What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours (3 of 3)
Published February 21st, 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, 3-4 PM: Okay, home stretch. Now a question: You’ve just been blown up because your ex-girlfriend betrayed you. What do you do?
a) Call up your buddy Will who totally told you that that chick sucked, and you should have burned that bridge a long time ago?
b) Call your buddy Curti- oh….nevermind this option.
c) Order up a tac-squad and climb back on the killing horse.
Pretty much answers itself, doesn’t it? When Jack comes to, the widow and the hunk from IT are running from some bad guys, who have chased them to an alley that does not exist in any parts of West L.A. I know of. What cracks me up is that they’ve run like three blocks and the Widow is huffing and puffing in a full fledged asthma attack. And I’m supposed to believe she had sex with Jack? Please.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours (2 of 3)
Published February 20th, 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 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.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published February 20th, 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, 1-2 PM: Jack’s in a chopper, but since they don’t know where the kidnapped CTU tech is, I have to imagine they’re just sort of tooling around. This would be a good time for Jack to see all of the parts of L.A. that aren’t abandoned oil derricks, warehouses and sparsely used freeways. Y’know…the real parts.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published February 13th, 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.
(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.)
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published February 2nd, 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, 11-12 Noon:
11:06: Jack unbags his little brother, who starts crying. Jack wants to know where Dad is, but Little Brother swears he doesn’t know. More crying. Jack’s about to bag him again on the pretense that he doesn’t believe him, but I think it’s also that Jack is uncomfortable with the sound of men crying. Gasping: fine. Pleading: great. Death rattling: wonderful. But crying gives him the willies.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 29th, 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, 10 - 11 AM: When the morning gets started we’re not even looking at Jack. We’re watching as President Limp-Dick goes down to the White House bunker, or “coward hole”, whichever term you’d prefer. I’m just saying that wherever Jack is, he’s probably sprinting towards the nuclear bomb blast because it’s the only thing that can give him a tan.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 22nd, 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, 9 – 10 AM: Jack’s nine o’clock hour starts with pseudo-Jack and Curtis bickering like high school girls. (Example: Jack II at one point says “we” referring to all of them, and Curtis snaps “There is no we. There’s us and you.”) The whole scene reminds me of every single episode of “Change of Heart.” Then I try and imagine what it would be like to fight terrorism with my girlfriend on one side and another girl I just took on a date on the other side, and I bet Jack is trying to remember what was so bad about Chinese prison.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours (3 of 4)
Published January 17th, 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, 8-9 AM:
8:00: Jack hops into Jack 2.0’s car. It’s like Double Dragon - they’re more than the sum of their parts. Unless they get rid of this guy soon they’re going to have to change the name of the show to 12.
8:02: Bad Guy Two of Twelve calls the President to make a deal. The President listens better to the terrorist than the man who saves the country in less time than it takes me to make a Powerpoint deck.
Jack wants to get in touch with CTU. Jack Junior doesn’t. Jack insists, and JJ caves. Jack’s back in the saddle again. Nothing like an explosion to get the blood flowing.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 16th, 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, 7-8 AM: When Jack escapes the sewer system, he’s finally got the top button of his shirt undone, and he already looks twice as limber for killing. He’s favoring his stabbed shoulder a bit, but I’d bet that doesn’t even last into the nine o’clock hour. All Jack needs is a cell phone to call Chloe with and it’ll be like he was never gone.
7:03: Well, that was quick. Jack breaks into a car and finds a state of the art cell phone sitting inside it. Mighty convenient, there. Especially since the car was something like an ’84 Caprice. It takes less than a minute for Jack to call into CTU and say the words, “Bill, I don’t have a lot of time. Put me through to the President.” Buchanan overcomes the waves of déjà vu he must be experiencing and does exactly as Jack says.
7:05: Jack orders the President of the United States around for the first of many times today. Sure, even though you have to discount it a little since it’s just Wayne, we’re still pretty far along the 24 Hour Timeline. At this rate Kim will be needlessly placed in danger before brunch.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 24 Little Hours
Published January 15th, 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, 6-7 AM: Here we go! When we last saw Jack, Chinese agents had captured Jack and stuffed him onto a boat heading to China. Two years have passed since then, and in that time, Wayne Palmer has become President. Some of you might remember Wayne from last season, when he spent several hours as Jack’s squire, running around waving a gun that I think Jack had unloaded. Now he’s president. This is good. Jack’s job always calls for him to tell the President what to do, and having a President with a backbone would just be a speed bump between Jack and terrorist life-blood.
Apparently there have been terrorist attacks all over the country. Two of the president’s advisors are debating the wisdom of setting up internment camps for Muslims, and President Wayne looks like he’s going to cry. I don’t think he’s sad for the country; I think he just wants everyone to leave so he can flip a coin and figure this thing out. That’s the problem with being President, Wayne. There’s really only one person who has the authority to tell you what to do, and he’s being tortured in China. (BTW, given his general wet-noodleness, I refuse to call him President Palmer. I will call him President Wayne.)