How to communicate like Jack Bauer.
May 5, 2014 9:19 AM   Subscribe

 
he seems intense. is this a new show?
posted by philip-random at 9:23 AM on May 5, 2014


HE SEEMS INTENSE!!! IS THIS A NEW SHOW?!!??!
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:33 AM on May 5, 2014 [38 favorites]


TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!!

(I have not watched the trailers for the new season, but I assume there is a bomb.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:34 AM on May 5, 2014 [4 favorites]


Although 24, in its day (no pun intended), was groundbreaking, occasionally in unexpected ways--how many Americans warmed to the idea of an African-American president after seeing 24's President David Palmer?--I gave up on it after season 4? 5? The OTT-ness of having to find an even more urgent, cataclysmic, world-shattering event got boring, and the unpleasant aspects of the show--how many Americans warmed to the idea of torture as an effective means of intelligence-gathering after seeing 24's Jack Bauer work his magic?--got even less palatable.

This weekend, I was trapped into seeing the teaser for tonight's season premiere about 30 or 40 times while enjoying an Xfinity On Demand™ Cosmos-athon at a friend's house. At least Chloe's in it, who was always my favorite character. She was the most like a federal gov't employee of anyone on that show.
posted by the sobsister at 9:35 AM on May 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


My God, it's my Parenting style... repeated nicely, then Nicely... then..... TIME OUT....NOW!
posted by MikeWarot at 9:39 AM on May 5, 2014 [8 favorites]


Mirrors the story of Pontypool in some interesting ways.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:45 AM on May 5, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ripley: Is there any word about my daughter?
Burke: Uh... I really think we should worry about the hearing now, because we don't have a lot of time, okay? I read your deposition, and it's great. If you just stick to that, I think we'll be fine. The thing to remember is there're going to be a lot of heavyweights in there. You've got the feds, Interstellar Commerce Commission, colonial administration, insurance company guys, and —
Ripley: Do you have any news about my daughter?
posted by stebulus at 9:50 AM on May 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


THERE'S NO TIME!!

Sweet Jesus, I loved this show -- quit about a season or two before it ended (the first time) but would pick up with this new edition in an instant. Plan to, actually.

I remember studying for college finals and plying myself with 24 episodes -- okay, go two more hours and then you can watch another one. And then after the test I'd binge on like half a season at once. Good times.

And sure, Jack's methods had... ethical implications. I mean, so do James Bond's. You could wring your hands about it or you could watch some great TV.
posted by eugenen at 9:53 AM on May 5, 2014


At my office, to "Jack Bauer" someone is to hang up the interoffice phone line without some sort of parting words, like "thanks" or "bye". You're encouraged to call them back with "Don't you Jack Bauer me, you're not that busy!"
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:56 AM on May 5, 2014 [19 favorites]


What I'd like to know more about is the Jack Bauer years between then and now. Where did he go? What did he do? I imagine him escaping to some deserted beach, every day lying by the ocean, trying to clear his head of his dreams of humanity's fetid scum. In the show I want to see, the cold open starts with Jack rising, walking to the beach, applying lots of sunblock, then dropping to the sand under his umbrella. Then, for the next hour, Jack lies in the sand while the waves crash on the beach until the credits roll.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:58 AM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


Jack Bauer is a professional and very efficient! He is so professional and efficient that he doesn't even waste time and energy on separating breathing and speaking like regular people! It makes him sound breathless but that's just a sign of how incredibly efficient he is.

Also, I love the show and my wife has frantic happiness attacks every time the teasers play on TV.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:09 AM on May 5, 2014


Wait, Stephen Fry is playing "Prime Minister Alistair Davies?" I very much hope he turns out to be the Soviet sleeper agent behind it all.
posted by Iridic at 10:12 AM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


After being up for 24 hrs straight, I thought the perfect ending of the first season would've just been him dead asleep. Unless they did that in a subsequent season which I missed.

And did they ever address how each episode would end in a tense cliffhanger, so after a while you'd think the characters would dread whenever the top of the hour was approaching?
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:29 AM on May 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


how many Americans warmed to the idea of an African-American president after seeing 24's President David Palmer?

Well, however many did after all the other fictional precedents, Fox News and its audience certainly have not exactly warmed to the actual one.

how many Americans warmed to the idea of torture as an effective means of intelligence-gathering after seeing 24's Jack Bauer work his magic?

Entirely too many, from the civilian audience to military one:
U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California {in November of 2006} to meet with the creative team behind “24.” Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. {...} Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.” {...}

Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”
When the real-world intelligence report on "enhanced interrogation" still has not been released, despite a judge's order, senate committee vote, and, just last week, the petition of retired military figures, releasing another 24 just seems like bad timing.

And sure, Jack's methods had... ethical implications. I mean, so do James Bond's.

