Time finally ran out for Jack Bauer last night. Sort of.
After being shot, stabbed, suffocated, run down, exploded, beaten and cuffed, Jack did a Tony Soprano and pixelated.
OK, admittedly Tony went black while Jack got digitally divided, but both anti-heroes’ final exits leave us secure in the knowledge that tough guys, like vampires, never die. They live on in reruns and in movie sequels. And last night’s bloody end left us hoping for new and terrible beginnings to come.
It also made it clear why this, the eighth season, was “24’s” 25th hour.
I mean, seriously, what can you do to top digging into a guy’s entrails to retrieve a hidden micro-chip?
Yes, I was hoping that Jack would have nuked one small but very bad country we never heard of in the finale, but he didn’t.
He’s more of a hand-to-hand kind of killer; a lone wolf in a world of slimy lizards, like former President Charles Logan, who was so disgusting last night, he made me feel like I should wear rubber gloves to touch the TV.
Last night’s finale centered around a super powers’ peace treaty, which has been the lynchpin of President Allison Taylor’s presidency. Like many presidents before her, leaving a legacy of a meaningless peace treaty became all-consuming.
In fact, Taylor, my (former) hero, was so desperate to get her historic peace treaty signed that she was willing to: A) overlook Russia’s assassination of Omar Hassan, the president of the Islamic Republic of Kamistan, and B) blackmail Hassan’s widow and successor Dalia, the most beautiful woman in the universe, with nuking IRK off the e.a.r.t.h. if she didn’t sign the treaty.
I loved that President Taylor was even threatening nukes. But I hated that she’s always fighting back tears. Ditto for Dahlia. OK, the woman’s only been a widow for six hours so, yes, she has the right to get teary, even if she is the new president. But Taylor? Come on!
Why, oh why, do the female leaders of the free and unfree worlds always have to cry?
Seriously, do you ever see Jack crying during negotiations? No! He doesn’t even cry when he’s tortured, burned, stabbed, exploded and shot — or shooting others. Well, sure he cried when Renee Walker was killed, but he stopped weeping long enough to kill everyone in his path.
So, after all these years, in the end, nothing much changed for Jack — unless you count getting shot by Chloe, and finally making the president so guilty that she is willing to fess up and lose it all.
I feel he’ll be back. He always comes back even though he has to be 126 years old by now. I mean, he still looks good for his age.