07.07 | Episode nineteen, 2AM - 3AM
Jack Bauer dead? There's not a lot else to discuss, really.
There are two ways to look at this; one is that the writers of '24' are mavericks who aren't afraid to kill off any character - even their heroes; the second is that this is a plot twist on a par with Teri Bauer's amnesia, or with Fonzie jumping the shark.
Of course, Jack Bauer isn't dead. This whole act of him being killed is merely a cheap stunt - a cliff hanger to keep American viewers on their toes all through a Superbowl fortnight that lacked any episode of '24'.
There's no way Jack Bauer could be dead. Kiefer Sutherland's signed up for six more years of the show. The series couldn't continue without him - it's not about stopping the nuclear bomb and saving us from a war, it's about Jack Bauer stopping the nuclear bomb and saving us from a war. The whole dynamic of the show is based around him; it's his 24 hours, a disguised allegory that shows us that taking care of the world, of those around us and the families that we love is a full time job. It's a 24 hour job.
Of course, what this series is beginning to show on a more basic level is that everything around Jack Bauer is dead. Viewers of the first series will know that, alongside his wife literally being dead, his love for Nina - his former mistress - is dead; his respect for authority is dead; his trust for his colleagues is dead; his hope and dream for his daughter, Kim, is dead; his enemies are dead. The second series brought us the fact that his career and life are both dead; his co-workers and accomplices die by the dozen. His former boss, George Mason, dies, whilst any chance that Jack has of coming to peace dies when he parachutes out of that plane and away from the nuclear explosion. Now Jack Bauer himself is dead, and with him any chance of stopping the oncoming war.
Or so you'd think, eh? It's not hard to predict that '24' will soon be ripping off one of the oldest stories that the world has. Jack Bauer will be resurrected much like Jesus Christ himself was in the Bible's New Testament. And that should be where any respect I have for the series dies. The writers have pushed the boundaries of reality just that little bit too far. Even so, every new episode brings a situation which has been cribbed from previous scripts, presented in the same manner, and changed at the last minute to turn the on-screen action to a different direction. There are many examples of this; the death of Johnathan Wallace in last week's episode was taken from the situation in season one where Richard Walsh, who Jack similarly depended on, was shot and killed, and died - whilst also trying to pass Jack information on a computer chip. Each new episode brings about a rewrite of what has gone before. It's on this level that you must know that there's no way Jack Bauer could be dead. Jesus Christ died and rose again, therefore it must come to pass that Jack Bauer must do the same. After all, there are only so many heroes to tell stories about.
Even the writers themselves recognise that Jack Bauer is a hero, that the show could not exist without him in it. That's why they save the juiciest plotlines for him, and leave Kim running around the forest, David Palmer stuck in an office somewhere, and Tony Almeida gets to spend time making gooey eyes at every woman he meets.
It's reasons like the above that make me love '24' like no other hour of my week.
That said, and speaking of Terri Bauer's amnesia, tonight's episode provided us with some great, but terrible, scenes to match the nonsense that brought season one to shame; the aforementioned death scenes of Jack Bauer, for one, but also Lynne Kresge being locked in a closet, Michelle Dessler and Tony Almeida's kiss. Yusef Auda being called a 'towelhead' also ranked as one of '24' all time lows - not even the dumbest of rednecks would confuse Auda with yer stereotypical 'towelhead' (they call him another name, surely - you get the feeling the writer included that particular phrasing for shock value), let alone if he was driving past them in a car. At night. In the dark.
So, yes. Episode nineteen, 2AM - 3AM, had some terrible moments - examples of the very worst that the show has so far given us. But it has also given us hope, because if Jack Bauer can die and come back to life, if Mike Novick can truly turn into a bad guy, then there is hope for the whole world. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I figure that we'll reach it in less than five hours - or weeks, depending if you're a fictional government agent, or not.
