PRESIDENT PALMER STILL NOT HAPPY ABOUT BEING ASSASSINATED

Dennis Haysbert, 24’s President Palmer, is still bitching about being killed off the show early last season.

And it’s not because his character’s assassination put him out of a job.

No, it’s because he has another low-rated counterterrorism show to promote for CBS. And what better way to grab a headline than to bitch about 24? I don’t hear Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida) and Reiko Aylesworth (Michelle Dessler) bitching about getting killed off. Then again, they don’t have some shitty new show to plug.

Haysbert had already finished shooting the terribly melodramatic (and slow-motion cheesy) pilot for David Mamet’s The Unit (Tuesdays, 9/8c) when 24 brought him back to kill him off in Season 5’s opening moments.

Haysbert now describes the scene as “the only thing in my career that I ever regretted.”

You've got to be kidding me.

Despite 24’s high weekly body count, Palmer’s death was certainly the toughest for long-time viewers to cope with, along with perhaps Tony, Michelle, Chapelle and Edgar. And that pisses Haysbert off.

“I don’t think any death gives anybody any satisfaction, really, or has any meaning. It was a device, and a device that I didn’t think was necessary.”

First, deaths do give people satisfaction. When Jack murdered Drazen, Henderson, and Nina in cold blood, those were all very satisfying actually. But Palmer's death wasn’t necessary? Right, except for the fact that his character’s assassination has driven much of the past two seasons’ plotlines. Sure, you could argue that the death was gratuitous. But that one moment jolted Season 5 into new dramatic territory and sparked the show’s best season since its first.

Haysbert also claims that he’s no longer comfortable with 24’s “politics,” and enjoys working on The Unit more. Sure he does …

“All [of The Unit’s] stories have a spine of truth,” claims the disgruntled (and dead) ex-President, who noted that his new show makes “pretty subtle statements – some subtle and some not so subtle – about the CIA and FBI.”

You know, that’s great and all, Dennis. But I don’t want subtlety on my counter-terrorist dramas. I want shit blowing up and terrorists getting their nut sacks stapled to their belly buttons. Haysbert apparently disagrees.

“I started to watch it this season, and, you know, I’m just a little disappointed in its direction,” he said.

Well, yeah. Of course you are. We all are. But how could the show ever top last season? It’s still the best f’ing show on television.

“I think the politics has been skewed in a very, very right-wing way,” Haysbert added, pointing to outspokenly conservative executive producer Joel Surnow.

Surnow is a dick. I’ll grant you that much. But the show’s “politics have been skewed in a very, very right-wing way”? Ummmm, how? He obviously hasn’t watched past this season's first four episodes.

The writers have actually gone to great lengths to contradict the virtues of any right-wing philosophy. The Muslim detention camps have proven worthless and even detrimental to the government’s intelligence efforts – as evidenced by Walid’s plotline. The noble President Wayne Palmer has tried collaborating with a wanted terrorist to sway his people’s minds. And the evil Vice President Daniels’ plan to nuke the northern region of a Middle Eastern country at all costs has been portrayed as reckless, dangerous, and immoral. The villains aren’t just Muslims and Russians this season. They are right-wing extremist war hawks trying to push America into World War III. Conservative my ass, Mr. President …

“I’m very pro-military, I’m not pro-war. And I think that’s what [The Unit] is too.”

I’ll tell you what I think "that" is – shameless self-promotion.