Goodbye Jack

At last it's official. Jack Bauer will no longer have the worst days of his life and no longer will we, the loyal '24' audience be able to watch and enjoy the often adventurous and twisted plots that exemplified life for the characters on '24'. After last season, which took place in Washington, DC, I had somewhat higher hopes for this season seeing as how it was supposed to be set in New York City. I mean after all, New York, the City that Never Sleeps, why would it be boring? But somehow the show managed to find a means of becoming so and now, as ratings continued to decline, the powers that be at Fox decided it was time to pull the plug on the loud ticking clock.

I started catching up on '24' a couple of seasons after it had already been on the air. I used to have marathon weekends where I would not have class or any work and I would watch back to back to back episodes and I managed to get caught up in no time. Since then I have been watching on television alongside the regular audience but I can tell you, I have noticed a few things in all that viewing that led me to believe that such a show couldn't sustain itself perpetually and I'll attempt to explain why. Firstly, while the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) where Jack and his co-horts work is supposed to be a relatively secret organization that operates within the United States, a lot of people know about it. It's location is fairly well known and terrorists often staged strikes against their headquarters. I can't think of a season where CTU wasn't attacked in some scheme to knock it out of commission.

And that's not the only rotating plot point that the show seemed to latch onto. There were many plot and sub-plot points that seemed to carry on from one season to the next. While I'm sure it was based on some survey of what plot elements random audience members enjoyed, it wasn't the best thing to repeat season in and season out. What am I talking about? Well again, you'd assume that since CTU is an elite security apparatus within the United States, the security requirements to get a job there and to gain access to classified material would be difficult. Yet almost every season, the agency has been penetrated by rogue agents or spies from other countries or terrorist groups.

Okay I grant you the first time, it could happen. But after that, don't you think the security procedures and screening would increase to the point that getting a job there would be harder than doing linear algebra without a calculator? I would like to think so but that's not the case. Terrorists continue to infiltrate CTU with reckless abandon and the leaders there seem powerless to do anything. Suddenly don't you think the audience would begin to view CTU as a relatively powerless (and therefore meaningless) organization? I think even the other agencies in the show seem to think that. Like when CTU was hit with an electro-magnetic pulse device recently this season, when Jack Bauer contacted the NSA to request their help, it seemed as if they were completely unaware that an attack had occurred on US soil.

Now perhaps for the sake of cinematic (or television-atic) liberties some elements like these are left in but then you have to wonder, do people really think that it's plausible anymore? After all, the Bush Administration left our country with a legacy of interdependent agencies that are supposed to know what each and every other agency is supposed to be working on in the interest of promoting greater security, so then are we really supposed to believe that Jack Bauer is the only real person on the case (even when he's tried to retire multiple times in the past)? I mean seeing as how CTU is hiring people like Freddie Prinze Jr (who really needs to learn to stop breathing through his mouth all the time) to serve as replacement Jack Bauers? Perhaps it is definitely time to retire the series while it has a shred of believability and integrity left.