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, 2-3 PM:  Let’s keep it going!  After successfully disarming the rotary phone nuke, Jack is heading back to CTU.  Perhaps I’m projecting, but given the time of day, I bet Jack could also use CTU’s men’s room to fight some intestinal terrorism.  Just because you can deactivate a bomb in front of a ton of dudes and corpses in a room where some guy got his shoulder drilled doesn’t mean it’s easy to drop one there.  (Yeah, I know those were two redundant and terrible scatological jokes.  I’m fine with that.)

Note: As Jack is driving back to CTU, I come up with several contrived reasons to shout “You gave him something that WORKED???” at my roommates.  (See the previous entry.)  For instance:  “Hey, Mary, could you pass me that bottle opener?”  (Mary passes bottle opener; I open bottle.)  “Thanks, but…YOU GAVE ME SOMETHING THAT WORKED???”  It’s never funny.

2:05:  Jack enters CTU for the first time in years.  He barely recognizes everybody; mostly because they’re all attractive.  The foundations of between one and five different sexual harassment lawsuits are currently being formed in his mind, depending on how similar Jack and I are.  Buchanan lets Jack know that they are tracking a Russian general who may have supplied the terrorists.

2:07: Like Jack hasn’t had a long enough day.  Now, as he’s standing over the corpse of his brother, his dad has to give him a guilt trip over it.  Funny, he didn’t look Druish… (another obscure reference, Dad.)  When Jack asks if his dad knows where Marilyn is, Dad replies, “Why - are you gonna question her too?”  Yeah, with his super secret Inquisition Staff.  

2:12:  Jack meets with Buchanan, who shows him the toxicology report on Graham.  The report confirms that graham had a heart attack after massive doses of Liquid Hurt, and Buchanan mentions he has seen the video tapes of Jack losing it on Graham and Burke.  Jack swears he never set out to kill Graham, but…c’mon Jack.  I’m sure you never get out of bed and say, “I’m gonna kill twelve people today,” but it still happens.   You should really be budgeting for this sort of thing by now.

Buchanan wants to cover up the report, but Jack says no.  “I lost control…I tried to tell you I could do this…I wanted my brother dead… I killed my brother, and whatever the consequences are, I accept them.” Is this The Young and the Restless?  I thought I was watching 24.  Hey Jack, you weren’t so accepting of those consequences last episode, when you made Buchanan tell the Widow that her husband was dead.   But now that there are no women crying, you want to sign your kill.  Stand up guy, Jack. Stand up guy. 

Speaking of the widow, Jack tracks her down.  Time to be questioned like she hasn’t been questioned in years.  She also seems to have forgotten the previous hour, when she was crying over the death of her husband.  And it turns out Jack was smart to have Buchanan be the bringer of bad news, because the Widow doesn’t blame Jack at all  She wanted to leave Graham, but couldn’t because of her and Jack’s illegitimate child.   I really never noticed the similarities between this season and your standard daytime soap opera until now, but it’s pretty astonishing, you must admit.  I used to watch General Hospital about ten years ago, and if I remember correctly I’m going to guess that with Graham dead, Jack stands to inherit the family lucrative business.  The widow will seduce Jack and convince him to marry her, but right before the wedding, Curtis will show up.  Being shot in the neck didn’t actually kill him, but jogged his memory, and now he remembers that he is actually Jack’s older brother, and first in line to inherit the company.  I’m not sure how they’re going to fit that all into a single day, but when it happens, you heard it here first.

The widow knows that sex is not the way to Jack’s heart.  Swift, violent justice is.  When she hears that Jack is looking for a Russian, she tells him about a time when she suspected Graham of cheating on her, and followed him to a house in West L.A., where she heard people speaking in Russian.    Jack grabs a tac-team, one of the new good-looking techs and the Widow, and tells them that they’re going to West L.A.  I got money that says the eye-candy tech dies.  At first I figure the Widow is coming along for road-head purposes, and I wonder if she knows about Jack’s ability to reach any location in Los Angeles in ten minutes – she’ll have no time to waste.  Then they explain that she can’t remember the address, so they’re just going to drive around going “Duck…Duck…Duck…” until she yells “GOOSE!”  Then that person gets their house raided by a CTU tac-team.  Search warrants are apparently for pansies.  I know Jack violates civil liberties with every breath he takes, but…this is particularly bad. 

I’m excited.  You see, I lived in West L.A. on and off for about eight years, and I’m dying to see the vast differences between CTU’s West L.A. and mine.  For instance, when the Widow sees the house, I want to see Jack drive around for fifteen minutes looking for parking, eventually yelling obscenities at that stupid fucking fire hydrant that he’s passed fifty fucking times, and why the fuck can’t he use some of that space, it’s not like there’s fires anymore.  Then I want to see him and the tac-team walk five blocks from their car to the house, and when he gets back, I want to see the parking ticket he got because the signs were too fucking confusing and he didn’t realize there was a two-hour limit.  Fucking West L.A. 

On the way, the Widow does her best impression of a trollop.  Her husband is on a table and Valencia is going to glow in the dark for the next five thousand years, but she wants Jack to know that she thought about him the whole time he was in China.  While she doesn’t seem to be distracted by the immediate threat of death by nuclear terrorism, Jack has too much on his mind to tell her that thinking about her was what got him through all the water torture.  Sure, it’d be a lie, but how many times does a guy get the chance to tell that one?  It’s practically a guarantee that you’ll spend the next year of your life with your mouth filled with a grilled cheese sandwich while someone else’s is filled with your penis.

What Jack doesn’t realize is that while they’re in the car, the Widow gets a call from Dad.  He tells her that he killed Graham, and unless she takes Jack to an address he gives her, he’s going to kill her bastard son.  With Jack dead, she’ll get the fortune, so…hey, Jack, make a right here.  This is one tac-team I wouldn’t want to be a part of.

2:57: Yep…They go into the house, Jack sees a bomb, and has just enough time to yell “BOMB!” and jump out of a window before it goes off.  That tac-team didn’t last very long.  Five bucks says Jack starts the three o’clock hour by ordering another one.  They’re like socks.

For the hour:

• Kills: 0
• Tac-Teams Met: 1
• Tac-Teams Lost (dead): 1
• Civil Liberties Ignored: 1 (and unlawful search and seizure is definitely one of the big ones.)
• Come-ons ignored: 2 (from one woman)
• Bowel Movements: 1 (likely)

Weak hour for Jack, but the dude was dropping a deuce. 

My Day, 2-3 PM:  I’ll leave the details out, but… minus the tac-teams and the C-4 and the women coming on to me, I lived the life of Jack.

For the hour:

• Bowel Movements: 1 (definitely)
• Come-ons ignored: tons.  I swear.

Put me and Jack in the same room, and you’d hardly be able to tell us apart.