run even though in fact it changes nothing. There’s a story that Churchill allowed Coventry to be bombed rather than expose the fact that Allies had reliable intelligence on German objectives. Whether this is what really happened has been questioned by some historians but it did explicitly inspire one of the key moments in Babylon 5 and it’s this kind of ambiguity and sacrifice that’s mostly missing from 24.