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24
Great 24 Moments |
| When I was a child, television was a gateway for me. It expanded my imagination and taught me that by following my dreams I could accomplish anything, be it practical medicine or being a green puppet who lived in a trashcan. Or Spider-Man, and I could help people learn to read. Without television I wouldn't be who I am today, and I wouldn't be able to express excitement, sadness, heartfelt thanks, or regret. Hi, my name is Harry Knowles and welcome to my website. Television is bad now. Really bad. It has been for a long time. If you like watching a group of wealthy people have sex with each other and then talk profusely about this sex, television is great. If you like watching a group of policemen, lawyers, or doctors stand in a room and discuss something for an hour, television is great. If you like finding out what your next door neighbor (who is also a sexy stripper) will and will not eat for money, television is great. But for those of us who want something more, television is empty. It's the same stuff over and over. Car chase. Gunshots. Man down, call for backup. Tom Selleck races to the scene. Don Johnson has a nice car. Jack is gay. Boring, bland, and an exercise in futility. "24" changed all that for me. It's the best hour on television for people who want to simultaneously feel anxiety, joy, and release. It's not a "guilty pleasure" because it's nothing to feel guilty about. The writing is great. The acting is great. The situations are COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC AND INSANE, but they know this, and they continue to turn up the volume to make things even MORE unrealistic and even MORE insane. It's twist and turns that actually matter, and even when they don't make sense or are poorly resolved the damn tension you feel from it is unreal. It makes you want to break the time space continuum to travel forward and watch the next episode immediately. BUT YOU CAN'T WATCH THE NEXT EPISODE PREVIEW OR YOU'LL BE SPOILED. It's all hyperbole because the show works in hyperbole. It LIVES in hyperbole. It's what life would be like if we were always on the brink of death. We've hoped here to list 24 (narf) of our favorite moments from the show. Be forewarned. This list is made clearly for people who have already seen and watch the show. There are incredible spoilers throughout. I mean it. On 24 something happens every two seconds, so if you say "Jack eats a taco" you've spoiled something. Almost every number here is a spoiler. So if you are interested in watching the show and do not mind finding out what happens during it, proceed. If you love the show and want to share your thoughts, proceed. Maybe you want to catch up before the season four premiere this Sunday on Fox. But if you don't, IF YOU HAVE AN INTEREST IN WATCHING UNSPOILED 24 WITHOUT HAVING SPOILERS SPOIL YOU, please refrain from continuing. We want you to read our article, but hey, we already got your hit. So beat it.
Borvo Sobrinna funds international terrorism, so you know in the back of his mind he keeps expecting a government agent to pop around the corner with a gun to scream things like "GET DOWN" or "DROP THE WEAPON." He never expected Jack Bauer to don a pair of sunglasses, cut on his exciting background music, beat an elevator to the bottom floor of a building and hijack his limousine. Borvo, or "Ted Coffell" as he is calling himself here, gets driven around violently before being straddled and told that if he does not divulge the information he possesses Jack will stuff a towel down his throat and use it to rip the lining of his stomach out. Jesus Christ. It's the first time in the series to feature Jack bunking his "I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL SHOOT YOU" and going for something a little more creative. It works, because in true in-twenty-formant fashion Ted Coffell is scared to death and inadvertently murdered by the idea of a special agent turning him into Inside-Out Boy. You could say Ted Coffell would Dan Rather be dead than horrifically and facetiously maimed. Way to go, Jack. All in all, kidnapping someone and threatening their well-being via limo proves my theory that Jack is not a special agent but merely an agent for the Ministry of Darkness. - B
