I don’t watch much television. But tonight I make an
exception. Why? Because Jack Bauer wants me to.
You don’t mess with Jack. Made famous by Kiefer Sutherland
on Fox’s long-running show 24, Jack
Bauer makes Chuck Norris look like a tofu-eating yuppie. In eight full seasons,
the guy has killed his boss, cut the hand off his partner and threatened
someone with a towel—all to save the
world repeatedly from terrorists and duplicitous politicians and dirty bombs.
I’m sure he could do something about climate change if he had more bullets. He
makes even baking cupcakes look tough:
And now, after a four-year hiatus, Jack is back with 24: Live Another Day. I admit it: I’m a
little giddy.
I’ve watched 24
from the beginning, every action-packed, sometimes ridiculous minute of it.
When I worked at The Gazette (the daily paper here in Colorado Springs), me and
a clutch of 24-loving editors and
reporters would rehash the whole show the following morning: The shockers, the
one-liners, the narrow escapes from rampaging cougars. Talking about 24 was almost as much fun as watching
it. And when I moved to Plugged In
and reviewed the thing from a Christian perspective (and given all 24’s torture and stuff, it’s not really
the sort of program Plugged In can
give a hearty thumbs up to), I had to smile when some 24-loving readers skewered me for not “getting” the show at all.
I got it, I think. Or, at least, I appreciated it. Each
season—each episode, really—was predicated on one thing: Just how far would
Jack go this time?
The answer always surprised us. And over the arc of the 24’s run, we not only watched Jack do
some terrible things, but suffer as well. He buried his wife and alienated his
daughter. He lost nearly everyone he was ever close to. Every season, Jack’s
job consumed a little of his soul.
"In the early years of 24, after the 9/11 attacks, the
common take was that the appeal of Jack Bauer lay in his strength," writes
Time's James Poniewozik. "He was
tough, decisive, and effective, offering the fantasy of security in an insecure
time. But in the long run, I don’t think Bauer’s most important function was to
fight our battles; it was to feel our pain. Season after season, he would
suffer physically and spiritually, he would lose friends and lovers (and
sleep), he would save the country and get run out of town. He was like a
psychic pincushion, a sponge soaking up all the toxic emotion of the era,
committing our sins and swallowing the guilt until he seemed 100 years
old."
He is television’s ultimate suffering savior, I suppose, as
tortured as anyone he takes a towel to. He’d do anything to save the world, it
seems, including sacrifice his own life.
But a Christ-like figure, he’s not. He knows it as well as
anyone. While a blameless Jesus carried our sins, Jack (in Poniewozik’s words)
commits them. He is a doomed hero, a savior in a world without grace or mercy
or forgiveness. Jack might call himself a necessary evil, and Bauer apologists
would agree. The theory goes that sometimes to take out the bad guys, you need
someone willing to get his hands dirty.
But a necessary evil is still an evil. Jack may be a savior
of sorts for a purely physical world. Maybe he saves our skins. But when it
comes to souls, he can’t even save his own. For that you need grace and
forgiveness and the healing power of God.
No, Jack’s not a Messiah. He’s just a guy like us—a flawed
sinner who tries to do what he can to make the world a better place in his own
brutal way.
Hey, I’m thrilled Jack’s back. I’m rooting for him to be
thanked for all his hard work and get a medal or something. After saving so
many people, it’d be nice for him to find some salvation himself.
But I’m not counting on it. For that, the powers that be
would not just have to acknowledge Jack’s sacrifices, but forgive his crimes.
And 24 is not a very forgiving show.
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