Jack Bauer's our terrorist-fighting Superman

Despite the graphic violence that’s a perennial part of the show, “24” serves as a sort of TV comfort food. The audience knows how it’s eventually going to end, and the writers have been good at maintaining the delicate balance between predictability and surprise.

It’s safe to assume that at the end of the day, a lot of good guys will be killed and Jack Bauer himself may be shot, tortured, or taken captive, but the country will be safer than it was before.  The show is just real enough to be compelling, and just fake enough that it’s not scary. The audience knows that Jack is probably safe, but there’s always that twinge of doubt, as well as the knowledge that no other series regular can rest easy.

Fans of the show have already seen Jack’s wife killed, watched him become a heroin addict to get close to a needed source, have seen one president and one ex-president killed and another president guilty of plotting against the country. His friends keep getting killed off, he always gets the girl but never keeps her, and his daughter constantly needs saving from random dangers.

Last season’s plot twist concerned President Charles Logan, who turned from incompetent weasel to manipulative evil-doer in a matter of moments. The change took everyone by surprise, even the actor who plays Logan, and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If something similar happens this season — if Wayne Palmer turns out to be evil, or his sister is really working for the terrorists, that may be a sign that writers are desperate to keep viewers guessing by any means necessary.

But it’s also obvious that the fears the show exploits are real.

The Los Angeles that Bauer inhabits is a lot more dangerous than the real one, serving as what many would view as a worst-case scenario of the war on terror. The enemies of the United States seem to be everywhere, have access to every kind of weapon, have sleeper cells in every city and elaborate contingency plans anticipating every failure.

And yet, even in this realm, the world is generally safe because Jack Bauer makes it that way. His co-workers fall by the wayside, traitors are everywhere, and the government is corrupt or incompetent, yet Jack Bauer protects Los Angeles almost as well as Superman does Metropolis. He has 20 more hours to work before the city can rest easy again.

Craig Berman is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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