24: 4.00am – 5.00am
By fred | May 5, 2009
(S07E21) Hour 21. We’re getting closer and closer to the end of this new day, and if we all know it will have to end with a bang, that means I guess no one will really be surprised that until we get there, things are going to go a little slower. Case in point, this was very much the calm before the storm, the episode where it all gets set in motion: Tony and his new friends are getting ready to strike, Jack and Renee are not far behind them, more drama at the White House…
But it is slow, so much that if you missed this, I’d say you can be fine waiting for next week’s “previously on 24″ bit. Then, in two minutes you’ll probably found out as much as we did here in an hour, and yet you will not be missing anything really. Well, maybe another scene where Jack shows how sick he is, so someone can comment on it and someone else remind us that he’s been infected and everything. So, nothing new.
This leads to me something though : I think I know how this season of 24 will end. Well, I really don’t, but I have a theory/idea, of how it could end, or maybe how I would love it to end. I think this season of 24 should end with a silent clock, for Jack.
If you want a shocker, what could possibly be bigger than this?? My guess is nothing. At this point I say the biggest twist of all, would be the lack of all twist. Look at where we are now: what is the one thing they more than hinted towards? What is the one element they keep insisting on and repeating over and over again?? Just this week, Jack told Chloe he only had one day left, two at best, and later on Renee told someone else how Jack was infected.
For weeks we’ve been told Jack was infected and no cure existed, for weeks they’ve told us Jack was dying, he was in fact dead already, and yet no one believes it. Why? Because he’s Jack freaking Bauer! That is the only explanation we have, because there are no others. We just assume Kim changed her mind and head to the hospital or wherever she was needed to help on a possible cure for Jack, we just imagine that maybe Tony & co have a secret cure they never mentioned to anyone so far, we just do for no other reason than this is Jack we’re talking about, and that because of that he can’t die.
But it’s only us, though, who are claiming he can’t die. The season is almost over, and again I feel like to not come up with some crazy unbelievable twist to save Jack’s life, to do what they’ve been saying they would do all along, would be the most shocking event they could actually come up with. And creatively speaking, I also like this idea.
For one, because Jack can’t go on saving the world forever. Plus, what would happen next season? Again Jack knows who the bad guys are yet no one believes him, Hell they even buy into that crap that makes him be the bad guy, so Jack has to go undercover and run from the FBI until finally they realize he was telling the truth all along? Seriously, we’ve seen that many times already just this season, and all the ones before it. And every time it happens again, despite the ever growing history Jack has of saving the country, it becomes less and less “realistic” – if it ever was.
So I say kill Jack, let him die by the end of the season, as a pure hero, saving his country and maybe killing Tony in the end — since Tony truly became a bad guy. And next season, next season could simply be set before this day, in a time where Jack wasn’t so alone, hadn’t save his country so many times again, thus opening brand new doors for Jack.
He wouldn’t have to be so troubled by his past, to carry on his shoulders the deaths of so many friends and relatives. It could be a brand new Jack, a more happy Jack, and inject a whole new lot of possibilities for the show and his main character. Hell, they could even bring President Palmer if they wanted to! And sure, one thing that it would mean, is that we would all know, with 100% certainty, that Jack couldn’t possibly die during the course of that day. But then again, how many of you are seriously considering the fact that he could possibly die by the end of this season?
Exactly. And that’s why this biggest surprise of all is that there is no surprise, and by the end of the season, Jack will be dead — as we’ve been told all along. You know… or not. Just an idea, but I guess at this point, I actually wish for Jack to die… go ahead, shoot me.
What does everybody else think?
BANG!
They’d never kill Jack. End of. Even though you raise a lot of good points creatively, they just would never do it. Not only because there is another series and they’d never be able to pull off a prequel series, but also because they’ve always promised a big screen 24 film. (Also Palmer/Dennis Haysbert is excellent over in The Unit – he wouldn’t go back to 24)
My prediction from the beginning of the series was that at the end of this day Jack will receive a medal from the President recognizing all that he’s done for the country. I even thought it would be a great idea if he got celebrity recognition from the media – but that would be odd. Then next series Jack would be the head of his own special department in a new CTU department of the FBI.
This way we can have a Mission Impossible 3 vibe: Jack training new recruits into working in the field. (Or Scrubs this series if you will) This could introduce a whole load of new characters (we know how 24 love doing this) as possible young Bauers