What a Difference a Day Makes: gettin’ caught up
Published May 14th, 2007 in 24, TelevisionI’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 AM: It’s been 20 hours now. Jack has a dead brother, a crazy girlfriend, and the Secretary of Defense just called him cursed. Sure, he stopped a threat of nuclear terrorism, which would be awesome if he hadn’t then gone and incited a possible nuclear war. Not exactly Jack’s best day. Now to win Cold War II, Jack’s going to have to do more than JFK, Reagan, Maverick and Rocky combined. Too bad he’s incarcerated.
2:04 AM: Even though it sounded like “Mrrflmorg”, Audrey and the rest of CTU’s Chess Club have managed to track down a lead to some building where they think the Chinese are hiding, which is really impressive since the sign doesn’t contain any of the following words: Happy, King, Dragon, Jade, Palace.
Yet again, Jack pleads with someone, this time to go on the raid. First of all, it’s surprising how little he seems to understand the concept of arrest. Perhaps that’s because it’s so rare that he actually puts people in it. Second of all, his reasoning for why he should go is that he believes he knows how Hello Kitty (the Chinese Ambassador) thinks after two years of being tortured by the guy. That means that Jack developed a deeper relationship with his torturer than with the Buzzkill. Surprisingly, parole is not granted.
2:18 AM: The Widow, who has been crashing in CTU’s employee lounge, comes in to talk to Jack. Jack probably figured he was getting a conjugal visit, so he understandably gets testy when the Widow keeps bringing up his now-ex-girlfriend. Notice how Audrey kills buzzes even when she’s not there. She’s good, people.
The Widow wants Jack to know that she’ll be there for him when this is all over. Officially, her husband’s body is ‘tepid’, so it’s totally kosher.
2:42 AM: In a pinnacle of irony, while Silver Spoon is rooting around an empty warehouse, the Chinese invade CTU. CTU’s security guards impede exactly no one, officially making CTU easier to get into than CostCo.
Jack begs – AGAIN! – to the security guard outside, who deserves Employee of the Month if only because he hesitates before opening the door for the nice man who said please. Naturally he is killed when he turns to unlock the door. On the plus side, that finally makes him useful, as Jack uses his corpse for a shield and kills one of the intruders.
Over the next several minutes Jack kills four more men and disables one with a knee shot. (Not an Amazing Feat of Marksmanship – Jack was hiding under a set of stairs as the guy walked down. If anything it was kinda cheap.) He also picks up with a big, high-tech looking rifle, and rescues the Widow and the Bastard. Alright Jack!
2:51 AM: Apparently Jack doesn’t know how to use the big high-tech rifle, because he chooses to jam it in a duct fan so the Bastard can escape. That’s thinking ahead - when more bad guys show up, Jack only has a pistol with two bullets in it. I’m starting to think Jack has money riding on the Chinese.
If that weren’t bad enough, the Bastard doesn’t even escape after the Chinese threaten to kill his mom unless he returns. See, it turns out that the Bastard was the one they were after, because the circuit board that Jack stole was damaged, and to fix it the Chinese need a security override and Jack’s DAD is the only guy who can do it, and he wanted his grandson in exchange. Sure. Why not.
For the hour:
- Kills: 5
- Human Shields: 1
- Disablings: 1
- Beggings: 2 (I’m not kidding about the begging. It even says so in the official recap on Fox’s site: “Jack begs”.)
- Status: STILL held captive.
Here is a quick list of shows I can think of that require less suspension of my disbelief than 24:
- Lost
- Heroes
- The 10 o’clock news
- General Hospital
- The one where the fat, obnoxious guy has a really hot wife
- Quantum Leap
- Knight Rider
- Air Wolf
- Small Wonder
- Diff’rent Strokes
- Tale Spin
That last one was a cartoon about a bear who flew a cargo plane. I am officially announcing my retirement from watching 24 after this season.
My day, 2-3 AM: I slept.
2:38 AM: Got up to pee. Seeing how I was up and all, I grabbed two Thin Mints from the freezer. Walked halfway back to bed, turned around, and got two more. Damn those girl scout temptresses!
For the hour:
- Thin Mints: okay, okay, 5. Can you blame me??? Do you know how good those things are frozen??
- Pee: Curiously Yellow
Can’t wait to see what I do tonight!
You left off my favorite part of the episode, though: The part where Nadia denies his plea to go out and play cops and terrorists and he looks up at the two guards who, in turn, shit themselves. Probably because they don’t realize that this is a kinder, gentler Jack. I mean, sure, he’d kill them, but probably he’d cry afterward.
Remember the air foil that kit cloudkicker had? I still kind of want one of those.
y’know, it’s funny - I actually had that exact moment in my notes, including “they shit themselves”. In the end I decided to leave it out because I didn’t think Jack had earned it.
I remember watching that and seeing the nervous glance one of the guards gave the other, then it looked like one put his hand on his gun, like he expected Jack to throw a murderous tantrum. I wondered if it was written that way or if the actor playing the guard decided to do a little improv.