Before the series finale of “24” began, Kiefer Sutherland (a.k.a Jack Bauer) appeared on the Fox network and thanked the show’s audience for their support of the long-running program. After eight seasons (eight days in the show’s life), “24” was cancelled earlier this year, although the show will likely be made into a movie. However, after so many great seasons and an emotionally satisfying conclusion, it should be the audience thanking both Kiefer Sutherland and his alter ego.

As the series finale began, the president of the United States, Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), was preparing to have a historic peace agreement signed. However, the idealistic Taylor had been forced to make numerous ethical compromises in order to get the agreement signed and then discovers that Russia’s leader had planned the assassination of a Middle Eastern leader who was set to sign the agreement. Even knowing that, Taylor continued to obsessively pursue the treaty, which would likely become a major part of her presidential legacy.

Her Shakespearean fall continued throughout and in one unbelievably good finale scene, she even threatened to brutally attack another country if the leader of that nation (the widow of that country’s president, who had been killed only hours before) revealed the truth about Russia’s involvement in the assassination. This was a shocking turn of events as this once hopeful president suddenly made horrific decisions in order to achieve “peace.”

Taylor’s fall from idealism was only one part of the jam-packed finale. As Taylor was fighting for her treaty, Jack Bauer was seeking vengeance against those who had killed Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), a former work associate and love interest of his who was assassinated. In the meantime, disgraced former president Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) was trying to find redemption in the public eye by helping President Taylor get her important peace treaty signed. Throughout the last few episodes, Logan has been pushing President Taylor to make grievous errors in her pursuit of the agreement.

The finale was full of great twists and turns. From seeing how far President Taylor was willing to go in pursuit of the agreement to seeing how close Bauer came to causing a war because of his need for vengeance, this show continued to excite and surprise the audience even in its closing hours.

Some criticism, including on this blog, has been leveled against the show’s writers for pushing Jack Bauer into extremely dark territory and surprising the audience by Bauer’s lust for vengeance. I can appreciate those criticisms and I can understand that on numerous occasions Bauer has crossed ethical lines. However, Bauer has been an extremely flawed character for a long time and he has been willing to do things that are immoral and wrong. In the end, and as is noted in the finale, he will have to eventually face the consequences of what he has done and even though we, the audience, can support his mission of saving millions of lives, we should also be able to understand that Bauer is not a perfect human being. He is a hero, but he has also done cruel things.     

The first hour-plus of  the finale focused on the action and the excitement that the show did so well.  However, in the end, it was not the action or the excitement that closed things out. Instead the focus was on politics and relationships. President Taylor, who was eventually able to manage the cover-up that she supported, was forced to decide what the “peace” agreement was worth to her. Her choice  may have been presented in a clichéd way, but it was a strong way to end her character’s arc.

Additionally, the best part was in the closing sequence between Jack Bauer and Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn  Rajskub), one of Bauer’s former CTU colleagues. Throughout the past few seasons, O’Brian and Bauer have been worthy allies working against terrorist threats and fighting against people who wish to do this country harm. Instead of an action-packed few final moments, the show decided to focus on this strong relationship and show what they meant to each other. The final few lines of dialogue avoided blatant sentimentality to simply show these characters saying goodbye.

As these characters were saying their respective goodbyes and acknowledging their longtime support for one another, the audience was saying goodbye to them and this fantastic show…until it moves to the big screen.

Through all the years, the sheer genius of 24 lay in the fact that viewers returned show after show, even though they already knew its outcome.  No matter what the odds, no matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how evil the enemy, Jack Bauer was going to find a way to survive. 

What is it about this character that so captivated the American public?  It was not Jack Bauer himself but the ideals he represented.

Jack was good, and there is still something embedded deep within the American spirit that makes us long to see this good triumph over evil.  Regardless of the political correctness of the program in recent years, and regardless of the bastardizing of those who strive for truth, justice and morality in popular culture, there are still Americans out there of all political stripes that understand that in this world there is good and evil.  Every human being is nuanced, and man’s imperfection is endemic, but we still intuitively know that there are real heroes, protectors, patriots.

Jack was one of these people.  He stood up for the defenseless.  He sacrificed his entire being.  He defied authority when he knew it in his heart to be unjust.  He willed himself to live when others would have simply curled up and died.

Jack is that underdog that this country loves and has always loved.  He is Rocky, Rudy and Reagan rolled into one.  He is that soldier bloodied on the battlefield who with every ounce of strength continues to fight.  He is that fireman who rushes into the burning building.

The cynical or realist part in me knows that these statements may be romantic and naive, and I grant that some readers will take these views to be not only these things but in addition to them simplistic and immature.

