Underpants On The Outside

Last season, I got into 24 quite a bit. Most people I know say it’s the best show on television, and I have to admit, I see their point. I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I’m going to compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.

Jack’s Day, 6-7 pm:  The hour begins on a significant moment: Kim Bauer shows up at CTU.  I’ve mentioned a few times that I don’t understand why people hate Kim so much.  I can understand why girls hate her: she’s hot.  But guys hate her too, and that makes no sense. 

Well, it makes sense now.  Two sentences in and I realized that Elisha Cuthbert is one of the worst actresses of our generation.  But do you know why I was able to pay attention to her acting?  Because she was wearing a lot of clothes, which means the producers were really sleeping at the wheel.  Not like they care about plausibility, but the show takes place in Los Angeles, one of three cities on Earth where a woman could walk into a room glistening wet, wearing nothing but a bikini top, a pair of Daisy Duke shorts and flip-flops, and no one would bat an eye.  (San Diego and Miami are the other two.)  Someone please send Fox some copies of Maxim.

I’ll spare you the details of Kim’s initial interaction with Audrey, except to say that it was a meeting of two Level Four Buzzkills.  Several good times wandered into the room and were immediately shot in the head, execution-style.

Jack returns to CTU with Robocop in tow, and goes to reunite with Kim.  As you’ll recall, Jack had faked his own death, so Kim only learned five minutes ago that he was even alive.  When Jack walks in, Kim is standing with a much older man she arrived with, who we are supposed to assume is her boyfriend.  I don’t think we ever learned his name, so I’m going to call him Goatee, because his was awful.

Jack is trying to explain to Kim that he couldn’t tell her he was alive, but acting-wise it’s like Keifer Sutherland is trying to play tennis with a dog.   When Jack says for the ninth time that he had no choice, Goatee steps in and says “You could have chosen to trust her.”  Now, I’ll allow that Goatee doesn’t know that Jack just shot Mrs. Butterworth in the leg, but I’d like to think that once Kim knew her father was alive, she would have warned him, “Okay, my dad… kinda has a temper.  Don’t say anything to him.  And for God’s sake, don’t look him in the eye.”  Maybe Curtis could have stuck his head in and added, “Don’t try to arrest him either.”

Jack shows remarkable restraint. “I’d think I’d like to talk to my daughter alone.”  In all of these posts, I don’t think I’ve used the word “restraint” without “remarkable” immediately preceding it.   I guess any restraint on Jack’s part is remarkable, but this is REALLY remarkable, because Jack is also dealing with the anger of an older man humping his daughter.

Goatee: “I don’t care what you think.”  Whoa.  I mean…whoa.   Jack looks kind of confused, and I can’t blame him. Jack turns to Kim and just says, “Kim,” then she asks Goatee to step outside.  Shrewd.  Instead of killing the man, Jack killed his manhood. 

When they’re alone, Kim tells Jack that she can’t be a part of his life right now.   This scene was extremely boring.  Every time Jack stuttered I hoped he’d say “I gotta go… I got this torture thing… they’re waiting for me.”

But that’s when things get good.  When Jack gets to CTU’s abattoir, Robocop is restrained and hooked to various pieces of intimidating medical equipment.  That’s when Jack utters a line I hope to one day say:

“He’s going to tolerate an inhuman amount of pain.” 

Hell yeah he is.  They inject something into him which I can only guess is liquid pain (Jagermeister, probably), because Robocop starts sweating and gritting his teeth, but it’s really no more effective than Jack shooting the guy’s wife in the leg.  The wife only has one leg left, so Jack is running out of options.

6:42: the best part of the episode.  By that, I mean the preview for X-men 3.  AWESOME.  While a chick who can read minds would be the world’s worst girlfriend, for some reason when you call it a “mutant ability” it becomes really hot.  Go figure.

While Jack was torturing Robocop, one of the terrorists broke into CTU. Don’t worry how he accomplished that, if I tell you your head will explode.  You know how in the 80’s a cop could break into any building using only a Diner’s Club card?  That would have been better.  Just know that an intruder alarm interrupts the interrogation, Jack gets my dad’s “Can I have five minutes?  Just five freakin’ minutes???” look and leaves to take care of the problem.  (We don’t SEE Audrey call Jack to tell him there’s an intruder, but I guarantee it happened.  It’s like the tides.)

Of course, like all problems, when I say Jack takes care of it, I mean he shoots it.  It’s not a very eventful kill, until Jack finds a remote timer on the body.  Oh no!  The terrorist planted a nerve gas bomb in CTU!  And it goes off! 

Unfortunately, there’s nothing funny about nerve gas.  A lot of people die, yada yada yada, but Chloe saves a bunch of people by sealing them in an airtight room.  Of course Jack is there, along with Audrey, Chloe, Kim and Jack’s terrifying realization that there’re no three people it would be worse to be trapped in a room with.  It’s the Perfect Buzzkill.

Several unimportant CTU employees die outside of the room, but then Edgar wanders in.  I haven’t talked about Edgar before, and it’s something of a moot point now, but he was another tech geek like Chloe, and a popular character because he was fat.  As the audience realizes Edgar is about to die, we see Jack’s face, and he’s going through agony.   He’s looking at a problem he can’t shoot, and even worse, Edgar would have been another dude for him to talk to.  Unfortunately, Edgar grabs his chest and falls down. Nerve gas, Shmerve gas, that’s a heart attack.  Dude was FAT.

The show ends before Audrey can yell, “Oh my god, Jack!  Edgar inhaled nerve gas!  And I think he had a heart attack!”

For the hour:

• Kills: 1
• Kill Opportunities Missed: 1 (Goatee)
• Deaths Jack FAILED to Prevent: 60 (estimated)
• Knockouts: 0
• Interrogations: .5

It’s like Jack forgot the KO was in his repertoire.

My day, 6-7 pm:  Still drinking that delicious white chocolate mocha.  I got a medium.