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, 6-7 PM:   I’ll delve into it more later, but Monday night some co-workers and I went out for dinner and drinks, entertaining some out of town guests.  The reason I mention it now is because I wasn’t able to watch 24 in the hilarious company of Roommates Kat and Mary.  Instead I watched it at home with Wonder Woman, and any chance that she was going to add funny comments died when she put on headphones so none of the stupidity could get in.  So essentially I was by myself, taking notes in between propositioning Wonder Woman via email.

From my notes, one might assume that I was drunk.  Like, Bucket O’ Vodka-drunk.  My notes ramble, swing wildly from one emotion to another, and are filled with pop culture reference that make no sense, but I’m sure seemed very clever to me at the time.  But after I looked at the episode recap online the next morning, I realized that my notes were accurate and that I was sober.  I can’t say the same for the eight-year old writing this season.

The first “Wait…am I drunk or did that just happen?” moment came at 6:03 - Rickey Schroeder: CTU agent.  First of all, I want to say that Silver Spoon looks like he put his face through the same windshield as Mark Hamil.  (What, too soon?)  Second of all, let’s take a second to think about this:  24 is a show starring a Lost Boy.  Last season we had a Goonie.  This season: Silver Spoon.  I hope Ralph Macchio is taking a new set of head shots – I want to see a terrorist crane-kicked to death.  As interesting as it is to see who the next CTU agent will be, as long as the show’s producers are running up the white flag, I wish they had gone the other route and thought of a way to saddle Jack with a cute toddler for a partner.    Hey, speaking of Jack…

6:05:  Jack is bound at the wrists, and his captor, a Russian guard, tosses him down a flight of steps where he lands on a dead body.  I have to assume that was the body of Jack Bauer: Russian Edition from last week, but I’m pretty sure we never saw that guy near a set of stairs.  For all we know, that’s some other dead body.  There could be a bunch of them lying around the Russian Consulate as we speak.

With Jack face down on a corpse, his captor makes a phone call, the gist of which is this: “So, just to double check: did you want me to kill Jack Bauer or not?  Yes, you want me to kill him, or yes, you didn’t want me to kill him?  Jeez calm down, I just wanted to make sure.  What’s your hurry?  He couldn’t possibly be working out some sort of escape plan.  Anyway, that’s B (as in boy)-A-U-E-R…” 

When the Russian finally turns to do the job, Jack turns around, whipping out with a leather belt.  The belt wraps around the guy’s hand, disarming him at the same time that Jack uses the belt to throw him to the ground.  Jack grabs the guy’s gun and shoots him.  The bullet kills the guard; the whole sequence killed my suspension of disbelief.  That’s two kills for Jack, but more worrisome, pretty blatant copyright infringement of Indiana Jones.  This was the point in my notes where I had to confirm that I hadn’t been blindingly drunk and accidentally changed the channel to a Temple of Doom rerun.  Nope.  Assuming this was at least the script’s second or third draft (rather large assumption, but…) I wonder what was on the original.  I’m betting Jack dodged the bullet Matrix-Style, then killed the guard by suffocating him with webs that shot out of his forearms.  Someone should tell Jack that he could never be Indiana Jones.  Indy would never have shot Short Round in the neck.

Here’s why I think this show is written by a child.  Every adolescent boy spends a couple days after watching an Indiana Jones movie going around whipping belts and neckties, trying to get them around a door knob or lamp.  Adults know that shit doesn’t work.  The belt spins around then either gets a bit of slack and falls to the floor, or unwinds as soon as you put any weight on it.  The only things Jack should have been able to incapacitate with that belt are a few lightweight lamps (sorry, Mom).   Also, no one who actually wears a belt would have written that Jack could have taken one off a corpse so effortlessly.   (Maybe Jack has a lot of practice getting a belt off of a “stiff”!  Hi-yo!)

The Russian Consul is watching this all on a security camera, and alerts building security.  They probably don’t show much Indiana Jones in Russia; that explains why he doesn’t share my confusion.  Anyway, all Jack has to contend with is an entire security staff with a side wound from falling down the stairs.  This is definitely where Roommate Kat would have shouted “who cares?!” and gone to bed.

6:32: Jack’s been wandering around quite a bit, it would seem.  In the meantime, I considered sending WW an email asking if she wanted to go into the bedroom for her own personal 24 (minutes), but decided against it to avoid the inevitable, “Don’t you mean ’seconds’?” reply. 

Jack is sweating and grimacing a lot.   He looks like he needs a sick day.  The last time he needed one of those was that time he came down with a case of HIV.  Just one of those 24-hour ones, though – nothing he couldn’t cure with a bowl of chicken noodle soup.  (Actually, I think we’re seeing Keifer Sutherlands “remember the paycheck…remember the paycheck” face.)

Jack breaks into a room with a very attractive Russian couple making out, no harm in that, but Cockblock Bauer has to threaten their lives unnecessarily.  He points his gun at the woman’s head, threatens to shoot a woman and says “get against the desk”.  Then says ‘don’t’ be scared.”  Jack doesn’t realize that most people weren’t woken up for school this way when they were kids.  Jack tells the guy to go get a satellite phone from upstairs while Jack holds the girl hostage.

6:57 (alright, who’s seen my satellite phone?  It was right here…):  By now the two Russians have lost any sex drive they might have had before Jack showed up, but it’s a moot point because when the guy shows up with the phone, guards come along and shoot him.  Jack kills two of them before he runs out of ammo.  Luckily, he still has a belt; everything should be fine.

At the last minute, CTU agents swarm the building, rescuing Jack.  As if the tables hadn’t turned on him enough, Rickey Schroeder walks right up to Jack…and introduces himself.  That’s twice today that Jack’s been beaten at his own self-identification game. Chump.

For the hour:

• Kills: 4 (though my suspension of disbelief was really a mercy killing at this point.)
• Roll Calls: -1 (DAMN YOU, RICKEY SCHROEDER!)
• Balls Blued: 2
• Times he made me wonder whether I was drunk: 2

Way to go, Indiana Bauer.  In an interesting non-Jack twist, President Nut-Neck went to see his ex-wife, who drinks and takes pills, but other than that, she’s cool.  Forget why Scrote-Throat went to see the First Lady of Crazy; all you need to know is that she went nuts and stabbed him in the neck, at the same spot where Jack shot Curtis.  I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to make the joke that she was trying to cut his balls off or whether she was trying to carve the turkey (neck).   In any case, it was a lot of time that had nothing to do with the imminent threat of Calabasas being wiped off the map.

My Day, 6-7:  One of the benefits of my job is that we frequently have to entertain clients.  Sometimes, there doesn’t even have to be clients there.  Two of my co-workers invited me and WW out to Japonnaise, a Japanese-fusion restaurant I could never afford, and we had ourselves quite a time.  I repeatedly had to raise my hand and ask, “so…the company’s definitely paying for this, right?  Okay, then I’ll get the foie gras.”

For the hour, (favorite dish competition):

• 3rd place: thin slices of marinated sirloin, cooked at our table on an incredibly hot rock.  Top marks for presentation and the beef was very good, but not quite up to the competition.
• Runner up: Foie Gras with a sweet sauce, apricot I think.  It was like meat flavored icing.  And I mean that as a good thing.
• The Winner: Octopus roll topped with Tuna Belly.   Sort of made me tear up; I won’t lie.

(Of course, none of them were as good as the grilled cheese sandwich I got back at home.  High-five!)