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, 4-5 PM: Alright, I’m just going to say it: 24 sucks this year.  A year ago you would have never heard me say that, for two reasons. 

#1: It didn’t suck.

#2: Jack Bauer had become pseudo-real to me.  The show was so compelling that I found myself talking about him like he was a real person, even if he was a half-crazed avatar of destruction and vengeance.  (And the United States of America, just in case he ever needed a warrant. (yeah, right!!!))  Sure, the plots were outlandish and placed bizarre importance on Ontario Airport; yes, Jack managed to get around Los Angeles faster than Santa Claus.  But damned if I was going to say anything too bad about him; when he and Burke show up at your door, it’s too late to say you’re sorry.

Now, Jack Bauer is a sham.  (Full disclosure: I looked behind me before I typed that.  Just in case.)  Story-wise, you could say it’s a result of Jack’s Chinese prison and all of its affiliated tortures, but I’m not buying it unless that’s where Fox has started to outsource their writing staff.

All he does is run around, point guns at people and yell bad-ass things that only sound bad ass when you back them up.  Sure, he chewed some guy’s throat out, but what has he done lately?   He was shown up by Jack Bauer: Muslim Edition in episode 2, he quit, he cried, he failed to stop an act of nuclear terrorism, and when he couldn’t kill his brother his Dad had to come in and clean up his mess.  He wouldn’t even be where he was if his dad hadn’t unbelievably decided to leave him a cell phone with a magic number to dial.

I understand that for 24 really exciting things to happen, some outlandish things have to go down, but something about this season feels sloppy; it makes even less sense than it usually does.  Jack has now happened to come across two cell phones.  First he finds one in a 1980 Pontiac then his dad just leaves him one on a roof ledge.  This is video game caliber logic.   If Jack punches a brick wall, eats the flower that comes flying out of it and starts spitting fireballs, at most I might shrug.  

Example: Jack’s Dad kills his own son to prevent CTU finding out his role in losing the nukes.  He puts a gun to his grandson’s head…then he just lets Jack live?  On top of that, he gives Jack a lead to find the nukes???  Remember, these things happened two “hours” from each other; not only has Grandpa been too busy holding his grandson hostage to really reflect on his actions, but not enough time has passed for me to forget, which is usually the reason I overlook all this nonsense.

Yet here we are at the top of the hour, with Jack on the phone with ex-President Logan, who thinks he knows something.  Fine.  I’ll accept the premise that this is possible even though it doesn’t jive with anything we’ve seen before from this character, which mostly consisted of two parts bluff, one part bluster, and eight parts loose neck-jowls.  This is a man who needed two Secret Service agents to handle his wife.  But even if he does know something, it’s a piece of information that might help CTU find the man who might help CTU find the terrorists.  A couple more degrees of separation and Jack is gonna be torturing Kevin Bacon.

Whatever.  But of course ex-President Turkey Neck needs to see Jack in person.  So Jack has to call in a helicopter to take him to “Hidden Valley”, which must be right outside of Tibet if Jack can’t get there in fifteen minutes with a Range Rover.  (I should say now that I’m a touch cranky today.)

In any case, Jack calls into CTU for the air support, and tells Buchanan, “I’ll debrief you as soon as I have time.”  Yeah.  Jack hasn’t peed since 1998, but as soon as he gets a sec he’ll sit down with Bill and explain this wonky ass plot that has taken me like twenty pages to blog… SO FAR.  The best part is when Jack tells Bill where he’s going, and Bill asks, (I quote) “How the hell did you trace this to Logan???”  Good question, Bill.

4:08:  The Widow thanks Jack for saving her son.  Jack caresses her tenderly on the cheek, and I know if Curtis was there he would have a gun to this imposter’s head.  At the very least, he’d be asking Jack if his yeast infection had cleared up then high-fiving Tony.  I think Jack killed him so he could finally watch Dirty Dancing in peace.  Jack tells the Widow that the boy looks like her, at which point Roommate Kat shouts “who cares?” and goes to sleep on the couch with the episode still playing.  This never would have happened last season.  Never.

