Help a fangirl out?

[rivkat]

I'm looking for pop culture examples (TV, movies) of professionals doing their jobs because they're professionals, even though they know -- or strongly believe -- that there's no point to it. An example would be the final episode of Angel. (That might be an example of "the point is that this is all there is," but I hope you get the idea -- you treat the patient because that's your job, not because you think it will help or because you think it makes you especially noble. You investigate the crime not because you're doing justice or because you have a personal stake but because that's what it means to be a cop. Greg House and L&OL's Jack McCoy are, therefore, counterexamples.)

Specific episodes/arcs, please! The point is to have some examples to show students, so the more specific, the better.

Comments

[wearemany.livejournal.com]

while reading a profile of kiefer sutherland in the april 20, 2006 rolling stone just now, i found this, which might be an even better fit. it's about the end of s3:

[Bad guy Saunders] learns that CTU's regional director, Ryan Chappelle, has been making headway in uncovering private information that the terrorist doesn't want uncovered. He demands that the president shut Chappelle down by having him killed. [President] Palmer decides he has no choice but to accede to Saunders' grim demand and orders Jack Bauer to carry out the killing.

When Bauer takes Chappelle to an unoccupied train yard in the dawn hour, forces him to his knees and places a gun to the back of the trembling man's head, it is an almost unimaginable, wrenching moment. It verges on breaking every rule of a dramatic television series, but more important, within the story's framework, the occasion represents a defeat of everything Bauer believes in. "God forgive me," he says, then squeezes the trigger. In that awful instant, both Bauer and President Palmer have violated all that they had hoped to stand for. They have summarily executed a man who shared teir cause, and they have let their fear of terrorism force them to betray the core values in American democracy. Palmer and Bauer did it, however, because in the story's world, the greater moral good wasn't the acceptable choice; they carried out a murder in order to prevent a vast number of deaths.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I gave up on 24 mid-S2, but people keep telling me I should try again.