Farewell To Jack Bauer and 24 Series TV Show

I am an ardent follower of the action adventure “24” and Monday was the last time that we will see the intrepid action hero, Jack Bauer. One of the reasons I like the show was how it handled a crisis – it did so like how people with common sense would… not the nonsense we have seen in real life, which involve debating ad nauseum about the efficacy of torture, etc.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="331" caption="Jack Bauer"][/caption]

photo credit: John Griffiths

Jack Bauer got the job done because the writers recognized that we are living a pretty nasty world and the “gasbagging” availeth nothing.  Keifer Sutherland, who resurrected his career with the Jack Bauer character, played him perfectly… not smug like that “shaken and not stirred” English guy, but reluctant and conflicted. I supposed this is how someone who is asked to do our “wet work.” would be like; not callous and nonchalant about taking lives, even when some of those bad guys deserved no second thoughts concerning their wicked demise.

The only problem I had with 24 is the constant problem of someone always breaching CTU; if that was the case in our intelligence, we would be in serious trouble. I know this breaching of CTU provided the writers the latitude to flush out the story lines and had them run directly with or parallel to that of the main characters. I also hated how characters were killed off so quickly when they seemed to get popular… depriving those of us who had fell in love with them.

But this aspect to of the show mirrored reality… where death is quick and comes out of no where in the spy business. The depiction of the interaction between Bauer and his daughter was spot on because this was a parent who was always gone and due to the nature of his job was hard for him in his line of work to show tenderness to a child or even a wife.

The many conflicts these men and women in intelligence must go through were represented by 24 too: be it conflicts in common sense or adhering to rules made by suits who have never been out in the field; or betting on theories than the practical aspects of the job, which showed empirical results; and the stumbling block of politics, which seemed to be a hindrance to protecting lives.

In the end, the show succeeded for eight years because it mirrored the times we are living in… we secretly wished that there was a Jack Bauer out there that would do what many of us could not stomach. The only real life examples we probably have… whose agents are like Jack Bauer are part of the Israeli intelligence units: Shin Bet for internal security and the Mossad for external security.