Jack Bauer is a one-man army.
He can take on any opponent, drive across the greater Los Angeles area in 15 minutes, and even cheat death multiple times.
This season, though, Jack Bauer has met his match. And it’s not Abu Fayed, the terrorist who set off a suitcase nuke in Valencia. It’s not even his own evil family.
No, Jack Bauer’s match is a shark, swimming in the waters below him. His only defense against this shark?
Why, jumping it, of course. But that may not be the best idea.
I’ve written about “jumping the shark” in this column before. The term is derived from a “Happy Days” episode in which Fonzie literally jumped over a shark while water-skiing. Fans felt that this episode was the point at which the writers ran out of ideas and the show began to decline.
Well, season six of “24” might as well run on the Discover Channel during “Shark Week.”
Essentially, the season seems to have peaked in the fourth episode. That’s the one in which, you’ll recall, a suitcase nuke detonated in Valencia, killing over 12,000 people. At the time, this seemed like a stunning plot twist “”mdash; the terrorists finally succeeded on a grand scale, and Jack Bauer failed to stop them.
Its aftermath, however, has been mixed. For one thing, the attack was so stunning that there isn’t really any way to top it.
Sure, there are still four more suitcase nukes out there, but the only real way to up the stakes is to detonate more of them. Which is thrilling and all, but having the crux of the action occur so early and then follow it with 20 weeks of Jack trying to find more bombs is sort of … anticlimactic.
Of course, to fill the plot, the writers have introduced something patently ridiculous ““ that Jack’s evil father and brother have been behind the crux of the terrorist conspiracies for at least the last two seasons.
This whole “family affair” plotline just comes off as outlandish.
At least until Jack’s evil dad killed off Jack’s brother Graem.
This, of course, led to more implausible, ridiculous plot twists.
In the course of two weeks, Jack’s dad killed one son, threatened to kill his grandson, and threatened to kill Jack. Why? To save his company and his legacy. Even though to protect his legacy he’s killing his offspring ““ who are his legacy.
But that’s not what made me realize that “24” had jumped the shark.
That moment came in last week’s episode, when Morris went to a liquor store to buy a drink. First of all, even though a nuke went off hours before, the store is open and it’s business as usual. The mushroom cloud is visible in the distance, but nobody is panicking. Everyone’s just sort of going about their business. The clerk’s response to all this?
“Helluva day, huh?”
Because, you know, that’s how I’d react if a nuclear bomb had gone off in my general vicinity.
Or, for that matter, if I were about to jump over a shark.