Tony Almeida. Director of CTU. Master of squinting his eyes, looking indignant and saying, "What are you talking about?" While Jack gets to run around killing people and overturning tables, Tony is confined to sighing wearily over boring office-politics bullshit. Jack shoots up smack and chases terrorists in the Mexican desert; Tony glares at coworkers he does not trust from behind art-nouveau office decor. He doesn't get many chances to be cool and make us like him; so when one does come his way, he jumps at the chance. That chance presents itself in the forum of Yusef Auda, a schmuck with indeterminate Middle Eastern origin. Yusef keeps hounding Tony for information, and when he doesn't get it, he mutters, "You Americans..." as if he wants to punch him in the face with a hijacked passenger airliner. Tony gets pissed off, turns, and says, "We Americans, what?" Yusef mutters, "Nothing", and Toby Keith shoots his television off the hood of his truck with a shotgun. - Jon
We had established for two and a half seasons that Sherry Palmer was good for two things: 1) Getting anything remotely shady accomplished in record time, including several unrelated things all in a row that would normally require her to drive or fly great distances in the three-to-five minutes the commercial break allows, and 2) Yelling. In the second half of the third season we learn that Sherry has the ability to actually talk a man to death. When confronted by Alan Milliken, the influential man who wants to push David Palmer out of office, Sherry begins insulting the man (who is in a wheelchair) until his heart begins to explode. He reaches for his pills but Sherry denies them, continuing to list off every horrible thing he's ever done and every negative insult ever written down or passed along orally in the history of modern man. Even his wife Julia, fresh from having an extra-marital affair with Principal Black from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and being a maggot-faced demon goddess on Buffy's sister show and being a ROOTIN TOOTIN SPACE PIRATE on Buffy's sister show that demands you ignore and forget about it's sisters or else, is helpless against Sherry's barrage. Milliken collapses on the floor with the agonizing specter of death still burned into his face. Sherry convinces Julia to lie about the situation and then spends the next six episodes writing FAGGOT on Alan's corpse in magic marker. - B
In most shows, if the hero were asked to shoot his partner, you'd know it wasn't really going to happen. This show, however, has done a better job than any other show of making sure that the viewers know that almost anyone can get knocked off at any time. While undercover, Jack was asked to kill Chase to prove his loyalty. It would have been especially easy to knock off Chase. He wasn't particularly likeable, he didn't really get much done, and he was kind of an idiot. For once, we actually expected for him to die. I mean, Jack didn't even want him around. Chase spent most of his time playing Super Sleuth and trying to catch up with him. His progress in the field was severely hampered by a team of a cappella vocalist who sang "oooooooooooh THE CHAAAAAASE" whenever someone said his name. - Jon
Sometimes we like confrontations because we want to see a good fight. Other times, we like confrontations because we want to see somebody get an ass-kicking. On this side of the bathroom door, we have Jack Bauer, CTU agent and ex-Delta Force commando. Over the course of the last day, he has killed about thirty men who were trained to kill, survived a plane crash, parachuted out of another plane and faced seemingly certain death twice. Oh, and also, one hour ago he was clinically dead. He is unequivocally the toughest son of a bitch ever to exist. And cowering on the other side of the bathroom door is a nameless, hapless sack of shit wearing a John Deere hat and jean jacket. He and his bumblefuck friends decided it would be a good idea to respond to the nuclear attack on American soil a few hours earlier by finding the nearest brown-skinned guy and literally beating him to death with a bunch of rocks. As this poor sap's luck would have it, that brown-skinned man was Jack's partner. He stole a chip containing information that Jack needs to stop a war. I love this scene for its hilariously anticlimactic nature. After watching Jack fight against seemingly insurmountable odds all day, this feels like a mismatch akin to Bruce Lee against a couple of kids with Super Soakers, or maybe the Kansas City Chiefs against the Oakland Raiders. Needless to say, Jack punks their inbred asses out. - Jon
Well, you can't have a 24 episode without them. UNLESS YOU'RE IN SEASON 4 WOOOOOOOOOOO
almeida_bench_on_tool_time: sup almeida_bench_on_tool_time:
wants to direct connect. Bauer_Power: Come on, Tony. Put the gun away. You're not going to shoot me. almeida_bench_on_tool_time: *fidgets* Bauer_Power:
Well, I have to jet. It's time for me to go save the
world and be many times more interesting and cool than you are.
