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.

(WARNING: This is one of the longest 24 posts ever.  Go grab a cup of coffee.) 

Jack’s Day, 12 Noon – 1:00 PM: I know it’s been a while since I posted one of these.  In fact, I’m officially late after last night’s episode.  Well…what can I say?  My mom came to see me a couple weeks ago, and she wasn’t beating around the bush when she said “you look like shit.” 

As you may remember, Jack’s starting off the lunch hour in a van on his way to someplace where he and his Dad are going to be killed by men working for Jack’s brother.  What I will never be able to articulate is the complete lack of shock on the faces of Jack and his father.  It makes me wish I could see what a Bauer family Christmas is like.  You know there isn’t so much as a light or stocking hung, a present bought, or a ham ordered until the night of December 23rd.  Because all that stuff it takes you and your family a month to do?  They do it in 24 HOURS.  (Not to mention they cut their own tree down with a nail file.) 

(Also, since I spend way too much time on this sort of thing, I spent ten minutes imagining a scene with Mama Bauer tied to a chair in the kitchen, both of her thumbs broken, and Jack standing over her screaming “ARE YOU MY SECRET SANTA?  TELL ME!”  This made me giggle.)

12:00:  As they’re driving, Jack’s Dad starts apologizing.  He says that everything he did, he did for Jack, but after Jack left, he convinced himself that Graham was capable.  Dude – Graham’s WIFE could tell you he’s incapable of filling Jack’s shoes.

12:09: They arrive at a cement plant/oil derrick/random unused manufacturing facility in the middle of a California desert.  Jack visits at least two of these during each terrorist crisis, so I have to believe he’s been to this particular one at least once before.  I wonder if he even knows L.A. has a beach.

The thugs lead them to a cement truck parked above a ditch.  Then Jack and his father exchange the exact same look that Luke shoots R2 in Jedi when he is about to jump into the mouth of that sand-thingie.  (No, I really don’t know what the name of that was.  Yes, I’ll turn in my nerd badge.)  Something tells me a light saber isn’t coming out of Dad’s head, so I’m worried they might be having a miscommunication.

Dad turns on one thug and lambastes him for not being man enough to shoot him while they’re face-to-face.  That is one poor excuse for a light saber, but does the job and gets Jack the distraction he needs to grab his guard’s gun, shoot Dad’s guard, then tackle the first guy.  Unfortunately, Jack’s Dad gets a little over enthusiastic and shoots the second guy before Jack even has time to say “My name is Jack Bauer”, let alone obtain information.  Jack is pissed, and completely overlooks the fact that his septugenarian father just fired a bullet six inches from him.  Then again they probably played a lot of “William Tell” when Jack was a boy.

12:09:  Jack calls into CTU to send a team to Graham’s house.  More to the point, he specifically requests for Burke and “an interrogation kit”.  To be honest, if I were ever to meet Burke and Jack, I think Burke might scare me a bit more.  If I had been asked why originally, I wouldn’t have been able to explain it any better than that even Jack gave Burke an odd deference he never seemed to give anyone else.  A couple days ago, I figured out what it was: Burke is the only person Jack calls by his last name.  He might refer to an “Agent [So-and-so]” or “President [what’s-his-face]”, but other than that, Jack works on a first name basis.  Who cares if you’re his boss, Bill?  Oh, you say you’re a deadly motherfucker?  That’s nice for you, Curtis and Tony (RIP).  But when Jack really needs to get something done, he calls in Burke.  (One admission: while I’ve watched 24 for 2+ seasons, I haven’t seen Burke do anything a registered nurse technician couldn’t do.   Still… Jack calls the guy by his last name; I’m not going to ask for any other credentials.)

12:17:  Jack and a field team raid Graham’s house, but before they do, one of the agents needlessly introduces himself as “Al Turner”.  I find it awesome that he just used Jack’s number one move against him, and you’d better believe I’m docking Jack for not punching him in the throat as soon as he said “I’m Al”.  Jack and Graham engage in a brief face off, which Graham loses.  I find this needlessly barbaric and outdated, and wonder when more brothers will learn to solve their problems by me and my brother’s method: Rock, Paper, Scissors.  (Which is especially awesome when your brother is a simpleton.  Or so I’ve heard.)

