Because 2400 Is Too Many
written by Jon, B, Kyle, Justin and Bill - January 16, 2026
KIM TELLS JACK SHE CAN'T SEE HIM AGAIN
SEASON 5
If memories of Teri represent Jack’s yearning for domesticity and a fully-rounded humanity, the presence of Kim in his life represents the last shred of those things. And he will protect Kim at all costs to keep that alive. Jack doesn’t react in any grand emotional way to Kim’s insistence that he stay out of her life because of that: without Kim, the part of him that feels, his humanity really, just shuts down.
And of course that hope will never die—just look at his out-of-character naïveté in bounding to accept a call from Kim on a grimy, tucked-away pay phone at the end of the season—but in this instant, it withers, making Jack that much more hardened to the world.
- Kyle
"NO, YOU DON'T."
SEASON 3
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 IS GRABBED BY THE CHINESE
SEASON 5
Anyone familiar with the show who is watching this scene surely knows it can’t end well; Jack and Audrey are joyfully reunited, the sun’s shining, the music rises, and the world is safe from terror. Some shit is about to go down. And sure enough, just as Jack’s dream comes to fruition—Kim’s on the phone and wants to talk to him after all!—he’s snatched by Chinese forces, to be put on a barge to China right away.
In this one moment, the show finally answered a question that had been open all season (what are the Chinese, who’d sought Jack Bauer’s extradition and imprisonment at the end of season four, going to do now that they know he’s still alive?) and reasserted the notion of consequences in the 24 universe. Jack has pissed off a lot of people in the course of the show, and his ability to walk away from that without answering to it is often unaddressed. The Chinese’s stated long memory and the bold decision to end a show’s season with its protagonist shackled on a torture cruise to China put that danger back into 24. Yes, those zany internet comedians may be right, Jack may not use the bathroom or eat very often or whatever, but he still lives in a world of cause and effect and one in which he is not completely invulnerable. This moment reiterated that in a huge way.
- Kyle
"I'M GONNA NEED A HACKSAW"
SEASON 2
This was the moment we knew Jack had changed. Before his wife died, he was a rule-breaker but he was a psychologically healthy human being with healthy reservations against killing people, no matter how much they deserved it. Jack listens to himself rattle off a list of this man's crimes, some shady, some unconscionable. Of course, he wasn't trying to manipulate him. He was sentencing him. The guy deserved to be killed, but even if he were charged with lesser crimes, you get the feeling that Jack would have shot him without a second thought anyway. He had to deliver this man's head to a crime ring to get in with them, so they could then lead him to someone else who could lead him to someone else who could lead him to someone else who had a nuclear bomb waiting to detonate somewhere in the city. Jack had a lot left to do, and he simply didn't have the time for humanity.
This scene makes the jump from illustrative and significant to hilarious pretty quickly. Jack nonchalantly asks George for a hacksaw. Apparently Jack has cut off a few heads in his day, because he's quite certain about not just getting any old saw. I guess CTU's field team had some sort of tactical short-range hacksaw weapon they were able to spot Jack with.
I went ahead and left the clip running a few seconds so you can see the show segue from preparing to serrate some guy's head off to a little girl playing with her dolls. Hysterical.
- Jon
"I JUST DON'T THINK YOU'RE FIT
TO BE THE FIRST LADY."
SEASON 1
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.
- B
PIERCE CALLS OUT LOGAN
SEASON 5
Aaron Pierce is of a rare breed in the 24 universe: he is simply a good person, a man of principles who values those principles over his own life. For the majority of the first five seasons, he’s mostly a sturdy oaf, offering solid protection to presidents and giving suspicious glances to guys who turn out to be traitors. Then he becomes a part of the Jack Bauer-Martha Logan coalition to unveil Charles Logan as head conspirator of the days’ events, and his adherence to principles comes to the fore:
“There is nothing that you have said or done that is acceptable to me in the least. You’re a traitor to this country and a disgrace to your office. And it’s my duty to see that you’re brought to duty for what you’ve done. Is there anything else, Charles?”
