There’s a bit of casting news that’s emerged today and it’s not giving me high hopes for Season 8 of 24, a full eight months before it’s set to premiere. It’s not the fact that Slumdog Millionaire’s Anil Kapoor has recently been added to the cast for Day 8, according to Variety. That’s good news. It’s the fact that he’s set to portray a leader from the Mideast who comes to the U.S. for a peacekeeping mission. Now I very well could be wrong, because, to my knowledge, no details have as yet been released about Season 8, but this says one thing and one thing only to me:
More Muslim terrorists.
Now be they the main bad guys like Season 4’s Arnold Vosloo’s Marwan, or an unwitting henchman like Season 6’s Abu Fayed (Adoni Maropis), is there anyone out there, anyone at all, who wants to see this possibility?
I’ve been tracking this fairly sub-par current season very carefully, and one thing that I will give it props for is having different bad guys. 24 has alternated, with its even-numbered seasons featuring Muslim terrorists in varying capacity. It got to be so comical that in one of the seasons (I believe it was 6), Kiefer Sutherland had to do a The More You Know bit saying something to the effect of “although Muslims are portrayed as bad guys in our show (yet again), they’re valuable members of society and shouldn’t be lynched , racially profiled, nor thought badly of.” Yet the show has no problem going back to them in that regard every other season.
Of course I could very well just be jumping to a conclusion that’s nowhere on Tom Smykowski’s mat. And I really do hope I am wrong. Because this current season, while not living up to any promise of retooling, except for location and bad guys, is nonetheless a welcome respite from Muslim bad guys. Salaam ‘Alaykum.