Rules of Life and the Skills of Jack Bauer

4 a.m. to 6 a.m.
5.20.07

I’m sick of components, character recaps and old men who can’t drive. The next season of 24 better have digital software, ambiguous statements and sexy Latina waitresses who run illegal street races on Friday nights.

The season finale of 24 started off as most mornings do in LA. A middle-aged blond man kidnaps a 16-year-old kid and brings him to the beach, the FBI is confiscating an old man’s family photo album and Jack Bauer is put in a time-out because his antics from the night before are too much for anyone to handle.

It’s all because one senior citizen, Papa Bauer, has taken it upon himself to piss off three governments at once, all because he wants to retreat to China, a country he believes is the future of the world and whose major exports have been take-out menus and Yao Ming.

But he doesn’t care. Despite the mistakes and misguided judgmental stares, Papa has a dream and believes in China. He should have checked Cuba. Their health care system is apparently better than ours and they have the baseball stars of tomorrow.

It’s also in China where Papa Bauer will have “the means and the power” to mold Josh into the man his bald-headed father should have been. This means Josh will have hair and a robotic arm, which is every bald man’s secret dream. That and less hair “down there.”

Ricky “Strikeforce” Schroder also has a dream and it’s to see Nadia naked someday. That dream went kaput when two of Papa Bauer’s men approached the beach, handed Strikeforce a box and watched it explode in his face. Had he paid attention to the label on the side, Strikeforce would have read “Acme’s In-Your-Face Exploding Component-good for parties, parent-teacher conferences and custody hearings.”

So Strikeforce will probably be blinded and will spend the rest of his grabbing for walls and bore the handicap wing at the hospital with his lengthy anecdotes about the day he did everything wrong. I have those days too. They are called “Thanksgiving.”

Maybe he’ll get an eye-patch and become a pirate, which could be a 24 spin-off titled “CTU: A Day at Sea” where agents would battle pirates and mutant sea urchins for treasure, rum and hooch (you know which hooch I speak of you scalawag).

Strikeforce was at the beach making sure the exchange of Josh for the component went smoothly. Josh’s exchange is a rite of passage in the Bauer family initiation process. After that, he has to learn the various Bauer lessons of life from Gramps. So far we have “Pay attention,” “Don’t let your emotions control you,” and “Put that down.”

However, these three lessons conflict with Khay’s singular one of “Never negotiate with a sociopath.” Isn’t that common knowledge? And if it isn’t, then we should stop teaching kids about nutrition and start teaching them about negotiation and who they can do it with (crossing guards and IT technicians no, meter maids and drunk sorority girls yes). I’d rather have safe fat children than stupid skinny kids who take spam email seriously.

KHay, with her lesson freshly implanted in her mind, calls her disgrace husband, Old Man Buchanan to do “whatever it takes” to spring Jack Bauer from the governmental time-out.

To do this, Old Man Buchanan engages in the most dangerous thing someone his age can do: drive on the road. Since Khay gave him the location of Bauer’s SUV transport (marked with a colorful red dot), he knew exactly which car to run off the road. He also ran off a couple beforehand, but that’s just because Buchanan refuses to respect the road.

Just as Strikeforce is getting blinded by science, Jack and Old Man Buchanan show up in time to fire random shots into the air and see the two men take Josh with them in a dingy headed out to the ocean.

Jack doesn’t shoot and attends to Strikeforce’s wails of “It was a fake!” and “It blew!” The last time he yelled those two phrases on a beach was when be brought his blow-up doll “Nancy” to a secluded beach with a $7 bottle of Merlot.

Random: A man named Stewart shows up. He is Milo’s brother and looks nothing like him. Despite his brief visit, he manages to enrage me with sappy line of “…no, he did it because he was in love with you.” I’m glad Milo and his sappiness was shot in the head even more now.

Jack calls CTU to relay the “I am always right about everything” message and Nadia calls off his arrest and asks for his help. Bauer squints through the darkness and notices a couple of random lights that he determines are oil rigs off the coast. That’s right, he saw through the darkness.

(BTW: Where did hottie Agent Reynolds come from and why is she only answering phones? Shouldn’t she be jumping up and down on a trampoline to keep everyone’s spirits up?)

The CTU Trauma Team shows up to tend to Strikeforce. They are like the CTU Drama Crew except slightly less gay.

Khay and Scowl-face (Chloe) had been on Jack’s side, but unfortunately they have the combined political power of a bag of chips. Their punishment for backing Jack? Khay is arrested and Scowl-face faints at work because she is pregnant with Morris’ child. Expect Scowl 2.0 to have no social skills, a British accent and a penchant for the smell of new shoes. Scowl 2.0 will be the nemesis of Josh, after he gets his robotic arm.

