24: What could have happened on Day 7 in the life of Jack Bauer
By fred | February 4, 2008
“Damn it!”
Those words are probably the ones Jack Bauer said the most in each season, or even episode, of 24. Because Jack is a good guy, at least when it comes to words. But he’s not afraid to torture and torture some more, to ignore Presidential orders or even go after his own family, but if there’s one thing he won’t do, it’s say any bad words. But what if he did ?
Okay, so no this is absolutely not about words, but actions. So far we’ve see Bauer going over lots of very difficult situations, and every time, even after being locked up and tortured himself for a few years, he never went to the other side. Jack Bauer was always a good guy. And he will still be one next season, whenever that comes.
But it could have been different !
The Wall Street Journal has a piece about 24, and its evolution over the years and for the season to come. For some reason they keep focusing on the torture aspect of the series, insisting that it went down in the ratings as the public was changing his mind about G.W.Bush and his war in Iraq. Now really, maybe it is true that 24 played the card of fear and constant terrorist threats, but that’s got nothing to do with why last season got awful ratings.
The reason is much simper than that : it sucked. Jack’s big return was highly disappointing, his family soapy-drama were ludicrous at best, CTU people much like the White House staff were boring and unbelievable in their roles (can anyone say worst President ever?), and all the promises from the first few episodes were dropped and long forgotten we weren’t even half-way through the season. And with time and each new episode, things only got worse.
Either way, this new season and this new day in the life of Jack Bauer had to put things back on track, and writers & producers were given a great opportunity as they were told to re-invent the series, to bring back to the show fans who left during season six or earlier, and to get Jack his mojo back.
As we know, they started with the premise of sending Jack to Africa, to help the children or build houses, it was about penance for things he’s done in the past. Because he now realized torture was bad and all. But this idea couldn’t work, for plenty reasons (costs, or the fact that Jack would have to be on a plane back to the States for most of the season…)
But before coming up with the idea of loosing CTU and sending Jack to trial, for his past actions being filled with torture and that same old aforementioned penance blah blah blah, writers had another idea, an idea which was - again - rejected by Fox !
And what really sucks there, is that it was one idea I’ve personally been wishing to see happening on the show for a few seasons now : Jack going bad. So far Jack has always been a good guy, the American hero. Better than the army, CTU or the President himself, even better than Bruce Willis or Chuck Norris ! If anyone was right it was him, if anyone was still really fighting for the good of the country, it was Jack. If there was one single person in the entire World no one could corrupt, it was no other than Jack Bauer.
But writers had - finally! - decided to break away from that line. After all he went through, and the way he was “thanked” for his sacrifices, Jack had turned to the dark side. For weeks writers worked on that idea and develop a new storyline, and they even wrote the first two episodes of this new season.
It wasn’t my dream, though, because I wanted Jack to really go bad. But of course, this being 24 he had to save the world in the end, so what writers came up with was to have a female FBI agent who would hunt Jack down from the dark side and eventually drag him back to the light. By the end of the summer, writers had their first scripts completed and went to see studio chiefs and executives at the network, including Fox’s president, Peter Liguori.
As I said, they didn’t like that idea, pretexting that viewers wouldn’t believe that Jack would fall down like that, and the plot for Day 7 in the life of Jack Bauer was once again sent to the trash, and had to be re-invented once again, from scratch. Obviously this didn’t help the show, which quite understandably had production delay long before the strike hit.
But further than that : would you have not believed that after all he went through Jack could go bad ? Would you have not liked it, to find Jack Bauer back on the dark side for this new season ? Come on! That would have been, or could have been, really cool ! The only part I wouldn’t have liked was him being saved and brought back into the light.
Maybe the writers’ strike will have helped 24 in the end, because writers could now “relax” and let the pressure go, they could let their imagination go wild for weeks, months even, and maybe they will come back with a brand new season much more daring than the previous ones ever were. And if they could reintroduced the idea of having a bad Jack, not by starting there, but by ending there, on the dark side, if this season could see Jack finally break down and succumb to temptation, I wouldn’t be against it… Hey, one can dream.
24 lost its co-creator and exec producer Joel Surnow ! @ TVoholic.com: Full episode reviews of your favorite TV shows & news about television