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Why I Love...24

Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer
  • Posted at 5:16am
  • 15 March 2007
  • by DavidBrown-RT
  • 2 comments

Jack Bauer is the government agent with extreme time-management issues from the nail-biting show 24, who solves most problems by killing people. He's so good at it that he's now regarded as the main cause of death among terrorists in America.

He can be found either growling to himself like Mutley, saying "dammit" and "sonofabitch" under his breath, or yelling at a bad guy to "Holster your weapon!" When he combines the two approaches, it is to cajole innocent computer geeks to help him stop California from being blown up: "You have got to help me."

This man also enthusiastically tortures evil-doers in a variety of ways and uses the rules of the Geneva Convention as a dartboard. Suspects are shot in the leg, electrocuted with live wires, sensory-deprived and threatened with having their eyes gouged out. You get the impression that Jack wouldn't baulk at ripping someone's still-beating heart out with his bare hands.

Jack himself has been killed twice at the hands of torturers but was brought back to life each time in as little as five minutes. Killing Jack Bauer doesn't make him dead, it merely sharpens his focus. When Jack is described as "torturing himself" after the death of wife Teri, the mind boggles as to what he's up to.

Back at the headquarters of the counter-terrorist unit, Jack is aided by some very resourceful people. Chloe, aka The Most Powerful Woman in the World, can track the entire planet from her computer screen. And we're not talking Google Earth here - Chloe can focus in on people's nasal hair if she wants to.

Then there's Jack's daughter Kim, who landed herself a job in dad's office with only a year's childcare experience on her CV. Obviously, Daddy wanted her closer to home following her escape from the clutches of a cougar. Still, one undercover assignment later (wearing a special wig and working in a library) and Kim was shipped off to live with her boyfriend whose hand Jack had cut off with an axe. Ostensibly this was because he was chained to an explosive, but I think it was Jack's way of warning him to treat his daughter right.

Until recently, there was also Tony, who obviously wanted to be as hard as Jack, but was prone to ending up on crutches, getting shot in the neck and being caught in a car-bomb blast. Usually, he'd spend more time in hospital than at CTU. The big wuss.

An honourable mention should also go to President David Palmer, a man whose voice was so deep it could start earthquakes. Jack developed a cell-phone friendship with Palmer at various times of crisis, but we assume they also did manly things together like go fishing at the weekends. Though Jack would probably try to shoot the pesky critters out of the water.

Jack Bauer is without doubt the toughest man on television. If he'd been on the plane that crashed in Lost, he'd have had them off that island in less than a week. At the end of the last series, he was captured, drugged, beaten and stowed on a Chinese ship heading out of America with no way of help finding him. But don't fear: Jack's now back for a sixth run. I never really fancied the odds of the Chinese, did you?

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  • Posted on 17 February 2009
  • at 8:41pm
  • by Pester

Somewhat out of date this blog, we're now on day seven (as in season seven and I believe year eight, given the writers' strike meant no 24 in 2008). Anyway, 'the toughest man on TV' has some mighty huge flaws, apart from being the political equivalent of a split personality (let's torture our way to the preservation of our liberal freedoms and feel really bad about it afterwards) compared to Ros Myers of The UK's Spooks he's a dysfunctional wimp with a vicious streak! I jest, but only slightly.

Ros Myers has to be the toughest and grittiest character in espionage television, not only that, she's got a much more layered and complex personality, with a biting wit to boot. With Bauer you get brutally determined and the troubled compassionate taking turns in such a contradictory manner that you're sure he should be on medication. With Myers you get the sharp, the cutting, the driven, the privately perplexed, the sacrifice of self and the total dedication to the job, not to mention the occasionally treacherous, she's a lethal weapon in a way Bauer can only aspire to, who shelves her doubts and traumas in favour of saving the nation every single episode.

But let's return to Jack.

To be fair, 24 started out life as a masterstroke in television with its first season, not so much a series as a very long film that had to be shown episodically. The second season was an admirable attempt to provide the first with a rocking sequel and succeeded in being almost as memorable. Perhaps they should have left it there. Seasons one and two were more drama than formula and plot was more than a device to frame the action. Of course, back then Jack Bauer was less of a super-agent and more convincing as a professional caught in a pickle, plus President David Palmer was virtually as important to the storylines (and that balance between CTU and The White House provided texture and contrast).

Seasons have rolled by and Jack's become a kind of unstoppable American James Bond. The team that make 24 have always sworn that the series could go on without him, but now there's such a cult of personality surrounding Jack it's hard to believe 24 would survive after his demise (no problem there for Spooks, main characters are always getting killed off or retired).

Day Seven, as they call it, has actually gone a little way towards recapturing the old 24 magic. There's more of a focus shift towards the trials of the first family in The White House and beyond, with a strong female presidential character that matches the charisma of David Palmer. It's been an eventful first batch of episodes that have quite wisely dealt with the initial problem arising fairly swiftly and with some freshness in the approach towards tension building, also seeing 24 regulars out of their CTU context by forming their own rogue do-gooder unit has helped, but you do feel this is a warm-up for what's to come and maybe that's fine, yet arguably it's also a tease that the main story hasn't leapt forth from our screens yet (for a series that has to go some way to recapture its former brilliance, more could be done to excite the nerves without contrivance and bury us deep inside the narrative).

The huge difficulty of 24 is that season one had the critical hook of a decent man being forced to do something despicable (Bauer's family held hostage, he was being set up to assassinate David Palmer) and that's something the show can't repeat, of course, it would be too lame. To praise it for its strengths, 24 survives as pretty gripping week-by-week entertainment of the what's-going-to-happen-next variety, but it lost credibility as being an actual drama within the thriller genre a long time ago, for all its pretensions. Now with Spooks the opposite could be said, it's presented as a bold, straightforward and violent spies-are-fun-viewing package that does indeed also work dramatically; but there you have The US verses The UK, don't you, the latter being no-frills, leaner and meaner, deadlier too, yet when it pushes those buttons your heart will genuinely ache.

No offence to Kieffer Sutherland (who, like his dad, Donald, is a damn fine actor really) but I've got two solutions for Jack. The first is kill him off for real this time and dare 24 to continue without him, forcing the writers to get clever again. The second is delightfully daft: we've had Aliens versus Predator (twice, both attempts shameful) now let's have Jack up against our own Great British Ros and see the sparks fly! Wow, can't you just picture it? Think of all those taunts and sarcastic comments Ros would hurl at Jack, poor lad wouldn't know what to do with himself. Anyone for a Spooks and 24 crossover special? Go on, admit it, you're up for it.

  • Posted on 10 April 2008
  • at 9:31pm
  • by LCD TV

Nothing wrong if the torture scene made you feel uncomfortable, that's the sign of a well produced scene imo.

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