Actually, I just thought about that, and I’m pretty sure Jack’s right hand could beat Rock, Paper AND Scissors, even if they teamed up.

Then Jack drags Marilyn into the kitchen.  She’s furious at him, but Jack growls, “Stop looking at me like this has something to do with us; it doesn’t.”  Gotta be honest, Jack: I give you the benefit of the doubt that you know how to please the ladies, but I’m pretty sure when you’ve got a SWAT team breaking down a woman’s door, she can forget her lust long enough not to confuse it for romantic jealousy.  (Then again, he may have courted her this way years ago.  He may have also used one of those battering rams to get her bra off; I don’t put anything past Jack.)

Then Marilyn yells “I’ve seen what happens when you try to protect people!”.  Wow…just…wow.  See, Marilyn is referring to Jack’s wife, who was murdered in (I think) the first season.  Our room went quiet like when you’re in fifth grade and someone yells out “shit!” for the very first time: something very, very bad is about to happen, right?  I mean, Burke is already in the house; I’m sure he can set an extra place at the torture table.

Nope.  Jack tells an agent to take her and the boy to CTU.   Jack sends so many people back there I bet they have a room called the “Bauer Suite”. 

12:20:  Graham’s in a chair.  Burke has taken his blood pressure, got a urine sample, listened to his breathing….but I swear - he’s a dangerous, dangerous man.

Jack asks a bunch of questions, Graham gives him some typical b-s.  Burke looks at Jack and says “his vital signs indicate deception.”  See, that’s why I like Burke.  Something about his needlessly complicated way of saying, “dude, the guy is totally lying,” shows that he takes this interrogation business seriously.  I probably would have just yelled out “Bullshit!” or “Shenanigans!” and that’s probably why I don’t have the job.

Jack’s intimidation factor has now gone plaid (obscure reference; don’t worry if you don’t get it…dad.)  First he tells Burke to set up “the interrogation package.”   Again, a really great use of terminology.  Any time I purchase some sort of  “package”, I know I’m getting a lot for my money.  But this is a lot of torture, so…yikes.  Yet they obviously put some thought into this; you can’t just pick any synonym for “lots of stuff”.  For example, “torture extra value meal”?  Not very imitimidating.   (Note: I’m not sure how well that joke worked.  All I know is that when I thought of “torture extra value meal”, I was going to get in, come hell, high water, or an Agent Burke All-You-Can-Bleed Torture Buffet.)
Burke goes and gets his Suitcase of Justice (no, he didn’t call it that…officially.)   According to Jack, it contains a “neuroinflammatory, designed to cause pain.”  Jack takes off Graham’s glasses. Because like dad taught him, you never torture a guy with glasses.  Or ugly guys; they got nothing to lose.

Graham looks pretty scared, and for the record, there is nothing cowardly about this.  I’m pretty sure a Bengal tiger would piss itself in the same situation.   Then Burke gives Graham 2cc’s of the neuroflamastatamine or whatever, and Graham starts doing a great imitation of my orgasm-seizure.  Then Jack hugs him, and says “at 7cc’s you will experience a pain I can’t even describe.  At 8 I risk causing cardiac failure…I don’t want to hurt you.”  Between the hug and those three sentences, Jack couldn’t be sending any more mixed signals if he shot Graham with a puppy.

Jack orders two more cc’s of liquid pain, and things get so intense I can’t even read my notes.  All I remember is that Jack was hugging, yelling and pleading with Graham, all at the same time.  I’d try and describe it but…they should have sent a poet.

