Quote of the Day, 1/14/07: Stephen King on 24

The new season of 24 starts tonight, in just under an hour.

First, a line from Chloe, which I think was from last season.

OK, when the alert level goes down, and the terrorists have been caught, we can have some chamomile tea and I'll tell you all my secrets.

Stephen King, whose opinion on suspense and thrillers I may trust above all others, had this to say about his sneak peak of this season:

Day 6 ... is like a book you can't put down...even though there are times when you may want to.
...

There's ... a queasily gleeful subtext to 24 that suggests, ''If things are this bad, why, I guess we can torture anybody we want! In fact, we have an obligation to torture in order to protect the country! Hooray!'' Yet Jack Bauer's face — increasingly lined, increasingly haggard — suggests that extreme measures eventually catch up with the human soul.
...

24 also remains fresh, I think, because it is regularly watered by the blood of supporting characters — the sort who used to be considered eternal.
(Note, King goes on to reference Jack's wife and Edgar Stiles, and eventually to threaten the producers with the kind of vengeance only Stephen King can promise if they go after Chloe.)
...

This time the threat — and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is — seems too plausible. When I got to the shocker that ends episode 4, I could understand Jack Bauer's expression of disbelief; it's a perfectly human reaction to what has just happened. And yet at the same time I'm sitting in my office chair and thinking, This could really happen. And at some point, it probably will.... Really, no one does the old ''We're surrounded by enemies!'' bit better than Fox. Bill O'Reilly's going to love this baby.