Have fun together for the rest of the season, you two. - Jon
For my money ($7.21/hr) Reiko Aylesworth is the most attractive woman in the three year run of 24. Sure, Elisha Cuthbert is the Men's Magazine go-to girl, with tits thirty-six sizes larger than her torso and asscheeks you could use to crack nuts made out of Now-&-Laters and diamond. But she's got bright yellow hair and black eyebrows. She wakes up every single morning and is masturbated to every single afternoon with bright yellow hair and black eyebrows. I don't understand it. This combination destroys every attempt I have made to find her as attractive as I should. I'm not saying she isn't white hot. She is. But she unnerves me. She makes this as a conscious decision. Maybe I'm the only person on the fucking planet who has heard of the "color wheel" and maybe I'm the only person who assumes the suspension of disbelief required to prefer blondes ends with the pubis on display. Dammit, I've set standards for myself. And they don't include ignoring a minor and inconsequential detail in the pursuit of celebrity vag. Reiko is also more attractive to me than what I like to call "the rest." Teri Bauer, Nina Myers, Kate and Marie Warner, whoever it is Jack is face plowing in the commercials for season 4. Okay, take like 1980 David Bowie. Pick a hair color and put it in a ponytail. Now have him wear loose-fitting blouses and make a squinty face, and go "Jack? JACK?" That's who these women are. JACK JACKS. Some are better than others (I wouldn't insult any actress by accusing her of being like Kate Warner), but the song remains the same. Jack is into Ethiopian teen boys who have rolled in flour and are poised to bring him harm. Nobody is perfect. So yeah, Reiko spent two seasons behind a desk at CTU as Michelle Dessler/Almeida, mild-mannered but importantly helpful A-jersey wearing member of the squad. When somebody needed a password or wanted something "patched through" to wherever-else, Michelle was there to do her job and put up with whatever time-soaking melodrama was going on at CTU while Jack was taking a dump or eating a sandwich. Then, out of nowhere, there is a vial of AIDSTHRAX in a hotel and Michelle is called into action. She swoops in, beats some ass (!!) and gets the situation under control. That is, until a disruptive innocent decides he doesn't want to be quarantined and tries to leave the building. Michelle warns him. She warns him again. She tells him she's going to shoot him. He is the kind of smug fuckhole who is walking around in your place of business, is asked if he needs help, declines, and then immediately asks you a question. Michelle shoots his ass.
And I cheer. - B
By the end of Season Three, Jack has pretty much reached a level of omniscience. He knows what everyone's thinking, he knows what everyone's about to do, and he's never really worried about what's going to happen because he knows it already. Season One Jack was a very different guy. He walked the Earth with the rest of us, ate, drank, slept, peed, and pooped. So when a terrorist hands Season One Jack a cell phone and says, "Give this to the Senator", you can't expect him to put it all together. Even when the terrorist tells him, "Uh...yeah, this is a special phone. I can't talk to him when he's using any other phone." Season Three Jack would have disassembled the phone, eaten it, shat it out into the likeness of a gun, and killed him and his terrorist cronies. Season One Jack makes his way to Senator Palmer, hands him the phone, and realizes that the phone probably has a bomb in it about five seconds before it explodes. Bauer is credited as a hero for saving Palmer's life. All those guys watching from prison who have stabbed a guy in the gut and then driven him to the hospital get pissed off. - Jon
The only person in the world Jack will not harm is Kim Bauer. This includes himself. If Jack had to shoot Kim or kill himself he would put a bullet in his dome in a heartbeat. This is one of the endearing and terrifying things about Jack as a character, and it's what makes him such an enjoyable death-bringing harbinger of shot faces. Near the end of season three SAUNDERS became the focus. SAUNDERS is going to release the virus. SAUNDERS is going to hide vials of the virus at various locations and set them off independently. SAUNDERS has rigged a vial of the virus to a treadmill and if Chicagoland policeman Carl Winslow stops running or somehow falls off of the treadmill he and Urkel will be covered in EBOLAPOX and melt. He was a tough customer and nobody for Jack to dick around. SAUNDERS has information. Every time Jack tries to get information out of somebody they end up dead. So Jack does the next best thing: He thinks like the killer.