But my emotions tell me that there are certain transcendental values in this world that go well beyond human conception.  There is most certainly good and evil, there is most certainly righteous and wicked, there is most certainly just and unjust.  Jack Bauer was a transcendent character because regardless of one’s politics, all knew that he was good.  Moreover, in a world which seems to clamor to the crude, the depraved and the diabolical, naturally his character was not only refreshing to us, but also evoked our empathy because we identified within him what in our hearts, in our minds, and in our souls is the ideal that we strive for, that of the virtuous.

And so when he lived on at the end of the last episode, in the same predicament he found himself in so many times before, it was representative of the fact that the good and the virtuous in our country and in this world will always triumph over the evil, but that it is hard fought, it is perilous, it is volatile, it is tenuous and it tests men’s souls.  Sometimes good triumphs inexplicably, and sometimes for decades or even centuries good is overpowered by evil, but in the end even the smallest bright spots of good can, must and do shine through the darkness.

Jack Bauer was a character that for an hour on so many Monday nights not only diverted us, but allowed us vicariously to shine through the darkness.  Jack Bauer was America qua America, and for that America loved Jack Bauer.  If the good in America is to last for generations, it is going to require many of us to take up his mantle.

Who are you and what have you done with Jack Bauer? That’s what I wanted to scream at the pod person who starred on “24” last Monday. When the conservative creators of the show left and liberals took over, I was apprehensive. But by and large, the quality of the program kept up. I snorted, of course, when a bad character was threatened with torture by other bad guys. She was hauled into a medieval chamber filled with pincers, hot pokers and iron maidens. Then she was strapped down, a washcloth was draped over her mouth… and she was water boarded. Oy. Then, a week ago, Jack murdered her in cold blood, not to get information… she’d already been terrified into offering up the info… but just because he felt like it.

What?! 

But this week the writers went too far. Bauer tortures a bad guy horribly… and enjoys it. In the next room a woman can be heard screaming, “No. No. He’s a human being!” Bauer uses pliers and a blow torch. The guy screams horribly but refuses to give up. Bauer steps aside and mutters to himself, “This isn’t working.” Then, realizing that the terrorist (my word, not theirs) has probably swallowed what Bauer needs, he guts him like a fish, plunges his hand into the dying  man’s stomach and retrieves the cell phone pad or whatever the hell it was. 

This season’s writers are dramatizing what they’ve always believed: that what Bauer has been doing for eight seasons was always wrong, and that his behavior this year is the inevitable outcome, that he has, like America under Bush, become completely de-humanized. I’ve watched every episode of “24” ever aired and then bought the season DVDs. I won’t watch the remaining three.

Jack is dead. The show is over. I can forgive the pseudo-intellectual left a lot, but not this. Dicking with the only primetime show I ever watched all the way through! Why not put their own dumb stuff on. But no, they had to ruin mine.

After becoming invested in the very likeable Hassan character over the course of the season, the viewer saw him meet his bloody, horrific demise.  As emotionally exhausting as that was for the viewers, that is one of the things that has kept them watching and what makes 24 so different.  From season one, which ended with Jack’s wife being killed, 24 broke the rules of television drama.  On television series the good guys don’t die.  They are rescued in the nick of time.  But on 24 no one, except Jack Bauer, is safe.  24 has kept viewers on the edge of their seats because they really didn’t know what would happen next.  On 24 anything can happen.  Well, anything except the death of Jack Bauer.

Fox’s 24 series began in 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks.  In fact, the premier episode was delayed because of the attacks .  24 is different from the norm — at times being politically incorrect.  On 24 we saw Middle Eastern, Muslim terrorists, not just the white supremacists so many of the movies following 9/11 preferred to depict.  The heroes in the show, particularly Bauer, were even depicted engaging in “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Sometimes the only way for Jack Bauer to save the day was through his ability to extract information using some form of torture.

Fox recently announced that this season will be the final one for the series.  I have loved 24 from the start.  I watched every episode of every season in real time, only recently watching delayed an hour on DVR (and then just so I could fast forward through the commercials).   As much as I will miss Jack and Chloe and the 24 series, it probably is time that it comes to an end.  I mean how many moles can infiltrate CTU before they figure out they need to tighten their screening process?  And how many White House staffers can betray the President before it gets to be cliché?   How long can Jack cheat death?  I don’t know, but there surely must be a limit to how many times you can be presumed dead before you actually get that way.  Last season Jack Bauer cheated certain death from exposure to a deadly pathogen, only surviving with an experimental treatment involving his daughter.  Stuff like that has to take a toll.  He is human after all. Okay, superhuman, but still, even a superhuman can only take so much.

