Because 2400 Is Too Many
written by Jon, B, Kyle, Justin and Bill - January 16, 2026
NINA KILLS TERRORIST INFORMANT
WITH GIFT CARD
SEASON 2
This doesn't get higher on the list because Nina evidently used one of those lethal gift cards like the ones Best Buy hands out. Those things are completely ridiculous and a step away from just using rusty cutlasses as currency. Whenever I pay with one of those things I feel like I'm a mercenary-for-hire in some nightmarish dystopian future world.
It's cool, but whatever. I bet I could kill someone with one of those things. You know that Jack could have killed a guy with a Subway Sub Club card, though. As if Jack is even a member of the Sub Club. He probably infiltrated the Sub Club and found the mole who was getting away with sticking half a stamp on his card and using the other stamp on another card to count as a full stamp. He ended up bringing down the entire Sub Club operation. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm safe from terrorism. But that Sub Club was such a great value. And to be honest, that was the only club or organization membership I had going for me. Now whenever I step into a train car I have nobody to give a special handshake or subtle but knowing tip of my hat to. Damn it, Jack.
- Jon
JACK SAVES PALMER'S LIFE BY GETTING RID OF AN EXPLOSIVE DEVICE HE JUST HANDED TO HIM
SEASON 1
By now, 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.
Apparently, one upside to your wife dying is that you get a lot more cunning about that sort of thing.
- Jon
PAUL AND JACK'S AWKWARD RIDE
SEASON 4
So you're in a car with a guy who'd just gotten through testing out electrical conductivity on your body and is also banging your old broad, on the way to stop terrorists from launching a series of devestating attacks against a country whose treatment of you has been nothing short of deplorable. Talk about your veritable fountain of conversation. Instead of talking about sports or something, Paul announces his intentions of making sure Jack's ho aint her ho no mo' and Jack just sort of gives him some grizzled affirmation before staring out the window for about ten seconds before the commercial clock pops up.
- Justin
AARON PIERCE EXPLODES
FLAMETHROWER TERRORIST
SEASON 5
"Alright. This is where we will attack the motorcade. You will come in from the--oh shit, don't look, Steve's looking this way. Crap, he saw us."
"Hey guys! Whatcha doin'? *gasp* Planning an attack? Ooh, let me go, let me go!"
"No, Steve, this is a very important operation."
"But I can be such a help! Look, I've got this--"
"Yes, I know, the fucking flamethrower. You bring it out every time we want to do anything. I keep telling you, we don't need it."
"But you don't understand! It shoots fire!"
"Yeah, I figured that out. We're going to be launching rockets at this fucking limo, what would we need a flamethrower for?"
"It can, y'know.. melt.. stuff. Plus, plus! I've already thought up all sorts of cool things I can say when I get there! Like, I'd say "Hot enough for ya?" And then shoot fire at them! Isn't that awesome?"
"Look, Steve, I think it'd be better if you just stay here and clean out the fish tank. You know how upset the fish get--"
"But guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyyysssssssssss..."
"Fine, fine. Jesus. You can come. Just try not to screw anything up."
"Yaaaaay!"
[Later that day, during the motorcade attack]
"Woo hoo! Finally, my big chance! It's my time to shine! *ahem* Hey guys, hot enough forOHSHIT" *plink*
*SHHLLLLBOOOOOMM*
- Bill
HENDERSON SLICES AUDREY'S ARTERY
SEASON 5
Henderson was nothing more than the evil Jack Bauer, and that was awesome. Anything Henderson had done over the course of the season was something that Jack Bauer would also do to achieve his ends, except Henderson was evil and we hated him. It's like in WWE when Randy Orton or someone beats up Todd Grisham and JR sells it like he'd just punched Ghandi in the face, but when John Cena beats a heel manager in a match and then continues to assault him afterward, JR needs to change his pants from the gobs of semen he'd just let loose out of orgasmic delight. We accept Jack Bauer as being "good" and anything that defies him as evil. That's how the show works, and that's why I love it.
This scene is great because Henderson takes being a complete son of a bitch to a whole new level by making things personal. It isn't as if Jack Bauer were this noble white knight, incable of wrong-doing, either. If you wanted to rationalize it, Henderson could be justified in stabbing Audrey as retribution for when Jack Bauer had shot his wife right in the fucking leg just to prove a point! And from the five minutes of screen time she'd recieved, his wife was a much more sympathetic character than Audrey had ever been.
- Justin
TONY FINDS OUT MICHELLE IS DEAD
SEASON 5
The silliness of the army-crate-font “DECEASED” stamped across Michelle’s profile, followed by the series of pictures of her death that pop up on the screen without any user input—apparently it’s the CTU clinician’s screensaver—is immediately undercut by Tony’s reaction.
In season four, we get a glimpse of what Tony’s life is like without Michelle, and it’s pretty pathetic—or at least it fits the 24 criteria for pathetic: shitty apartment, beer drinking, hot but shrewish girlfriend (see Rick in season one). Michelle is Tony’s reason to live, and without her, he completely falls apart. That he’s literally too weak to stand when he finds out Michelle is dead isn’t some maudlin cliché, it’s a real moment. Tony’s heart breaks—and then it literally breaks a few episodes later lol!
- Kyle
SAUNDER IN
SEASON 3
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
CHLOE STUN-GUNS AN ASSHOLE
SEASON 5
What makes this scene is Chloe's sudden change of expression when she decides she's going to have to take this guy out.
Ancient Mayan calendars indicate that the the first moment "I know a way for you to get some free bandwidth" works as a pick-up line, the world will end.
- Bill
GEORGE MASON: AMERICAN COWARD
SEASON 2
George Mason's role in 24 was that of a sheisty authority figure whose main concern was looking out for #1. As an audience we were conditioned to hate him because whenever Jack Bauer would try and get results, George Mason would impede said results from being gotten by evoking a bunch of beuarucratic gibberish about there being procedures and protocol and all of that other political red tape those Washington fatcats throw up when they don't want honest Americans knowing the truth. Upon finding out about the threat of a nuclear detionation in Los Angeles, Mason does what any of us would do and considers that maybe HE SHOULD TRY AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE I MEAN IT IS A NUCLEAR BOMB PEOPLE COME ON! Tony sees through his cunning facade of "I just need to... go away from here for a while," and calls him out on being a quivering vagina. Mason gets caught in his own lie though, and ends up being sent to the radiation factory where he ends up working overtime on dying.
- Justin
JACK THREATENS TO DESTROY A PLANE
SEASON 5
A continuing problem for the 24 writers is finding new ways for Jack to threaten people's lives. He shot guilty people, then he threatened to kill the innocent children of guilty people, then he just started shooting innocent people. Where can he go from there? The natural choice is to find a plane full of innocent people and throw it to the ground. Next season: Stabbing babies with forks.
But just flying it into a mountain wouldn't be good enough. Any pussy can wiggle a stick. He's Jack Goddamned Bauer, and if Jack Goddamned Bauer is going to destroy your plane, he's going to do it with his bare Goddamned hands.
- Bill
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