Jack finds/kidnaps/whatevers Saunders' daughter Jane and wheels her over to the giant hotel Saunders has infected. The place has been quarantined and the virus isn't getting out, but that doesn't mean Jack can't send someone in. And that's precisely what he does. He makes Saunders stand there while he sends the guy's only daughter into the infected zone, telling him "When your daughter is infected, I'm going to make you watch her die." Saunders coughs up the information and is emasculated as a man. Jack is a creep, a horrible human being, and a cold-blooded killer. It hurts him on the inside. He cries about it and other things later. But the entire situation can be summed up in one of Jack's greatest quotes ever: "You can look the other way once, and it's no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that's all your doing; compromising, because that's the way you think things are done. You know those guys I busted? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren't, they weren't bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised... Once." - B
The first three seasons of 24 have followed three primary storylines: Jack, Kim, and David Palmer. Kim's escapades are generally so ridiculous and laughable that we can't put any of them on this list with a straight face. The Palmer storylines were great in the first two seasons, but by the third season it was just a bunch of boring crap pieced together by the writers in order to give the camera something to look at while Jack was busy taking a piss or mowing the lawn. Characters would appear and disappear, neither for any good reason in particular, and it just wasn't going anywhere. One of its few saving graces was a guy named Fox. Who is Fox? Fox is the guy who punched Sherry Palmer in her face. Fox was hired by Palmer's Chief of Staff and brother, Wayne Palmer, to help him find a prescription bottle that proved that, blah blah blah, not important. What is important is that while ransacking Sherry's house for the bottle, she arrives home and catches them in the act. While Wayne starts stuttering like a moron, Fox gives a "eh, what the hell" sort of look, and just decks Sherry right in the jaw, living the dream of millions of fans as well as half the characters in the show. And hell, it's taped to her back. Fox's shit-eating grin is the real highlight. - Jon
In the final, balls-out action sequence of Season Two, Jack manages to take out an entire squad of elite bodyguards in the L.A. Coliseum, all while suffering what is essentially a heart attack. And as a tribute that made me love the show's writers even more, Jack does a Bo Jackson move in the very stadium that Bo played football. Unfortunately, after he finished shooting that season of 24, Kiefer Sutherland fractured his hip while breaking away for a touchdown run. 24 dropped his contract, but he soon signed with CSI: City Setting That Might Make This Show Not Be As Bad and made history by being the first man to solve numbingly predictable crimes with an artificial hip. - Jon
Unbeknownst to President Palmer, his own Cabinet is taking measures to remove him from office. His aide, Lynne Kresge, finds out about it, but is shoved down a stairwell before she can warn him. While being loaded into an ambulance, Palmer checks in on her. She tries desperately to point out Mike Novick, the Chief of Staff who is working against Palmer. And in an instant, the guy we kept confusing with Turtle Guy from "The Master Of Disguise" makes us all hate him at once. She struggles to indict him with Palmer standing there, and in near-panic, Novick closes his hands over hers and whispers, "It's all right. You're going to be just fine." With that, they roll her into the ambulance, and we never see her again. This is one of the most painful pieces of television I've ever watched. You might say I could have used some Novick-ain. Or some Tylenol. - Jon
I am the last person who is going to watch a TV show and say something trite like, "Oh, these guys are SO HIGH." People do it constantly. The guys from Mr. Show are SO HIGH. Steve from Blues Clues is SO HIGH. One-hit wonder Tal Bachman is SO HIGH. I don't do it, because jumping to conclusions about what state of mind the writers or actors were in before they filmed something is fruitless and frankly pretty gay. That being said, the writers/producers of 24 had SO JUST PLAYED METAL GEAR SOLID when they filmed Jack's big rescue attempt at Ira Gaines' compound, the mid-season climax of season 1. Teri and Kim have been kidnapped and have been falling in rape/love respectively with their kidnappers. After a while Jack decides that maybe driving around in an SUV and talking on the phone to people you are going to eventually shoot for eight hours isn't the best way to handle the problem, so he heads in and pretty much takes out everyone in the vicinity. Guys with pistols, guys with machine guns, guys with nuclear bombs strapped to very long knives...it seems like everyone is there, and Jack skunks them all. All the while the entire operation plays out like a game, complete with Russian guys on walkie talkies telling each other "NOTHING HERE" and "SECURE THE PERIMETER." It's the first time we really get to see Jack in action, and we start to learn that if Jack was in a fight with Superman and He-Man at the same time he would just break He-Man's arm and hurl the power sword into Superman's chest. The climax comes around because the guys running the show weren't sure whether or not they would be picked up for the rest of the season, so they give Jack a big victory and a happy ending. When the show cleared and got twelve more episodes they panicked and created some unrealistic character motivations and decisions (Teri gets amnesia, et al). And then in episode 20 when Jack is replaced by Raiden there's just no going back. - B