I will miss Jack Bauer. I really hope he survives the final season and the door is left open for a 24 movie or two.  Jack Bauer is just too good a character to say goodbye to forever.  And there is a great need for characters like Jack Bauer  – characters that are not perfect, but have the perfect kind of honor and devotion to country that leads them to risk all to keep their fellow Americans safe and free.  Heroes like Jack Bauer really do exist.  Not the superhuman character that is invincible and can single handedly take out dozens of  armed, trained killers and survive deadly nerve agents, but the kind of character that battles evil forces in this world and puts a greater cause ahead of their own personal well being.

Even with the outrageous plotlines and superhuman qualities of Jack Bauer, 24 has at times been able to present some real life scenarios sparking thought and debate.  (There was even a black President in the world of 24 back when Barack Obama was still organizing his community.)   For the issues the series has tackled, as well as for the pure, unadulterated entertainment value, 24 will be missed.

This latter characteristic is a key element of the show’s success. Like real human beings, the characters in 24 are motivated largely by present concerns while filtering them through their individual experiences and personalities. In conventional suspense literature and filmed dramas of our time, the central characters typically are given some traumatic events in the recent or distant past which they are trying to work through and over which they agonize as the present narrative events remind them of it.

Of course such things do happen in real life, and they are present in 24, but the use of it as a convention becomes more than a little ridiculous in today’s dramas as nearly all crime and suspense writers employ it, making it appear that no one but disturbed individuals gets involved in the good work of preventing violence toward innocents. That’s clearly not the message the creators of these narratives intend to send, and it conflicts with their desire to create plausible central characters.

This convention is now an obviously artificial attempt to attribute people’s choices to their psychological condition—and thus constitutes at least some acceptance of philosophical determinism. That undermines drama by reducing the characters’ freedom of choice; as Aristotle noted, drama is the result of choices characters are forced to make.

In 24, by contrast, although nearly all of the central characters have endured traumatic experiences, their choices are clearly their own, and the writers and performers make this quite clear. Jack, for example, is often torn between his desire to get the job done and his conscience regarding the things he must do to achieve it. This has been a more prominent aspect of the show in recent years but was always a concern from the beginning, as Jack’s intense sorrow and feeling of responsibility for the death of his wife in season 1 made quite clear.

Such character arcs make sense in 24 because they flow from the narrative itself: Jack and the others are presented as having the jobs they have because they simply want to do good, not because they’re working out some psychological trauma from childhood. That makes all the difference in our evaluation of their choices, as they are based primarily on reasoning and not emotion and thus are open to analysis and criticism.

It’s a significantly braver approach than the now-conventional one that depicts the hero or heroine as forced into the confrontation with evil. Jack chooses freely, and we can respect him for that without being forced to endorse his actions as being dictated by circumstances and his psychological condition.

This year’s two-day, four-hour premiere event has the series off to its best start in several years. Former U.S. Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU) agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is now a grandfather and just wants to leave New York City for a peaceful life in Los Angeles, where he can visit regularly with his daughter, Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), and her young daughter. Longtime CTU colleague Chloe O’Brien (Mary Lynn Rajskub), however, gets Jack back in the game to help her prevent an assassination attempt, the investigation of which her painfully obtuse and rash boss is bungling horribly.

The plot begins with the attempt by an apparently unofficial Russian paramilitary group to stop President Allison Taylor’s (Cherry Jones) pending agreement with a Middle East nation under which the latter will give up its nuclear weapons program. Their motives for wanting to spike the agreement remain murky throughout the first four hours of the narrative, but the group’s nefarious nature and ruthlessness are quite clear, and that’s enough to force the initially reluctant Jack back into action.

Also returning to action is former FBI agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching). She’s now unemployed after having gone seriously rogue after the hard lessons she learned from Jack Bauer during last season’s narrative. Now, having persuaded Renee that “extraordinary measures” are sometimes necessary in order to prevent evil, Jack finds himself trying to reign in the monster he created, as Renee pursues with bizarre ruthlessness her undercover work in penetrating the Russian gang to find out what they’re up to.

As in previous seasons, the villains feel no compunction whatsoever in killing people, taking hostages, and committing a diversity of explosive mayhem in pursuit of their goals. The forces of good and order, by contrast, are constrained by their adherence to certain moral standards, although the protection of innocents justifies the performance of otherwise prohibited actions, and Jack’s actions and conversations about his choices (and Renee’s) typically reflect this tension.

Just when the danger to innocents is sufficient to override these ethical concerns without becoming an “end justifies the means” excuse is an eternal moral question, and it’s what has always been at the center of 24. It’s what makes the show serious and important while adding to its entertainment value.

