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Why We Watch...24 |
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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?
David Brown
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