I've got a theory. Stick with me. Kim Bauer is not the daughter of Jack and Teri Bauer. She exists as a tangible, tactile human being in the fictional world of 24, but she is not actually the offspring of the two characters. Kim Bauer is the physical manifestation of Jack Bauer's innocence. Let me explain. Jack has a very stressful job. This is evident by the twenty-four hours he must spend every few years running up and down staircases while holding up a gun. He's always being shot/shot at/stabbed/stabbed at/nuked, so if there was this big emotional attachment to "thou shalt not kill" or even the more abstract "thou shalt not break the Mexican guy's neck with your legs while tied down" he wouldn't be able to do his job or get through the day. He would break down, he would give up, he would fail. Los Angeles would be full of Russians, nuclear waste, and Rage Zombies. Jack succeeds in eliminating this emotion by casting it off in the form of Kim, a dimwitted blonde, who Jack can idealize as the national symbol for stereotypical stupidity. He cares deeply, DEEPLY for her, like a child, because she, like a child, is a part of him. More specifically a part than usual, but a part of him nonetheless. She acts rashly and without thinking. Kim makes the decisions that Jack's innocent heart would make if he could not connect to the side of his brain holding all the reason and knowledge. Just like Jack cannot connect to Kim's separated childishness, Kim cannot connect to Jack's deduction and heroism. In three seasons of 24 Kim has perpetrated the following acts as evidence that she cannot connect to her previous ports: - snuck out of her house/got friend
killed in street a la Toxic Avenger And so on. Jack could not have saved the world as quickly as he has if he did not have Kim extraneously going through all the stupid shit he would've had to have gone through had they been one normal person. The moment that encapsulates these feelings happens early in season 2, when Kim and her boyfriend Miguel are confronted by the father of the child they have kidnapped. Evil Daddy gets physical, so Miguel does what any normal, Southern-California emaciated male would do. He gives the guy a super spinning karate kick. Yes, like Ken and Ryu. The Super Spinkick of Doom.
Tatsumakisenpukyaku! - B
A brief scene. INT. Emily's house. EMILY and B are watching the season 3 finale of 24. B EMILY
B EMILY B EMILY B EMILY
B B & EMILY (laughter for minutes) B
- B
Did Jack have to shoot Victor Drazen? No. The man was unarmed and had his hands up.
Did Jack have to shoot Drazen like four-hundred thousand times after he was dead, pointing the gun down into the water where Drazen fell to continue shooting until his gun ran out of ammo? No. Was it freaking hilarious and awesome? Yes. The moment would transform Jack into "normal man driven to darkness by extraordinary circumstance" to "violent nut who will kill you so hard." Dennis Hopper closing his eyes when he realizes Jack is going to kill him anyway really makes the moment, and is the best acting from an otherwise Lou Diamond-heavy second half of the season. - B
Bauer_Power:
Son of a bitch. Bauer_Power:
GOTCHA
Bauer_Power:
Ryan. I don't really have that many friends.
Just...people I talk to on AIM mostly. Are you ready? im_ryan_chappelle_bitch:
I think so
My Mom wanted Nina Myers dead from the minute she was revealed as the season one mole. The very minute. My Mom tends to have a problem with women. She enjoys watching Mel Gibson show his butt in whatever, but if my Dad gets similar jollies from Sharon Stone or Teri Hatcher or whoever she gets furious. She refused to watch wrestling for months when the WWF ran an angle featuring Trish Stratus kissing The Rock. She thought it was horrible because The Rock is married in real life. My Mother can discern reality from fantasy, but there's something horribly moral inside of her that keeps her from accepting it. She once told me (at five years old) that if one of the Midnight Express were to fall from the ring to the outside and over the guardrail in front of her she would have no qualms driving her heeled shoe into the side of his head, killing him. She is a wonderful person and torrentially emotional. My Mom also happens to like Kiefer Sutherland a lot. She owns the Young Guns films on DVD. She doesn't like it when somebody is unnecessarily mean to Kiefer. Nina, fictional or no, was meaner to Kiefer than anyone ever, unless Wil Wheaton ever grew up to be Richard Dreyfuss with a shotgun and went out hunting for his brother's Yankees cap. She killed his wife, she manipulated him for two seasons, she even forced him to kiss her. It was horrible. She was murdering, heinous, feminine scum and my Mom wanted to "send her a letter," her equivalent of "I AM GOING TO FUCK YOU UP." Season three came along and Nina was once again in the middle of things, manipulating Jack and claiming to possess information. What happens to people who have information on 24, kids? That's right.
