Because 2400 Is Too Many
written by Jon, B, Kyle, Justin and Bill - January 16, 2026
JACK'S HUMANITY
SEASON 3
If you think back on all five full seasons, Jack hasn't had a lot of time to reflect at the end of each day. Season One, his wife died. Season Two, he was on a stretcher clinging to life. In Season Four he was preoccupied with the frightening notion of starting a new life, and in Season Five he was being dragged off to another, nightmarish new life. Season Three is the only one in which we get to observe a relatively healthy Jack digest what the day's been all about.
For whatever reason, the third season seems to get overlooked, but there was still an immense amount of experiences within a single day for Jack to deal with. He began to kick his heroin habit. His love interest, Claudia, died. He was forced to execute his boss. His daughter's life was once again in danger. He finally took revenge on his wife's killer. His friend resigned from the Presidency. And all this had to be queued up against the issues that wouldn't leave him - notably his wife's death and the idea that life has been insane since.
The most interesting part is his frustrated slam against the window. Maybe he was frustrated at one of those things in particular, or maybe he was just bewildered by life in general. A few years ago he was a family man in a high-stakes government job. It would have been nice for him to think that his life would settle down and he could become a normal person again, but it's clear to me that he realized that nothing would be easy any longer. He'd yet to face some of his darkest demons, and somehow he knew it.
- Jon
JACK AND THE LAMP CORD
SEASON 4
Paul's first mistake was gunning for Jack Bauer's woman.
Paul's second mistake was openly defying Jack Bauer's demands.
The dialogue in itself is great. Jack is fucking pissed at this guy on both a professional and personal level, and Paul passes it off as nothing more than the empty threat of a raving malcontent who'd just tied him down to a hotel chair.
Jack: CTU verified your signiture. Paul, you need to start talking to me now.
Paul: I've got nothing to say to you.
The look Jack gives him before walking over to the lamp is priceless. You can just tell how stoked he is about Paul giving him open card to get down to business. When he comes back to talk with Paul again, the only way for him to be even more patronizing would be to call him "sport" or something. Paul decides that Jack won't REALLY zap the shit out of his chest, so he calls him out. Jack just shoots him the most awesome "alright" expression before pressing some flesh.
In the end it turns out Paul was innocent and the whole thing was just one wacky misunderstanding! That's our Bauer!
- Justin
SONS OF LIBERTY
SEASON 1
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
JACK FAUX-ORDERS HIS MEN TO SHOOT
SYED ALI'S SON IN THE FACE
SEASON 2
During season two we were still feeling out Jack's character. We had some idea of what he was capable of, but we weren't yet sure of how far he'd go to get the answers he needed. Well, we got the answer we needed when he forced terrorist mastermind Syed Ali to watch his own son be shot in the face. It was the first time during the series' run where I actually caught myself yelling at the television in a state of complete awe and disbelief. In the end, the entire thing turned out to be a hoax. But there was no doubt in my mind that if need be, Jack wouldn't have had a problem with capping a child for the good of the country.
- Justin
SAM-WISE SHARES THE LOAD,
DIES OF NERVE GAS INHALATION
SEASON 5
Poor Lynn. First we were made to hate him as an interloper in CTU with a by-the-book bug up his ass, then we came to like him when he saved Jack by being the only person not hit in the head with a brick so he could notice that Jack's repeated reminder that he was in an OMECAY AVESAY YMAY ASSAY position was.. some kind of code. But then he had to go and get involved in drama with his druggy sister, get beaten up by a common street thug, not tell anyone his keycard was stolen, and act like an ass to everyone because of it all. By the time everyone was holed up in sealed rooms surrounded by nerve gas and it became known that someone would have to go out in it to turn on the fans, it wasn't too tough to decide who should go. But he did well, gave us all some nice Rudy flashbacks, and redeemed himself in the eyes of all before collapsing into a drooling heap.
I question how often CTU actually uses that security camera they have placed in a corner of the room and pointed straight down to the floor.
- Bill
MARTHA BITCH-SLAPS LOGAN
SEASON 5
Charles Logan is my favorite 24 president.
I get a lot of crap about it, but it's true. David Palmer was a great presence on the show, and it's still tough for me to grasp that 24 is the same show without him in it. But Logan is the greatest example of shady cowardice I've ever seen. Even though he ends up betraying his nation and is prepared to indirectly kill huge numbers of American citizens to do it, he is still ultimately a human being who needs love. He's a weak, small man who you can tell wishes at times he could just retire to somewhere quiet and spend the rest of his life with Martha. Despite her own flaws, he loves her more than anyone or anything else in the world.
Martha knows this, and it gives her the leverage she needs to really let him have it when he screws up. The looks on his face as he's being slapped and after he's being slapped are absolutely priceless. Part of it, to be sure, is due to the fact that he probably never has to feel that much physical pain. He talks and acts as though a breeze would tip him over, and he felt this slap all the way down to his feet. Most of it, though, is emotional shock. Logan feels vulnerable and shameful about trying to ship his wife to a mental hospital, and is good and ripe for the slapping, but it still hits his pathetic and stupid self as a shock.
