In ‘24,’ Commercials Run Like Clockwork

To be or not to be.

Shampoo commercial.

That is the question.

All right, hyperbole. It’s not quite that bad, for even the most insensitive TV palookas surely wouldn’t interrupt Hamlet’s famous soliloquy to make a buck.

Can commercials decimate good television, though? It’s close.

Take the great new Fox series, “24.” Great, that is, if you watched the premiere as I did, on a network-supplied cassette without commercials. That’s how all TV critics preview shows they plan to review.

As for other, less fortunate viewers, one called to say she found unfathomable the same “24” pilot episode that other critics and I gave rave reviews. Her complaint was not about the show itself but about the intrusiveness of commercials within the hour. She said they destroyed its continuity, rendering it “impossible to watch.”

Impossible to watch a masterfully executed and calibrated show pulsating with tingly suspense as it follows a CIA operative, played by Kiefer Sutherland, trying to foil plans to murder a presidential candidate? With each inventive episode meant to reflect an hour of real time?

How could that be?

I tuned in Tuesday night’s second episode (which will rerun tonight) to see what was what. I didn’t use a stopwatch. Nonetheless, the chunk of show I timed evolved something like this: Nine minutes of plot, interrupted by four minutes of commercials, followed by five minutes of plot, aborted by four minutes of commercials. And so on and so on.

Which was no way to present a tightly coiled story whose suspense and momentum are meant to escalate slowly but surely en route to the closing credits. Watching it reminded me of stopping on every floor while taking an elevator to the penthouse of a high-rise.

One moment jeopardy, the next a parade of belly buttons in a jeans commercial.

They don’t call it commercial television for nothing. In contrast to the English and Canadian models, and much of Western Europe’s, our broadcasting system was designed at its inception to sell products along with fun, with commercials being instituted to manipulate consumers. So carping about this infrastructure is pretty much a wasted effort, making “To be or not to be” an irrelevant question at this point. Not that it even matters much regarding routine TV, most of which integrates commercials almost seamlessly.

Yet I, for one, have become spoiled watching the likes of commercial-free HBO, Showtime and other subscription TV, and also by PBS, which clusters its underwriting messages (code for commercials) so that they intrude on programming minimally.

Better “24” on Fox--even fragmented by advertising--than “24” not at all. I’m so hooked that I wouldn’t dare miss an episode. Yet there are some series that are incompatible with commercial TV. And “24” seems to be one of them.

Ride ‘Em: That old cowboy, former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, was on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” recently, cracking his whip in a discussion of war coverage on that PBS newscast, finding fault with the “stupefying, boneheaded questions” asked by reporters.

The media, said Simpson, now a visiting professor at the University of Wyoming, should “replace skepticism with patriotism.” In other words, get in line or get out of the room.

Argued media critic Geneva Overholser, who teaches at the University of Missouri: “Skepticism is patriotism for a journalist.”

I’m hardly neutral here, my vote going to Overholser.

Stupefying? Boneheaded? Yup, we’ve all seen that from the media at times. Some of us even (blush) have been guilty of it.

What’s instructive, though, is how perspective changes regarding blind trust in government, depending on the job you hold. When Simpson was a member of GOP leadership before leaving the U.S. Senate in 1996 after 17 years, was he not often publicly skeptical of the motives of the Clinton administration? Did he not openly question the machinations of Democrats? Did that make him any less patriotic? Of course not.

Why should media be any less skeptical than politicians?

As for the press, “We can’t be out there vying for popularity,” Overholser said. “We’ve got to be giving people information they need, which isn’t always a popular thing to do.”

Magnificent Sid: Television of old is celebrated on Wednesday’s “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” an ABC series whose brand of improvisational comedy I rarely find funny. Notable about this episode, though, is an appearance by Sid Caesar, during which he delivers some of his incomparable foreign-language doublespeak in improv nonsense with host Drew Carey and the rest of the cast.

Although not vintage Caesar, glints of his old brilliance come through, evoking memories of just how remarkable a sketch comic he was--arguably the best ever--during his heyday in the 1950s on “Your Show of Shows” and “Caesar’s Hour.”

Although much comedy doesn’t transfer beyond its time, Caesar’s is timeless, 1951 becoming 2001. If you want evidence, do yourself a favor and pick up “The Sid Caesar Collection,” six tapes of highlights featuring some of his memorable work with supporting players Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris and Nanette Fabray, along with interviews with his superb writers. It’s available on the Internet through www.sidvid.com or by calling (888) 292-9400.

I popped in a cassette recently and laughed so hard that I wheezed myself into an asthma attack. It was worth it. To buy or not to buy? You have to ask?

“24” can be seen tonight at 9 on Fox. The network has rated it TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children under 14 with a special advisory for coarse language).

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears on Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.