The new episodes employ the same narrative gimmicks as in previous seasons, and they still work well, as they have done for decades in the cinema and melodramatic literature: races against time, hairsbreadth escapes, personal crises, hidden agendas, secret identities and impostures, betrayals, historically momentous political stakes, great dangers to the civilian population, unexpected role reversals, spectacular physical triumphs by the hero, and the like.

All of that makes 24 highly entertaining, but what makes it really click with viewers is the show’s serious moral and philosophical core. It’s melodrama, all right, but of the highest order.

As with many seasons before, Bauer’s day began with him trying to stay as far away from anti-terrorism work as possible. This season, he started his television day (each season captures a different day in the life of Bauer) as a family man before inevitably being called back by an informer with inside information about a terrorist plot. It took a lot of convincing for Bauer to leave his family life. Both his daughter Kim and his former coworker Chloe had to convince him to return to the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) to assist in taking on a terrorist plot.

Chloe O’Brian, one of the best characters on the show,  had only recently returned to CTU and she’s there when Bauer arrives. She’s the acerbic computer expert who was previously quite confident about her own technological expertise. This year, though, she lacks that confidence as the computer systems at the new CTU are more advanced than what she was used to before she left the old CTU. As usual, though, she  has been quick to pick up on clues that could lead to real terrorist threats, rather than decoys, which is why she enlists Bauer to help her.

Additionally, Renee Walker is back on the show. Last year Walker was a professional agent who matched wits with Bauer. This year, after an offscreen suicide attempt, Walker seems to be on the edge and off-balance. At the end of episode five, Walker begged a violent criminal to shoot her, and Jack and many in the audience likely believed she really was willing to accept her own demise.

Lastly, President Allison Taylor is back, this time negotiating a major peace agreement with a foreign leader. Even in the first few hours of the new season, we have seen changes in President Taylor. Last year, she was often a woman trying to protect her husband and her politically-driven daughter. Because of the choices she made at the end of last season (she refused to cover up for a crime her daughter committed), she has started this season as a loner. Her daughter is gone and her husband has left. Like Bauer, who lost his wife in the first season’s finale, Taylor is still dealing with the aftermath of that.

Many have criticized “24” for silly and distracting subplots and like past seasons, this season has those too. For instance, viewers likely don’t care about the private life of one of the CTU agents with a “secret” past she’s trying to keep away from her professional career.

However, “24” is still an entertaining show often full of surprises. With its strong cast of characters in unknown personal territory and solid new additions like Freddie Prinze Jr. and Anil Kapoor (the game show host from “Slumdog Millionaire”), “24” is still worth watching and worth getting excited over as minute upon minute unfold on the show … in real time.

If nothing else, Polanski’s timing couldn’t be better. If you’re a Hollywoodist — even a remorseless child-raping Hollywoodist —  looking for a boost from your fellow Hollywoodists, what better way to hold on to your Frat House bona fides than to direct a film like this? [emphasis mine]:

[A]s a filmmaker, Roman Polanski is back in a big, big way with THE GHOST WRITER. Adapted by Robert Harris (author of the excellent FATHERLAND and ENIGMA) from his own novel, the film is about a mildly successful non-fiction hack (Ewan McGregor) who lands the plum gig of shaping the memoirs of a recently ousted British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) - who bears a none-too-subtle resemblance to Tony Blair. The opportunity is there for the taking because the PM’s former ghost writer washed up dead on a beach somewhere close to Martha’s Vineyard. The only downside to the assignment is the PM’s potentially unlawful participation in secretly shipping British citizens/suspected terrorists off to Guantanamo Bay for the ol’ Jack Bauer treatment.

Here are a couple descriptions of the novel upon which the film is based:

Bookmark Magazine: From there, it quickly gains momentum, merging a shrewd indictment of the war in Iraq with a literate, page-turning thriller. Harris, who was once a friend of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, offers a withering, barely disguised attack on Blair’s policies and his collusion with the United States in the Middle East.

Publishers Weekly: The stakes rise when Lang [the PM] is accused of war crimes for authorizing the abduction of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, who then ended up in the CIA’s merciless hands.

Sounds as though Ghost Writer is the perfect storm of everything so laughably and maddeningly depraved about the left-wing film industry today. It takes the wrong side in a righteous war — a war we’re presently fighting, by the way — and its creator is a fugitive whose anal rape of a thirteen year-old girl (he drugged) hasn’t dented his celebrity in the least. No shortage of “stars” lining up to work with him!

A new low from those who make the movies? Pish-posh, it’s still morning.

NOTE: This post is in clear violation of the rule that only allows water carrying left-wing film writers to speculate about upcoming films they haven’t seen.

UPDATE: Awesomeness in the comments — “Would you rather be a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, or a young girl in Roman Polanski’s hot tub?”

Tonight’s drinking game: Jack Head Twitches!

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