24 Body Count

Episode 6: 9 pm to 10 pm

• Three Russian mobsters who were getting ready to shoot Jack as he finished up wiring the $5 million to their boss’ account. Silly mobsters. Don’t they know Jack cuts people’s heads off when they don’t cooperate?
• Other Russian mob boss’ kid who had been poisoned with radiation. Dad didn’t like big brother taking the kid to the doctor to get fixed—“Waaaah, they know about the nuclear rods. They’ll go to the police!”—so he offed little brother. Yeah. I know. Harsh.
• Oh. Yeah. The doctor and nurse at the clinic? Dead. Dad’s goons tracked down the brothers and shot their way through the medical facility to bring the boys back home. I always find it ironic when people die in hospitals. I mean, c’mon—it’s a hospital. They’re supposed to fix  you there.  So yeah, one doctor, one nurse.

Grand total for this episode, six. Grand total for the season, twenty confirmed, one unconfirmed. Oh, and let’s not forget that there is civil unrest in the Middle Eastern President’s country, so you know there’s some killin’ and maimin’ going on.

All this brings to mind the books that I’m reading right now. Yeah, I said books. I’m still reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but I decided that I wanted to look at The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens for use in my classroom. I am really impressed with this whole line of thinking and wanted to see about sharing it with my Advisory class. They come to see me every day, not for Art but for “relationship building.” I am supposed to mentor them, be their ear/shoulder/whatever and, for the most part, I’ve more or less enjoyed them. They’re freshmen so they are a bunch of squirrels, but they’re not bad. The problem is that they have very little moral direction—they don’t see a problem with cheating on a test, stealing what they want, lying for their gain. I’m hoping that by introducing them to the 7 Habits, they might get some of the things that they have missed somewhere along the way. The books are completely devoid of religion—they don’t say you should behave because God says you should, but rather that you should make good choices because it’s the right thing to do. They can be applied to a child who falls into any religion—I can’t imagine anyone saying that teaching a person to tell the truth and make good choices is against doctrine or dogma of any type. Also, I don’t have to worry about parents saying I’m trying to teach their child religion. I’m just trying to help make them better people.

Anyway, watching 24 tonight brought these books up in my mind. One of the things that the Coveys encourage is looking at your influences. Sean, the author of the teen book, suggests looking at the lyrics of songs you listen to and seeing if they reflect the values that you are trying to live by. My first thought when reading that was that, no, I know for a fact that most music the kids listen to today does not reflect an ethical, respectable attitude. I felt very holier-than-them until I finished up watching 24 tonight and realized that the idea of killing/torturing/etc. is completely abhorrent to me. It seems odd that this show I’ve watched obsessively since the second season is such a carnival of violence.

I don’t know how this figures in to my trying to have good influences thing.

I don’t want to stop watching it.

I’m going to have to think about this.