Jack realizes she's full of it and plugs her point blank, right in the head. It took her faking a seizure, coming to life on the operating table, and killing a bunch of his co-workers before he figured it out, but the point is that he figured it out, finally. My Mom did a dance that night. She might still be dancing. - B
Jack has a mob boss brought in for questioning. He prepares his notes for the interrogation in a textbook fashion. The boss is brought into the room, and smugly tells Jack that he's already made a bargain and that he's not afraid of anything. Jack turns and pauses for a moment. It's the first episode of the second season. Jack normally wouldn't take that sort of shit, but he's not the same guy. He's a widowed, broken, depressed pill-popper who has little motivation to do anything more with his life. His boss doubts that he has it in him to be of much help. So it looks like he's gone softNOPE It's apparent that he really didn't have any interest in talking to this guy in the first place. The story soon unfolds further: Jack plans on delivering the boss' severed head to a rival crime ring as a means into their circle; the ring has plans to blow up CTU headquarters and play a role in a major nuclear attack. He doesn't particularly feel the need to share any of this now, because he doesn't really give a shit. His boss asks him what the hell he's doing; Jack responds by examining the corpse's neck and saying matter-of-factly, "I'm gonna need a hacksaw". This was the first great moment of the greatest television season ever. It was brilliant character progression; Jack had officially transformed from average guy to callous killing machine who did not seem terribly concerned over what would happen to him. - Jon
Sometimes I wonder which fictional husband actress Penny Johnson Jerald would prefer. President David Palmer, righteous and moral upstanding black man in control of a country, or Captain Benjamin Sisko, righteous and moral upstanding black man in control of a space station. Part of me says she'd pick Palmer. He could get her great rates on insurance. She'd be in good hands. The other half of me says Sisko, because it's been established that Sisko can hit a curve ball. Those questions go away when I remember the best Palmer moment ever. Sherry Palmer is a wretched cunt. That pretty much says it. She wants David to be the President so she can be Co-President. She wants power. So much so that she makes the mistake of putting that power above the life of an innocent: Kim Bauer. David realizes exactly what she is: a manipulative, conniving, wretched cunt. It's probably got birds nesting in it. Birds with red eyes who want to tell you confidential information. She's dirt. She's worse than dirt. She's cunt dirt. Sandy vagina. And he knows he can't stay with her any longer, knowing what she truly is. "Goddamn Sherry, the way you keep defying me..." he utters. "I am not defying you, David. I am protecting you" is her response. PROTECTING ME FROM WHAT~!! With one question Palmer has gone from caring, sane husband to FUCK OFF BLACK PRESIDENT. It's FREAKING AWESOME. Sherry flinches and we know who wears the pants. David yelling "Damn you Sherry if that child dies!" and hurling a vase against the wall is the best. Fuck you, Jobu. President Palmer will do it himself.