4:20: Jack shows up at Logan’s house.  Given the time, Roommate Mary and I make several jokes about smoking weed.

The whole scheme is that Turkey Neck says that the Russian Consul knows where to find the Russian General who might know where the terrorists are.  Jack says that they’ve already tried the Consul, but Turkey Neck says that he has a connection with the man, and “they need to go through back channels”.  I shout, “That’s what she said!”  No one high fives me.  Finally I do it myself. 

The problem is that the President is under house arrest because he conspired to have the last President killed (I would’ve thought the penalty might be a bit tougher; apparently the Judge was Harry T. Stone) and they need an Executive Order if he is to leave.  Okay fine, except the White House printer is out of toner, because it will be 4:45 by the time it gets signed, and I can’t think of another good reason for it to take that long. 

Instead, we spend the majority of the episode following Chloe around.  She’s worried because her ex-husband was the tech who got the Home Depot Special on his shoulder.  See, he went back to work merely hours after having his shoulder DRILLED, and she thinks he’s having some problems at work.  Imagine that.  Additionally, she’s worried he is drinking again, because apparently he’s a recovering alcoholic.  For the past three episodes we’ve seen probably nine conversations in which she asks him if he’s okay, he swears that he is.  Someone else asks her if he’s okay.  She swears he is.  Then he screws up.  Rinse, repeat. 

At 4:40, we check in with Logan to see him spending an inordinate amount of time picking a tie.  A few minutes later, we see Jack has changed into a suit.  This is exactly what I’m talking about; last season, Jack would have muttered “we don’t have time for this” before incapacitating every guard around Logan and dragging him out of the house at gun point. 

4:42:  Jack calls into CTU.  No, he doesn’t need a TAC team.  He’s good.  Just…calling to say hi.  Buchanan wonders what they will do if the Consulate won’t talk.  Jack hints that he’ll get the information one way or another.  Buchanan reminds him that they have no jurisdiction there.   I don’t know why Jack doesn’t remind Buchanan, as Mary dutifully reminded me, that Jack spent the last two years getting Chinese fill-in-the-blank torture precisely because he violated the jurisdiction of a Consulate.  Now might not be the best time for a refresher course.  On a side note, I wonder what Communist country’s consulate Jack will have to break into two years from now.  This season is a fucking travesty.

At the end of the episode…blah blah blah yak yak.  Jack’s got no kills, no KO’s, no Tac-teams called in, no self-introductions…which means he also doesn’t get a bulleted list.  Maybe that’ll teach him that if I wanted to watch a show starring a bunch of people with furrowed brows, I’d watch more TV with Wonder Woman.

For the hour:

• The second most exciting thing about this episode: a cameo by a woman my dad informs me is Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, who he used to be friends with.  When the Simpsons had been on for about a year or two, he ran into her and she gave him a personalized autograph for me.  Except she signed it “Bart Simpson”.  I guess she was pretty new to the idea of signing autographs, but it turns out its tough to brag about that to your friends, because even thirteen year olds realize that anyone can write “Bart Simpson” on a piece of paper.
• The most exciting thing about the episode: it was the first time I saw a preview for FF2: Rise of the Silver Surfer.  That looked rad.

My Day, 4-5 PM:  Seeing as how we didn’t see too much of Jack this episode, let’s not focus on me.  Let’s focus on some of my co-workers and some of their conversation.  This is where I picked it up: 

“That’s why I hate waxing.  I never seem to use enough powder and I always end up burning myself.” 

“Oh my god, it hurts so much.” 

It’s at this point I chose to turn around and pointedly remind them that I was, in fact, RIGHT THERE.  Then they told me that they were talking about their eyebrows.  And once again I learned that perhaps I DO think about vagina a little too much.

For the hour:

• Meetings with HR: Pending