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, 8-9 AM:

8:00:  Jack hops into Jack 2.0’s car.  It’s like Double Dragon - they’re more than the sum of their parts.  Unless they get rid of this guy soon they’re going to have to change the name of the show to 12.

8:02: Bad Guy Two of Twelve calls the President to make a deal.  The President listens better to the terrorist than the man who saves the country in less time than it takes me to make a Powerpoint deck.

Jack wants to get in touch with CTU.  Jack Junior doesn’t.  Jack insists, and JJ caves.  Jack’s back in the saddle again.  Nothing like an explosion to get the blood flowing. 

The problem is that the Jacks are trailing the handler but sooner or later he’ll spot them.  Plus Jack’s getting uncomfortable in the plush, padded, climate controlled environment.  He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s sleeping on the job.  Jack hops out of the car, runs up to a civilian entering his car and throws him to the ground, adding “Don’t get up”.  As far as I know the man is still lying there.  Jack hops in the guy’s Cherokee, hauls ass, then rams into the terrorist.  The Spare Jack pulls up like a witness to the accident.  Jack Classic shouts racial epithets, takes off, and Jack Junior offers the guy a lift.  That was a pretty nifty plan, in my opinion.  That explosion really did wonders for Jack.  He even looks younger.

8:24: Curtis picks up Jack, and mutters, “It’s good to see you Jack.”  Jack doesn’t respond.  Possibly because it wasn’t so good to see Curtis earlier when he was holding a gun and offering Jack up as a sacrificial lamb.  And while Curtis is happy to have Jack back, he starts to give Jack a lecture about working with ex-terrorists.  Jack: “I don’t know what means anything anymore, Curtis”.  Great.  Goth Jack is back, and Curtis won’t stop riding him.  Curtis deserves a thorough beat-down for this.  Way to challenge Jack when he’s malnourished and tired with 22 hours left in his day.

8:44: After a bunch of non-Jack activity, the terrorist leads them to a storage facility filled with ammunition.  I hope Jack spent that time off-camera to either grab some shut eye or tell Curtis to back up off him.  Curtis leads a strike team to capture the handler, who blows himself up rather than surrender.  Jack hauls Curtis out of the blast at the last second, saving his lousy, ungrateful life.   For those of you keeping count, that’s Jack’s second explosion in less than an hour.

The wreckage yields a hard drive with files pertaining to a nuclear device.   The device is tied to a nuclear scientist who just escaped from a detention center and is officially our third bad guy.  We’re still on pace for one per hour.

Not a tremendously busy hour for Jack, but once again facing the threat of nuclear terrorism, and now he’s gotta do it with Curtis riding his nuts like they’re married.  That used to be Audrey’s job, and while I wasn’t a fan of her, Curtis weighs significantly more.  Not to mention he lacks a vagina.  Not a good hour for Jack.

For the hour:

• Kills: 0 – What’s going on?  Jack started out so strongly.  Linearly he should have pulled a man’s heart out of his chest and shown it to him as he died by now.
• Explosions: 1
• Lives Saved: Curtis
• Leads Lost: 1

My Day, 8 – 9 AM: Normally I’d have been up, but they showed this on Martin Luther King Day.  So I slept in.  However, I dreamed dreams of racial equality, and peace and brotherhood.  That, and this really weird one where I was being chased through a gazebo by my third grade teacher. 

• Things done: 0