Underpants On The Outside

I’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good, but 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, 7-8 AM:  When Jack escapes the sewer system, he’s finally got the top button of his shirt undone, and he already looks twice as limber for killing.  He’s favoring his stabbed shoulder a bit, but I’d bet that doesn’t even last into the nine o’clock hour.  All Jack needs is a cell phone to call Chloe with and it’ll be like he was never gone.

7:03:  Well, that was quick.  Jack breaks into a car and finds a state of the art cell phone sitting inside it.  Mighty convenient, there.  Especially since the car was something like an ’84 Caprice.  It takes less than a minute for Jack to call into CTU and say the words, “Bill, I don’t have a lot of time.  Put me through to the President.”  Buchanan overcomes the waves of déjà vu he must be experiencing and does exactly as Jack says.

7:05:  Jack orders the President of the United States around for the first of many times today.  Sure, even though you have to discount it a little since it’s just Wayne, we’re still pretty far along the 24 Hour Timeline.  At this rate Kim will be needlessly placed in danger before brunch. 

Jack tells Prez Wayne not to kill Bad Guy One of Twelve, because according the current bad guy, Number One is actually working for peace.  Of course Wayne doesn’t listen to Jack, and he calls in a military airstrike at a residential neighborhood in Inglewood.  That’s one way to assert your authority.  Check out Wayne wearing the big boy pants.  On a side note: how many times does Jack have to save America before he starts getting the benefit of the doubt?  Something tells me that years ago, Jack drunkenly called up the President and had him issue a full scale alert on the terrorist “I.P. Freely”, and nothing has been the same since.

Now Jack has only five minutes to go save One of Twelve from twin attack helicopters.  Luckily his new phone has a feature where he can punch in a set of coordinates and the phone will return a set of driving directions, which would be tremendously convenient if there were no such thing as street signs.  I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how to do that on my phone and ended up accidentally downloading a Christina Aguilera video instead. 

When Jack arrives in Inglewood (with somehow more than five minutes to spare), he spots a guard outside the house, who Jack disables with a piece of firewood.  That shoulder doesn’t seem to be slowing him down too much.  Even better, now he’s got a gun, and one more thing is right with the world.  You know the pins and needles you get when your leg has been asleep for a long time?  Something tells me Jack’s trigger finger is tingling like crazy.   It better be a good day for dying, ‘cause a whole lot of people are going to be doing it.   Another guard comes out, and now Jack has got a hostage.  Imagine what he’d be doing if he wasn’t jet-lagged.  The man is a machine.

Jack walks into a room of men with guns, including One of Twelve, who kind of looks like the guy on House.  Jack tells him that there are attack helicopters on their way, but of course they don’t listen to him anymore than the President did.  To earn their trust Jack must put down his gun, which seems to pain him more than when he got stabbed.   House finds a transponder on one of his men and realizes Jack is telling the truth, but still prevents Jack from taking his gun back.  Now he’s being mean.  Next he’ll throw Jack’s gun up in a tree.

7:15:  They leave in the nick of time.   Well, not exactly: everyone but Jack, House, and the traitor die, but that’s to be expected when people don’t listen to Jack.

7:25:  CTU agents are making a perimeter ten blocks in radius.   We all know how well that works - Jack and Number One are probably eating at a Denny’s in Redondo.  

Actually they’ve broken into an empty house to get their torture on.  Jack wants to know where current villain Two of Twelve is hiding, and he stabs the traitor in the shoulder to get him to talk.  The guy starts crying, which is certainly understandable given the situation.  What is odd is that Jack backs off of him.  Jack insists the guy doesn’t know anything because Jack can “see it in his eyes.”   Now, Jack turning down a perfectly good interrogation is like me turning down a blowjob and grilled cheese: it’s probably time to see a doctor.  Fittingly, Number One is giving Jack the look I give Wonder Woman when she can’t remember how to turn on the headlights of her own car.  Without saying a word, he grabs a knife and stabs the traitor in the knee – and now the guy won’t shut up.  Number One gets a probable location of some of Number Two’s Henchmen, then stabs the traitor in the torso and kills him.

In case that wasn’t clear, Number One has just done to Jack Bauer what Jack Bauer has done to countless men, including several generals, Cabinet-level officials and at least three Presidents: completely emasculated him.  Jack looks rocked.  If we could read his thoughts, I imagine they’d look something like, “How could this happen? I ate a man’s NECK twenty minutes ago!”

As if that weren’t enough, Number One just told Jack there was no time to waste!  He’s out-Jacking Jack!  He shall be henceforth known as Jack++, New Jack, or Jack Prime, or other similar names as I come up with them. 

