The following takes place between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.I sit there on the couch, stamping my feet on the floor waiting for the “previously” opening to end. I know what happened last week because I watched it, just like every week. Don’t waste my time recapping for the not-so-faithful. Finally I hear the familiar, comforting, yet slightly creepy, boop-boop-boop-boop.
I am talking about the best show on television, “24.” The only thing that could ever make me look forward to Mondays.
For those of you who, for some reason, haven’t seen the show, here is a little synopsis. Now in its fifth season, or day five, “24” follows the adventures of the Los Angeles-based Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) and the terrorists they hunt. Past plots foiled have included a presidential assassination, the exploding of a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, the dissemination of a disease that kills within hours and most recently, 20 canisters of weaponized nerve gas. The kicker is that the show is told in real time; every hour-long episode is an hour of the day, hence the show’s title. In the past five years the show has had three different presidents, a multitude of CTU directors and several terrorists. One man holds it all together: Jack Bauer.
During season three, a friend once commented to me (during a commercial, the only time talking is allowed) that she loved my “undying faith in Jack Bauer.” This is absolutely true. He is the hero of all heroes. Constantly being put in impossible situations, Jack Bauer will always somehow figure it out. Jack Bauer is not a warm fuzzy hero such as Superman or Zack Morris. He tortures people, he sacrifices human life, he disobeys orders, he lies all over the place, he once got himself addicted to heroin while under cover. But in the end, he gets the job done. And that is what matters when we’re talking about terrorists, right?
This is where I start to feel guilty about loving the show so much. “24” is on Fox, part of Rupert Murdoch’s giant media empire. I hate to think that Bill O’Reilly and Keifer Sutherland (who perfectly plays Jack Bauer) are on the same payroll. It makes me wonder about some aspects of the show. When Jack Bauer tortures a guy and it leads to stopping terrorists, is this supposed to be some sort of conditioning so that we think it’s OK when we hear Alberto Gonzales defending the same action? Another point that sometimes gets to me is the resources available to CTU. The technology at CTU is truly the heart of the crime-fighting capabilities. They pull up information about everyone and everything within seconds. Instantly knowing someone’s life story by identifying their picture sure is a good tool for tracking down enemies of the state, but it’s also a little creepy. If our real government actually has that technology, it makes me wonder whether there is any privacy left in the world. Should I be OK with that? In the time of MySpace (which Rupert Murdoch also recently acquired), is privacy even a commodity we care about anymore?
And then there are the ethical dilemmas. In season three, Tony Almeida, a high level CTU officer, began working with terrorists because they had kidnapped his wife and threatened to kill her if he didn’t cooperate. Last season, Jack Bauer kicked a paralyzed, innocent man off an operating room table to make room for an injured terrorist who held vital information. Monday night, they were prepared to allow the terrorists to expose an entire mall full of families to a canister of nerve gas in order to save the potential victims of the other 19 canisters that remained. These plot points read like allegories from the utilitarian section of my philosophy class. I think Monday one of the characters actually said “Think about the greater good, sir!” in a half-shout because that’s how most of the lines are delivered.
I do think about the greater good. Anyone who watches the show is forced to. Most of the time I agree with Jack Bauer, but even he has lost a few of his utilitarian traits. In the second season he shot his coworker point blank in the back of the head in an attempt to stall terrorists. This season, he blew his cover and risked hundreds of lives to save a 15-year-old whose mom he was dating.
Of course we have to remember this is all fiction. The writers choose words for Jack Bauer, and they also create the outcomes of his decisions. But the show is about a very real threat that we all, to some degree, have to think about.
Terrorism may not rear its ugly head very often in this country, but luckily we have a great TV show that displays how evil terrorists really are and how brave and capable our government is.
I hope that in a crisis, life imitates art.

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