Whoa.  Jack just ordered four more cc’s.  For those of you who weren’t counting at home, that’s 8cc’s, the potentially lethal amount Jack mentioned earlier.  I don’t know if Graham had a heart attack there; it looked just like another seizure-gasm.  Either way, he lived through it, and figures it’s a good time to admit that he was the one who ordered President Palmer’s assassination last season, and that he was the one who framed Jack.  He looks Jack in the eye and says, “Today wasn’t the first time I’ve tried to have you killed, Jack.”  Burke once again shows how he is more qualified than me by refraining from blurting out, “Dude, you’re fucked.”

Jack throws Graham down on the floor and orders Burke to give him four more cc’s, taking Graham up to one and a half heart attacks.  Burke resists and Jack points a gun at him.  Is it getting hot in here?  Burke never loses composure and radios for help.  Then an agent with far less composure enters the room, because as soon as Jack pointed his gun at the guy, the guy put on his best “I don’t want no part of this” face and dropped his weapon.  No hesitation.  Way to show up, champ.  With nowhere else to point his gun, Jack defaults back to his brother’s head.

Without Curtis to calm Jack down, this situation really could have spiraled out of control, if it weren’t for the calming influence of Jack’s father and his disappointed grimace.  That will not do, pig.  Luckily, it’s just the right thing to calm Jack down.  He goes out side to get a breath of fresh air.   

12:43:  CTU is sending a chopper for him, and he and Dad exchange a moment where each of them is trying to keep the other from beating himself up over what just happened.  I would have untied my brother first, but that’s just me.

12:54:  A man’s work is never done.  Long story short, the terrorists need a new technician to program the four remaining suitcase nukes, because the last one got atomized.   CTU intercepted an email with the identity of a qualified candidate, but it was encrypted.  Luckily, they were able to decode it (yep) within the hour.   Problem: it’s a CTU technician who was just lured out of CTU headquarters with his news that his brother had been injured by the blast.  Now CTU has figured out that the terrorists are planning on kidnapping their tech, but rather than call him directly, Buchanan loops Jack into the call.  Implicitly, Buchanan just acknowledged that the tech would be more likely to take the threat of kidnapping seriously if it came from Jack, rather than his boss.  Jack really leaves a trail of emasculation wherever he goes.

Sure enough, the call comes about a minute too late, and Morris the tech gets captured.  Jack hops in a helicopter and is off.

As the hour comes to a close, Dad asks for a moment alone with his son.  Uh-oh.  Yep, Dad’s a bad guy.   When Graham ordered his death it was all a ruse.   The plan is for Graham to go to prison while Dad is kept safe, but Dad thinks Graham will break.  Graham gets absolutely no credit for having just gone through torture’s equivalent of the New York Bar Examination.  Instead, as Jack is lifting off, Dad injects Graham with the rest of the pain tonic, and holds him silent as he dies. 

For the hour:  

• Kills: 1
• Self Identifications: -1 (Thank you, soon to be fired or dead Agent Turner.)
• Interrogations/Tortures: 1.  I was tempted to give Jack bonus points for torturing his brother, but two things stopped me.  First, he completely lost control, and don’t think Burke didn’t notice.  Second, he didn’t actually find out any information pertaining to today’s crisis.  President Palmer’s assassination was last season – big deal.   Again, why is Burke so respected???
• CTU Agents cowed: 1 for 2.  Luckily Burke’s 90% backbone and only 10% incompetence.

Dad is going back on the bad guy list, and shame on both me and Jack for falling for it.  After all, he did the same thing in L.A. Confidential. 

Zach’s Day, 12-1:  Who can remember that far back?  I’ll just go by what I did yesterday.  I worked on this bad boy for about ten minutes, worked until 12:45, then went and got Wendy’s. 

For the hour:

• Side Salad: 1 dollar
• Baked Potato: 1 dollar
• Crispy Chicken Sandwich: 1 dollar

Let’s hear it for the dollar menu.

(Author’s Note:  You’d think, given the difficulty I’ve had finding time to post lately, that I wouldn’t write five pages on a single hour of 24. Yeah, you’d think; I don’t waste my time with such nonsense.)