Gregory Itzin, who plays Charles Logan, revealed that he established for him a sort of private backstory that included being abused as a child. This, I think, adds a lot more significance to the scene and explains why the most powerful man in the world could be destroyed by a smack in the face from someone he loves. Even at the end of the season, when he's drowning in his own conspiracy and assaulting his wife, he doesn't really hate her. She's just the other half of him, the holder of the positive qualities he's sorely missing, and if he can't hurt himself, he hurts whoever's in closest emotional reach out of self-loathing.
- Jon
MIGUEL AND THE SUPER SPIN KICK OF DOOM
SEASON 2
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
- fell in love with the cute boy who kidnaps her
- was arrested on suspicion of drug-dealing
- dropped out of high school
- kidnapped a child from an abusive household, resulting in the death of the child's mother
- made the child stand behind a stack of boxes in an alleyway so she'd be "safe"
- lost said child
- was arrested on suspicion of murder
- escaped police custody by setting a cop on fire
- ran off into the woods, leaving wounded policeman and her wounded boyfriend in a crashed car
- got caught in a bear trap
- was threatened by a cougar
- went into the home of a crazy guy who lives in woods to shower/wore his oddly-available woman-sized tanktop
- pulled a gun on crazy guy who lives in woods
- got caught in a convenience store robbery, resulting in the death of the guy in the convenience store
- snuck back into the house of the people who had been chasing her all day; committed murder
- got a high-paying, top-secret government job despite dropping out of high school and lectured her father, the guy who used to run the place she works and has saved all of their asses numerous times, about how she got the job on her own and it had nothing to do with him
- put on a wig to impersonate another man's daughter
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
JACK THREATENS TO CUT WALT CUMMINGS' EYE OUT
SEASON 5
The reason I love Walt Cummings' eye so much is that not only is that a wicked awesome way to threaten someone, but Cummings KNEW that Jack Bauer wasn't fucking around and he'd get down to business if the need be. It also endorses the notion that each season, the writers have to exploit another more vulnerable body part for Jack Bauer to maim, gore or pulp in the name of justice. And even though we all watch at home going "NONONONONODONTDOITDONTDOITDONTDOITFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK," deep down we're all waiting for that moment of release when we can yell "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! HE JUST STABBED THAT MOTHERFUCKER IN THE EYE!!!!!"
- Justin
JACK FLIRTS WITH TERI
SEASON 1
In the years since season one, Jack has gone from family man trying to make his marriage work and keep an eye on his kid to biggest hardass in the world who will thwart you where you stand and break your sternum in the process. But that initial coloration of Jack Bauer, the troubled family man, informs the character to this day, and to really understand the character is to understand where he comes from.
In this scene from the very first episode, Jack’s biggest concern is that his teenage daughter has been acting distant towards her mother. We go into the show knowing he’s some sort of government agent, but it’s obvious that he’s working on keeping that aspect of his life separate from his personal life and that he’s basically a happy person. The ensuing events of season one inextricably entangle his business and personal life, and it only gets worse, until Jack’s only identity is Jack Bauer, CTU Agent/Bad Motherfucker. But this fleeting glimpse into his personal life before it went to shit does something interesting: rather than setting the tone of the character, it sets a tone that the show from then on plays against, turning 24 into the tragedy of Jack Bauer. The domesticity shown in this scene is the ideal to which Jack aspires in his life—think his attempted return to a family life as “Frank Flynn”—but it’s one he becomes more aware each season that he can never return to.
Yet this inability to return to an ideal life is exactly what makes Jack Bauer so compelling: he wouldn’t be able to do the things he does if he weren’t a hardened shell of a man, but he wouldn’t be interesting to watch if he didn’t retain some aspect of his humanity. This brief moment exemplifies that humanity and sets up exactly what it is that makes his character so tragic.
- Kyle
CHLOE CAPPIN THEY AZZ
SEASON 4
Chloe O'Brien, quick to point out that she is not a field agent, is sent to the home of a woman who has possible evidence on her computer. Naturally, this means someone is about to effortlessly kill the other, nameless agents sent to protect them and leave Chloe to fend for herself. Trapped in a car with the killer bearing down on them, she is forced to open fire and create that holiest of television scenarios, Nerds With Assault Weapons. Or even better, That Chick Who Used To Introduce Mr. Show With An Assault Weapon.
This event also leads to one of the few moments where I specifically remember a show for its dialog.
Edgar: Is there anything I can do?
Chloe: I said I’m fine. I’m trying not to think about what happened. I’m gonna process it later, OK?
Edgar: Sure, fine.
Chloe: Edgar. I appreciate your concern. I really do. It’s just that when I shot that guy, I thought I’d go all fetal position, but the truth is I didn’t feel anything. At all. I hope I’m not some kind of a psychopath.
Edgar: Well, he was trying to kill you.
Chloe: Yeah, but still…
Edgar: Maybe it’s a delayed reaction kind of thing. Maybe you’ll freak out about it in a few days.
Chloe: I hope so.
Although her social ineptitude is sometimes used as a gimmick to squeeze in previous episode exposition for those catching up ("Hey Jack you let Paul die to save a suspect and Paul was Audrey's husband even though they're seperated and she was with you but now she's mad that's pretty rough huh?"), I do think Chloe is one of the better portrayals of a computer nerd on television. Many left-brained tech types like to think of themselves as computers simply because it's more logical and easier for them to understand. Chloe taking an emotional experience and queueing it for processing (while casually pondering if her mental machine is somehow not operating correctly) is exactly the way a nerd of her sort would think.
- Bill
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