Aaron’s refusal to submit to Charles Logan the man at the expense of the office Logan represents is classic honor. The look on Itzin’s face when he’s slapped with “Charles” caps the moment off perfectly; Aaron’s criticisms are not ignored, they’re absorbed. A strong man defies a weak one, and the heart of the show is exposed: moral compromise corrupts. Moral principle overcomes. Aaron Pierce is a perfect example.
- Kyle
"THAT'S WHAT YOU TOOK
FROM THIS WORLD, NINA."
SEASON 2
This moment comes during a rare, perfect silence. Minutes after Nina kills a witness, and moments before the plane is struck by a surface-to-air missile, Jack sits down for a talk.
It goes without saying that Jack hates her with every inch of his body. He would love to strangle her with his bare hands, just as he nearly did earlier. But not now. Now, he really just wants to talk about his wife to someone he once counted as a friend. There's no hatred here. Just a desperation for her to understand what happened and what it meant, and to go back to the friend to him she used to be. It's hard to say for sure whether he got his wish or not, but I believe it hit her. In part because she started to understand that he would not rest until she was dead, but also because she, like Jack, still holds traces of a normal, living, breathing, loving person.
Jack has become someone other than normal psychologically since Teri died, but as we watched in later seasons, he still would have a long way to fall.
- Jon
PALMER AND MICHELLE'S KILLINGS
SEASON 5
What kind of hole have I dug for myself here? How am I supposed to type up analysis of something like this? What was I thinking? I suppose I'll just have to try to specify the response these two moments elicited from me the first time I watched them.
hmm
SHIT
SHIT
SHIT
SHIT
SHIT
SHIT
...
SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT
I'd never had that response to anything in a television show before. Ever.
- Jon
JACK FINDS HIS WIFE DEAD
SEASON 1
This just missed #1 on this list, but it's easily the single most significant moment of the show's first five years.
Our televisions have never been this cruel. After twenty-four nightmarish hours for Jack Bauer, he's supposed to have some respite. It's supposed to be cathartic. Jack is banged up, but he's okay. He just met and embraced his daughter at CTU, where it's safe. They caught their mole. Everything is back to normal.
The next season, Teri and Kim are in a less prominent role, living their lives. Jack is hunting the nuclear weapon, but he doesn't have to cut any heads off. Maybe he'll talk some reason into some of the people behind the bomb. Maybe he'll threaten a few people like he did in the first season. He'll find himself in a few gunfights, maybe help expose another mole in the government. He'll lament more than once that "it's been a hard day." It ends with Jack limping home and opening the door to Teri's embrace. Her study light is on and a paperback is open and lying face-up. She's stayed up for him. Every hero deserves a woman to come home to.
No. Jack carries on for years, tortured more each season. He falls in love with other women, none of whom are Teri. He is destroyed inside by the decaying relationship with his daughter, the one person left who means everything in the world to him. The events of each season whittle him away a little more, and a little more, until he's a shell of himself, driven solely by the duty to his country. He saves it, and is rewarded with having to disappear and leave his life behind. He's needed again, and saves his country again, and is smuggled away to a distant, terrible prison from which he has no reason to believe he will ever escape.
So now, at the beginning of the sixth season, he returns home. Whatever the events bring, can we really reasonably expect Jack to ever have anything resembling a happy ending? All he wants is to peacefully live out his life with what remains of his family - not even his entire family, which is what most men find themselves blessed to do. Considering the transformation of Jack that started at this moment and perhaps won't ever end, is talk of a "happy ending" unrealistic?
Unfortunately so. Jack is not an action hero. He's not the next Clint Eastwood or James Bond. He's among the most tragic of tragic figures. When he does die, if he does die, it will be the only peace he ever finds, and he will do it without nearly the gratitude he should be afforded.
- Jon
GEORGE MASON: AMERICAN HERO
SEASON 2
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.
Michelle: I'm sorry.
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
Contributors:
Jon
jonbois@gmail.com
AIM: Boiskov
B
Destinys2ndKid@aol.com
AIM: Destinys2ndKid
Justin
all.star.me@gmail.com
AIM: Keasbey Mornings
Kyle
kdaly@virginia.edu
AIM: r a m b o l i
Bill
basherlemming@gmail.com
AIM: Basher Lemming
Special thanks to Fox, who have worked hard for years to make 24 the greatest show of all time.
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