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Sleepers Awake

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One of the pleasures of the first season of Sleeper Cell, Showtime’s terrorism drama, was that it didn’t rely on as many TV contrivances as shows like 24–superhuman agents, miraculous computer hacks, women chased by cougars. It showed the fight against terrorism, and terrorism itself, as human enterprises with flaws and foibles. Terrorists and Feds alike squabbled over egos and agendas, showed hypocrisy and made boneheaded mistakes. That the terrorist plot–a chemical attack on Dodger Stadium–was foiled was as much a matter of luck as ingenuity.

Ultimately, though, Sleeper Cell is a TV show, and in its second season (returns Sunday night) it proves that, while it may be the thinking couch potato’s 24, it’s not so different from 24 after all. Just like Jack Bauer, anti-terror undercover agent Darwyn (Michael Ealy) just happens to find himself in the perfect position to again infiltrate a terror cell. And as on 24, because cable shows are prisoners of the same production realities as network shows, the terrorists again harbor a strange obsession with attacking Los Angeles.

All that said, it’s not so hard to suspend disbelief for this show, which, while not perfect, manages to be both exciting and–if not exactly realistic–then at least reality-grounded. Where 24 tends to mash its villains together into an indistinguishable mass of evil, Sleeper Cell not only looks at the roots of Islamic-extremist anger, it also shows a wide range of Muslim thought. Darwyn himself is a Muslim, frustrated both by the radicals who have perverted the Koran and his American handlers, who seem willfully ignorant of Islam. And whereas 24 forced itself to implausibly ratchet up the threat every season (I see your nuclear warhead and raise you a plague!), the planned attack of season 2 of Sleeper Cell–a dirty bomb–is no less chilling for being more believable.

The show is still flawed by mechanical dialogue. The characters too often speak less like people than newspaper clippings. But last year’s chief weak link, terrorist mastermind Faris (Oded Fehr) has grown more interesting. Captured after last season’s failed chem attack, he’s holding up against Federal interrogation, where he becomes a kind of Hannibal Lecterian menace; he’s not a person, really, but at least he’s become a more interesting monster. We may still be waiting for the Sopranos of terrorism, a drama with fully imagined characters and emotional rather than technical realism. But as popcorn entertainment goes, Sleeper Cell is Smartfood, and a little dusting of cheese never hurt anyone.