Jack finds a new sweater to change into, giving New Jack a glimpse of his scars.  I think that’s Jack’s way of saying “You got me this time, but if you pull that shit when other people are around, I’ll drink beer from your pulmonary artery before the day is done.”

Then Original Jack admits weakness:  “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”  Somehow the world keeps spinning, and New Jack City replies, “You’ll remember”.  He’s even more compassionate than Jack, who if the positions were reversed would have said something like, “The only reason I haven’t knocked you unconscious is because I don’t want to carry you.”

7:50:  The Two Jacks head downtown according to the traitor’s directions.  New Jack recognizes a pair of men as they head towards a subway entrance.  He informs Jack that one of them is wearing an explosive vest.  When the two of them split up, Jack follows the explosive terrorist into the subway, and J++ follows the other one.    Seems like our Jack pulled the short straw on that one.  At first I thought it was shitty of New Jack City not to give Jack a gun before he played Bomb-Tag, but then it occurred to me that Jack appears to be getting a motherload of “Do Onto Others” karma coming back at him (and stabbing him in the shoulder).

Jack saunters, (I’m not kidding; SAUNTERS) up to the explosive man on the subway platform.  The guy is having an off day so far, but you have to admit that his balls still manage to be both brassy and hairy at the same time.  That seems impossible, but you can’t argue with the evidence.  I’m not sure what his plan is, though; maybe he’s going to eat the C-4.  Unfortunately a train pulls up before Jack has time to do anything, and Jack’s only meal of the day remains a side of trachea. 

Jack and the Bob-Bomb get on the train.  Minutes later, the train collector comes through the car.  Uh oh, Jack doesn’t have a ticket.  For that matter, he shouldn’t have a wallet either, so let’s watch to see if he pulls that bad boy out anytime later today.  Fortunately chutzpah is a currency accepted in more places than Visa.  Jack walks right up to the ticket collector and says “My name is Jack Bauer I’m a federal agent yak yak yak, bomb on the train, yak yak yak.”  For some reason, no matter the urgency of the situation, the first words out of Jack’s mouth are always, “My name is Jack Bauer.”  He really feels this is the most pertinent piece of info.  I’m going to try and count how many times that happens.  Of course, the ticket collector barely bats an eye before doing everything Jack says.  These aren’t the droids he was looking for.

Meanwhile, topside, J++ follows the “handler” to Union Station, the Los Angeles train station.  The handler is following the same path as the bomb, which seems unnecessarily complicated.  You see, despite the name, Union Station is not exactly Grand Central.  Last time I was there, Union Station had less security than most modern-day summer camps.  There are literally more pigeons inside the building than there are guards.  If I wanted to blow it up, I’d just walk into it; no need to waste the train fare.  Furthermore, it’s an even worse target than last season’s Ontario Airport caper.  You’ll never hear anyone complain about the train traffic in L.A. – no one takes them, because they don’t go anywhere anyone wants to go.   Blowing up the In-N-Out in Westchester would be far more catastrophic.

Back on the train, the ticket collector tips Jack’s hand before Jack can surprise the bomber.  The bomber tries to detonate his vest, but Jack dislocates his thumb.  The two wrestle and Jack does a nifty move where he grabs the bomber’s tie and pulls him head-first into a pole.  Unfortunately the bomber gets loose, but as he reaches for the detonator, Jack leaps up and jump-kicks him out of the window at the back of the train just as the bomb goes off.  The blast knocks Jack back several feet through the car, which of course does not aggravate his previous head and shoulder injuries because they have already healed. 

As the hour comes to a close, Jack calls his doppelganger and tells him to keep trailing the other terrorist, and CTU intercepts a phone call proving Jack was right.  President Wayne realizes just how over his head he is, and his last words are “This is going to get so much worse.”  I don’t think he’s talking about the terrorism; I think he’s just dreading his next meeting with Jack.  He looks like a kid who has wrecked the car and is just waiting for his parents to come home and find out.

For the hour:

• Kills: 0 (the guy killed himself)
• People saved: hundreds
• Presidential Orders (given): 1
• Explosions survived: 1
• Self-Identifications: 2 (on the train, and back at New Jack’s house)
• Interrogations/Stabbings: 1, though it was later ruled incomplete and disqualified.

Maybe Jack’s lost a step, but that’s pretty debatable.  Regardless, I’ve got faith that by Happy Hour he’s got a body count to rival most maritime disasters.

My Day, 7-8 AM: I honestly can’t remember what I did two days ago between seven and eight, but based on recent trends, it’s probable that I rubbed my crotch against Wonder Woman, mumbled, “you awake?” then fell asleep before I heard her response.

For the hour:

• Sexual Come-ons (any): 1
• Sexual Come-ons (successful): 0