Without a doubt, this can be referenced as the point at which 24 stopped being merely a suspenseful, innovative action thriller and became something that television had never really seen before, and desperately needed. It was the end of the first season. Everyone was happy. Nothing was supposed to happen but hugs, and kisses, and more hugs. Jack was a hero. He had saved the day. They were talking about him on the news. Jack Bauer's 24-hour nightmare was finally over. Life, though, doesn't wait for moods to subside; it doesn't place a great deal of emphasis on telling a story the way it's supposed to be told, nor does it particularly care about being predictable. The awful feeling lingered long after the show gave way to the 10:00 news. I was surprised that the anchors weren't staring dumbfoundedly at their cameras and saying, "Holy shit", over and over. At about 10:08 I finally turned off the TV. It's kind of hard to say whether I was more shocked by the event itself, or that its writers would have the guts to completely turn the script upside-down in the final thirty seconds of a 24-hour season, or that I could be so moved by a freaking television show. It was the most out-of-left field twist I'd ever seen, taking the honor held by the previous week's episode. And I just kept thinking; "This is the best television show I have ever seen." - Jon
Jack and Nina are on an plane, minutes after she managed to kill a special agent with a gift card while handcuffed, seconds before the plane is hit by a surface-to-air missile and takes a nosedive.
"The Sunday before you killed my wife... "Teri and I went to the boardwalk in Venice just watching all the rollerbladers and musicians, laughing at all the crazy people, spending time together. And Teri sees this sno-cone stand. She giggles like a kid. She takes off running, she wants to get in line, she wants one. I remember thinking I was watching her, I was just...
"I couldn't help myself. When I look up at her she's talking to this old lady in line behind her and the two of them are laughing, and I'm thinking to myself, 'how the hell does she do that?' How does she strike up a conversation with an absolute stranger? And they just started laughing. Like they'd been friends forever. "That's a gift. I remember thinking, 'God, I wish I could do that'. But I can't. That was Teri. My wife. That's what you took from this world, Nina. That's what you took from me and my daughter.
I just wanted you to know that." An unbelievable, rare, candid aberration from what we normally see from Jack. For just a moment, he's not angry. He doesn't seek revenge. He just wants to make her understand what she took away from him. Strangely enough, he doesn't appear vindictive or even resentful. Perhaps he holds the hope that his wife was so beautiful that even her murderer could not help but take pause. - Jon
George Mason:
Believe it or not, I used to want to be a teacher. A long time ago.
You know why I didn't? DOD offered me more money. That's how I made
my decision. So I made myself miserable. And I made everybody else
around me miserable. For an extra five thousand dollars a year.
That was my price. George: You know, Michelle, I'm not a big advice giver, but under the circumstances... Don't wait around for your life to happen to you. Find something that makes you happy, and do it. Because everything else is all just background noise.
George Mason was the resident ball-breaker for the first season and a half of 24. Before Ryan Chappelle got hands on George WAS Chappelle, telling the good guys what they didn't want to hear and making them do what they didn't want to do. Then there was a nuclear bomb set to explode in downtown Los Angeles. The biggest tragedy in the history of the United States. In the line of duty George inhales plutonium. He's going to die sometime during the day. He'll leave behind a group of employees who barely understand him and a family that doesn't seem to want him around anymore. He makes peace with Michelle, and the rest. It's heartbreaking. He makes peace with his son. It destroys you. And then he finds out Jack Bauer is going to sacrifice himself by flying the bomb out of the city and into a depression in the desert. Jack hasn't wanted to be alive since Teri died. It's what turned him into such an overt murderer. It's why he cuts off your head with a hacksaw. George knows it. George has known it for a while. And as Jack flies off into the desert he finds an unexpected passenger on board.
"So what are you gonna do tomorrow? If the bomb doesn't go off. Thought about it?" In a strange moment of metaphysical realization, George Mason, the meanest of all, is the one person who can make Jack want to live again. George is dying of cancer. He'll be dead in moments. His arms are practically falling off and he looks like a zombie. But he still drove out to the airport, he still climbed on that plane, and he still stuck his neck out to a man he knew wasn't going to appreciate it. George reasons with Jack and does the only thing Jack understand: He orders him. "You still have a life, Jack. You wanna be a real hero, here's what you do. You get back down there and you put the pieces together. You find a way to forgive yourself for what happened to your wife. You make things right with your daughter, and you go on serving your country. That'd take some real guts." Jack understands. Their last interaction, Jack placing his hand on George's shoulder, is painful. They are two men who respect each other. It's the strongest kind of emotion there is...mutual admiration. It's pure, and it comes across. And with his last moments of life George pilots the plane perfectly into the depression as Jack parachutes away from the blast zone. George Mason is an American Hero, dying so that others may live. In more ways than one.
- B |
| Jon
:: B |