CTU finds the oilrig and informs the White House about the location of the component, along with an innocent 16-year-old boy that everyone seems to be concerned about.

VP Crap Pants, feeling pressure from “Su Su Subero,” orders a massive air attack with a side of mayhem on the oilrig. As this is happening, the Russians are inching towards a US base somewhere in Southeast Asia because their national security is being threatened.

With the attack to occur in less than 20 minutes, VP Crap Pants offers Su Su Subero a “real-time” link so that he can watch the explosion. It tears into his voyeuristic porn time, but the Russian president figures it’s equally, if not more important to watch F-18s take out a teenager, an old man, a handful of Chinese goons and a piece of machinery no bigger than a pack of cigarettes that contains the location to their only stockpile of guns (it’s next to the cases of Vodka in the shed out back).

Bauer is mad and, along with Old Man Buchanan, conspire to take over the helicopter to get Josh out of there. The plan is to “move hard” which simply calls for Bauer to shoot constantly and around every corner. One of the bullets hits a barrel and explodes half of Cheng’s face off. (At this point, my dad picks at his teeth and somehow snores at the same time. I wish there was an explosion barrel in the basement).

The F-18s are screaming towards the rig, which only gives about five minutes for Plan Move Hard (this is also a Bauer-patented sex move that he uses on special occasions like baptisms and Superbowl Sunday).

Papa Bayer drags Josh to the bottom of the rig where another dingy is waiting for them. Josh, who suddenly feels Bauer-ific, clocks gramps on the head with a wrench, takes his gun and shoots his Grandpa in the chest, ending any chance that he’ll have a normal adolescence. He should just buy eye shadow, black leather pants and The Cure’s entire discography after today. And maybe change his name to “Loth” and date a Wiccan chic named “Willow.”

Bauer shows up, tells Josh that even though he’s scared and angry, it’s not worth shooting an old man over and that he should run to the top where another old man is waiting for him.

With Josh gone, Jack yells “Get up! It’s over! You are going to be held accountable for all you did today!” Creepy. This is how I say goodnight to my dad. Unfortunately with the F-18s on their way, Papa Bauer is going to get off easy, which is something he hasn’t been able to do for years.

Jack jumps off the rig just in time to catch a ladder hanging off the helicopter. He eventually drops into the water and swims to shore. Old Man Buchanan looks down and understands what’s going on. Jack Bauer has his own agenda, like a full can of beer floating aimlessly in a lake.

The oilrig has been completely destroyed, Josh is safe and reunited with his mom and Khay and Old Man Buchanan are going to retire to Vermont where they can live their lives without fear of prosecution. Now the only fears they have to worry about are loneliness and the dreaded Sasquatch. Cheng is brought back to CTU and is told he will be “debriefed” somewhere else (this sounds like a dirty job Mike Rowe should tackle).

Suddenly we’re transported to the Heller beach house where Jack has wandered to armed with a silencer and a beef with Papa Heller.

Here we see Jack go through a variety of emotions in an unnatural amount of time. We see displaced daddy issues, wrath, sadness, love, guilt and probably a little bit of indigestion.

Bauer is pissed that Heller didn’t try to get him out of China, that he’s disallowing him to see Audrey (Sheryl Crow) and that he’s the father he always wanted and never got a hug. Unfortunately, it’s too late and you never hug a guy who’s holding a silencer. That’s a Heller family rule.

Jack wants his life back and wants to take care of Sheryl Crow. He lays out his skills as being good at “disappearing” and “killing people.” For some reason, these skills don’t appeal to Heller and he stands by his “Don’t touch my daughter” rule (ah, memories of grade school).

Papa Heller brings Jack into Sheryl Crow’s bedroom, where she is sleeping and hooked up to various machines. Jack sits down, touches her hand, says he’ll always love her, gets bored and leaves. Jack Bauer is a man of action and a woman in a coma isn’t sexy.

He decides to “let her go” and walks out, with silencer in hand to stare at the ocean. Eventually the screen fades to black and the silent clock appears, which is usually reserved for the death of a major character.

Let’s hope it was the emotional, weeping while holding to a small tree Bauer that died, which will leave the gun-toting, smirking, violently frantic, confrontational, knee-cap shooting, heroin injecting, hand-chopping, “dammit” yelling, non-eating, car-jacking, Bauer we’ve all grown to love.

At least, that better be the Bauer we see next January…Till then friends. I’m going to drown myself in a sea of Jack Daniels.