Prison Break

One of my current favorite television shows is Prison Break. I've been watching it since the first episode of the first season and have never missed one (with the help of tivo). The first time I watched it, I noticed that there was an abundance of diversity among the characters. The 4 main characters of the first season were two white men, one African American man and one hispanic man. I didn't really think about it at the time because there was already a presence of Africans Americans and hispanics in television. I thought the reason for the adversity was because they couldn't pull off a prison that had only white men, but realized that that wasn't the only reason. As the show progressed, they began going into the backgrounds of all the characters and it seemed as if they really wanted to involve a variety of cultures in their show.

Another of my favorite shows (although it has gotten worse over time) is 24. It is attention grabbing, action packed, and full of suprises. One aspect that never changes, however, is that there is a bit of a lack in adversity. I'll admit there was a little, for example they had David Palmer as the first black president, but for the most part, there were white members of CTU with white field members, and there were terrorists who just happen to all be Middle Eastern (with a few exceptions). You would think, with a rising hispanic population, that there would be a lot of hispanic actors working on the show, but there have been few to none (at least that I can remember).

I am a bit confused why Prison Break has a lot of diversity, while 24 has very little, and has an abundance of steriotypes, even though they are on the same network, Fox. Doesn't really make sense, does it?