I'm trying to recall a scene from the Bond books in which he tortures someone during interrogation. If anything, Bond is typically the one on the receiving end. Say what you will about the ethical implications of being "licensed to kill", but if Ian Fleming had any message about torture, it was that it was the method of villains.

It doesn't sound as though Jack Bauer has really learned that.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:31 AM on May 5, 2014 [8 favorites]


The Timothy Dalton era James Bond films were horrible in so many ways, but the one that stood out for me was that it was treading down this ugly path that 24 calls its own. Well, shared with Homeland I guess.

Otherwise Bond is not a fair analog on the topic of the nonsensical term "ethical torture".
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:39 AM on May 5, 2014


You have no idea how many times I prayed one of the kidnappers would finally off his daughter so we'd never have to see her kidnapped again.
posted by dobbs at 10:41 AM on May 5, 2014


I will try adopting this style with Mrs. etherist. She used to love 24.

I will report back if this experiment goes well.
posted by etherist at 10:42 AM on May 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


They almost showed a case where torture didn't work, but it just turned out that Jack wasn't trying hard enough. Apparently getting tortured himself for over a year and a half had turned him soft.
posted by ckape at 10:45 AM on May 5, 2014


I'm excited for this show. If you guiltily like 24 too, you might also like Sleeper Cell's first season, a six episode short. It's significantly more subtle than 24 and stars my TV boyfriend Michael Ealy.

What I'd like to know more about is the Jack Bauer years between then and now. Where did he go? What did he do?

I like to think Jack's spent the past few years riding the white horse, holed up in some grimy hut in Burma working his way through a box of needles. He's trying to blot out the pain of having tortured so many people. Also the memory of Kim, who reverted back to being a dumb valley girl. When last seen she was in her forth bomb shelter, with yet another guy who convinced her a nuclear bomb went off and the two of them need to breed to repopulate the world.
posted by Nelson at 10:47 AM on May 5, 2014


I've never seen the show, partly because the clips strike me as so repulsive. I mean, even if you like the testosterone-overload self-righteous fury-violence thing, it seems so formulaic, so manipulative, so clumsy and obvious. It's sort of funny: it's all dressed up in those macho clothes but its really all about giving you feelings, albeit macho angry feelings.

It's like Viagra for your GRAR gland.
posted by Western Infidels at 10:50 AM on May 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


DOWNLOAD IT TO MY PDA!!!
posted by ethansr at 10:56 AM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


24 and Touch are almost the same program: Kiefer Sutherland begs other show characters for help. For an hour. Every hour.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 10:57 AM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


I am reminded of a Kids in the Hall sketch with Scott Thompson, imprisoned in a foreign land. He explains that all he wanted to do was ask where the razors were, and when the shopkeep didn't understand English, he repeated the same words, "louder, like you would to a dog." Then when that didn't work, he just smashed the guy's face in.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:06 AM on May 5, 2014


I stopped watching 24 because I felt like it fueled a lot of post-9/11-anti-brown-people paranoia.

But this is still pretty funny (esp. when combined with peoples' comments in this thread).
posted by raihan_ at 11:07 AM on May 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


These will be great fun for those Mefites who speak German well enough to understand the Swabian dialect and are familiar with Swabian stereotypes such as "Kehrwoche" (sweeping week):

24 re-envisioned as the struggles of Herr Juergen Bauer and his room mates in the face of shared apartment life in Swabia including disagreements over separating trash, a stray candy wrapper left in the staircase during Kehrwoche and who to sacrifice so all may live when the fumes from a pressure cooker full of Krautwickel (cabbage rolls) in the kitchen threaten to choke everybody in the apartment:
  • Tag 1 (Day 1): who left the toilet seat up?
  • Tag 2 (Day 2): honey, I found your porn!
  • Tag 3 (Day 3): who is throwing trash into our cans?
  • Tag 4 (Day 4): Kehrwoche: the candy wrapper incident
  • Tag 5 (Day 5): noisy neighbors/never mow your lawn on Sundays
  • Tag 6 (Day 6): the rental agency gets Herr Bauer released from prison to reign in his out of control room mates
  • Tag 7 (Day 7): Krautwickel
  • Tag 8 (Day 8): the last day
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:12 AM on May 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


Looking forward to the new season!
posted by griulf at 11:24 AM on May 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'd really like to see an entire season where Jack Bauer uses the same techniques he always has, but the results are suddenly more realistic: the people he "interrogates" say whatever comes into their heads, not outright lies nor straight truths, but rather chimeric combinations of verifiable facts with complete nonsense, such that the entire season is spent running from false lead to false lead, until the very end when the government must needs stop the nonsense, and so has Bauer tagged with a thorazine dart and subsequently transported in a bit of converted culvert pipe on a trailer to be released into a penny-stock boiler room, where his testosterone and relentless manner will be put to useful purpose in the initial public offering for Steve Madden shoes.
posted by Pliskie at 11:35 AM on May 5, 2014 [15 favorites]


24's first season was really incredibly fun until the wife got amnesia. I quickly bailed after that. You give someone on your show amnesia, I am totally out.
posted by xmutex at 11:45 AM on May 5, 2014


how many Americans warmed to the idea of an African-American president after seeing 24's President David Palmer?

