"24" Returns: Jack Bauer is Back Because America Needs Him

Agent Jack Bauer, that is.

Here's the plot: A special agent, trained in the black ops world of elite special forces and counter-espionage, finds himself in a life-or-death, millions of lives are at stake, nearly insurmountable odds situation. He only has a few hours to save the day. Sound familiar? It's every plot to every James Bond and Jason Bourne movie ever made.

It is the basic storyline of Fox Television's popular drama "24," which has entered Season 7. Counter-terrorist special agent Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) is back again in a headlong dash to save the lives of millions by putting his own on the line. He has 24 hours. Of course, Bauer does not know this, but the audience does. Clocked in "real time," the audience watches convoluted plot twists unfold, sometimes in quadruple fractured panes of split-screen action, the numbers of a clock ticking down the seconds throughout the show, in between scene shifts, and just before a commercial break. The effect adds to the shows edginess.

As does the subject matter. Fox Television debuted Agent Jack Bauer and "24" in September 2002. A hyper-vigilant agent, Bauer has been shot, beaten, tortured, and had innumerable injuries done to his body in the previous six seasons of the show, as has many of the characters in the show. And there is a lot of killing. Point blank, in your face, desensitized killing. But you're warned going in: Parental discretion is advised. It's splashed across the screen.

Who can resist a tease like that?

Through the seasons, Jack Bauer has brought down terrorists of all kinds: the atomic bomb-carrying kind, the bioweapon-weilding psychopath kind, and the electronic kind. Audiences of "24" have seen presidents assassinated or nearly so, plotted against, and plotting (one season places a plotting president on permanent house arrest for his complicity in a plot). Audiences have seen the cold, calculated, and ruthless manipulations of political posturing and leverage.

And audiences love it. Ratings for Sunday night's two-hour season premiere (part of a larger, two-night, four-hour premiere) put the show in second place for the night with over 12 million viewing households, just two million behind the "66^th Annual Golden Globe Awards."

Season 7 of "24" begins in a courtroom, where decommissioned agent Jack Bauer is tasked with answering the questions of a Senate hearing on the inappropriate actions and methods of the now disbanded CTU (Counter Terrrism Unit), of which Jack Bauer was an integral part. Bauer had been out of country, wandering the world, when he was caught up in a situation in an African nation undergoing a civil war (shades of the conflict in many nations in Africa, but particularly Darfur and Congo). A two-hour prequel, "Redemption," chronicled Jack Bauer's attempts to save a bunch of school children. To save their lives, he sacrificed his freedom and turned himself over to U.S. government officials to be returned to the United States to answer criminal charges (for activities he had orchestrated or participated in while at CTU or of his own volition). Bauer hasn't spent five minutes sparring with a Senator when the FBI shows up needing his help.

At first reluctant to cooperate, the FBI secures his help when they show Bauer a photograph of Tony Almeida, a former CTU agent and close friend of Bauer's that Bauer had believed to be dead. Almeida, it would seem, had joined forces with a domestic terrorist unit. The terrorists had just kidnapped a computer expert and forced him to produce a device that would breach the defensive firewall of the nation's infrastructural security grid, making vulnerable air traffic, public works, and government operated facilities throughout the U. S.

Jack Bauer does not believe that his undead colleague is a terrorist and allies himself with the FBI to prove it. And when he does catch up to the terrorist cell, events begin to unfold that involve members of his old CTU squad and points to a conspiracy that reaches into the White House and across the ocean to the war-torn African nation that Jack Bauer had just recently left.

"24" is pure escapist entertainment. It draws you into its fanciful schemes, Machiavellian plots, and hard core action. The audience stays with Jack Bauer because they want to see him survive, succeed, put down the threat. "24" was born in the aftermath of September 11, when the people of the United States needed a hero to combat the fears of a basically unknown international network of terrorists. Although fictitious, the show was grounded in the need for reassertion of confidence in the men and women who work in various shadowy capacities to ensure the security of the United States. That confidence had been shaken by the September 11 attacks and exacerbated by the internecine infighting and finger-pointing that became standard procedure for a government unwilling to take full responsibility for allowing the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil.

But "24" filled the need that the Bush administration could not or would not. People need their heroes, even if they're completely drawn from the imaginations of Hollywood writers. Since president George W. Bush was all too willing but all too inept at providing the hero American needed at the time, Fox Television provided the hero. Jack Bauer became the everyman patriot willing to do what it took to secure his country against outside threats, the embodiment of American sacrifice, and the definition of persevering ingenuity.

Jack Bauer exemplifies the mythologized American spirit with a "Don't tread on me" attitude. Bauer is what many Americans aspire to be: independent, intelligent, self-reliant, dedicated, dependable, loyal, and able. With determination and some acquired specialized skills, Bauer reassures us that anything is possible, even in the face of certain death and overwhelming odds.

Just as James Bond provided the fictional super-agent hero for the anxiety-laden Cold War and Jason Bourne provided the dispossessed hero for the uncertain post-Cold War, Jack Bauer provided Americans with the superman needed to combat the unknown of the terrorist threat, the so-called "War on Terror." For seven years, Bauer has done a relatively decent job.

He hasn't been perfect. Audiences expect their heroes to be human. But that only lends to his appeal.

Jack Bauer gets the job done.

Many critics wonder how much longer audiences will stay tuned to the multiple plot, always shifting, edgy action melodrama. The answer to that may also lie within what we know about the world's greatest agents, James Bond and Jason Bourne. Daniel Craig starred in the 22^nd James Bond film, "Quantum of Solace," which was released in October 2008. To date, the latest James Bond incarnation has made $116.8 million, according to The Movie Times, and was still in the Top Twenty grossing films (as of January 4). The Bourne trilogy starring Matt Damon has grossed $525.4 million in the United States and nearly $1 billion worldwide.

Although television series tend to wane in popularity over the years and eventually get cancelled, they are more often as not resurrected for theatrical releases. So, how long will audiences thrill to the renegade counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer, the tortured uber everyman who just wants a safer world and to be left alone?

Jack, in one form or another, will be back whenever we need him...

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Sources:

"24." Fox Television

The-movie-times.com