I like to think that this is an omen that the US is on the verge of electing or otherwise appointing a run of six of the sleaziest fuckers possible in a straight run from here. (If that's much of a prediction.)
posted by biffa at 11:47 AM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


God, I hate that show.

GOD I HATE THAT SHOW! *punches computer*
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:25 PM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


24 was the first show I would get drunk for and yell at with my friends.

YES JACK! SHOCK HIS NIPPLES! HIS NIIIIIIIIIPLES!
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 12:31 PM on May 5, 2014


the theft and launch of a nuclear missile

IIRC, the terrorists hijacked a missile in northern Illinois and stashed it in the mountains of Iowa. Hilariously, no one could do anything about it because the nation's counter-terrorism initiative is based entirely in downtown Los Angeles.
posted by Iridic at 12:48 PM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


24 was the first show I would get drunk for and yell at with my friends.

YES JACK! SHOCK HIS NIPPLES! HIS NIIIIIIIIIPLES!


You must have been too young for Three's Company then.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:51 PM on May 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


♬Come and kick down my door ... Come and writhe on my floor♪
posted by octobersurprise at 12:54 PM on May 5, 2014 [11 favorites]


This show could have been so good. But yeah, they did every possible stupid thing that only cartoons should do. The first season started off alright; taught, semi-realistic, visceral action. But then amnesia, repeated kidnappings, presidents getting dropped like redshirts, terrorists with ridiculously elaborate plans. Bauer is a fun character, world weary and angry, but they kept putting him into a soap opera decorated with testosterone. To use Bond as an analogy, it was Die Another Day, when it had so much potential to be Casino Royale.
posted by spaltavian at 1:15 PM on May 5, 2014


Five best things about 24:

(1) Tamzin Sylvester
(2) The Cougar, which gave me an excellent way of describing filler plots in shows whose seasons should really be half the length they are and are putting up false drama to kill time. "Oh no, it's another cougar."
(3) The look Chloe gives when it becomes apparent she's the cleverest person in the room and no one will listen to her.
(4) Being in the middle of a session and realising that you're inadvertently watching an episode at the right time of day and the digital clock next your television even matches the countdown into a commercial break.
(5) It begat Homeland.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:17 PM on May 5, 2014


(3.1) Had Mary Lynn Rajskub not been Chloe on 24, she would never have been cast as a mad scientist commanding an army of superintelligent gorillas on The Middleman. And that would be a tragedy.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:21 PM on May 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


If I remember correctly this was also season 4, and the nipples in question belonged to the ex-husband of Jack's girlfriend (who is the daughter of the secretary of defense).

Anti-terrorism and the state:
really just an ordinary family business.
posted by entropone at 1:22 PM on May 5, 2014


Oh, the other thing we loved was Chloe.

"OK EVERYONE JUST LET ME RUN A MATRIX ON THIS FIREWALL. OH NO, THE PRX9000 IS GOING INTO OVERDRIVE. HANG ON WHILE I HACK THE MAINFRAME. YES OK WE HAVE SATELLITE UPLINK."
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 1:33 PM on May 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


So it turns out all that rapid fire hacking was just Mary Lynn Rajskub writing herself sunny thoughts and affirmations.
posted by Iridic at 1:40 PM on May 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


24 was one of the shows which led to me reading TWOP. I don't know if I can handle a new season without many catty remarks about Jack's manbag of doom.

Any chance 24 could be added to Fanfare?
posted by honestcoyote at 3:50 PM on May 5, 2014


I don't know if I can handle a new season without many catty remarks about Jack's manbag of doom.

Good grief, there's a whole blog devoted to Jack Bauer's man purse, a.k.a. The Jack Sack. One can only imagine slathering trufans of the so-called "Satchel of Doom" debating the relative merits of the classic olive drab Rothco Classic Messenger Bag from '01 to '06 vs. the Maxpedition Monsoon Gearslinger from Season 7.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:13 PM on May 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


"It's sort of funny: it's all dressed up in those macho clothes but its really all about giving you feelings, albeit macho angry feelings."

My initial reaction, being a fan in the first couple of seasons: it's an action soap opera.

But somewhere, maybe season five, I just couldn't handle the torture anymore, it totally overwhelmed the soap opera absurdity.

But still, all the ports & sockets technobabble remains part of our home slang.
posted by epersonae at 4:17 PM on May 5, 2014


I would watch 24 if the season started like this:

BAUER: Where am I?

NUMBER 2: In the Village.
posted by SPrintF at 7:59 PM on May 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Metafilter Fanfare thread.
posted by Nelson at 7:49 AM on May 7, 2014


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