24 IN REVIEW

The following post offers NO SPOILERS for the upcoming sixth season of 24, as I have avoided all publicity and promotion in the month leading up Sunday night’s season premiere. And a word to the wise: Watching any or all previews will lessen and perhaps ruin completely your enjoyment of the show. This show lives and dies with its plot twists and action sequences. And seeing them before they actually take place in “real time” makes you a cheater, and I feel sorry for you. Chances are you are a terrible person.

Jack Bauer sure can take a licking. And keep on ticking.

And this weekend, we finally reset the clock for the four-hour two-night premiere event of the sixth season of Fox’s 24.

Since becoming America’s most popular counter-terrorist federal agent five years ago, Jack has been through a lot. His daughter has been kidnapped, his wife has been killed, the woman with whom he had an affair turned out to be his mortal enemy, and that’s just for starters.

Five separate terrorist groups have targeted him for assassination, not to mention both the Chinese and his own American (!) governments.

He’s been made an assassination attempt on a future president (David Palmer), been framed for an actual assassination attempt on a former president (David Palmer), and actually kidnapped and threatened to assassinate a sitting president (Charles Logan).

He’s picked up a nasty heroin addiction, broken Tony’s ankle escaping from CTU, and put a nasty sleeper hold on Curtis. Oh, and he murdered his boss execution-style.

He’s sawed off the head of a witness, helped blow up CTU, caused a prison riot to illegally break out a convicted drug felon, chopped off his partner’s hand, blown up a natural gas plant, killed his girlfriend’s estranged husband, interrogated and tortured that girlfriend, threatened to cut out the eyeball of the President’s Chief of Staff (in front of the President), landed a 747 on a Los Angeles freeway, and saved a 6-year old girl in a mall from nerve gas.

He’s broken into the Drazens’ headquarters to avenge the supposed murder of his daughter, a terrorist compound to rescue the Secretary of Defense, the Chinese Embassy to kidnap a citizen, and President Logan’s Western estate to, well, what else kidnap the President.

He’s been held captive by the Drazens, Peter Kingsley, Ramon Salazar, Habib Marwan, Christopher Henderson, President Logan, Ivan Erwich and Nina Myers – twice.

He’s survived a car crash, a plane crash, electric torture, an epinephrine overdose, multiple heart attacks, an L.A. Coliseum shootout, Russian roulette with Salazar, a massive power outage, a natural power plant explosion, an explosion set off by Henderson and a blackout. In fact, one time he actually did die – his heart stopped for four minutes.

He’s saved the world at least five separate times stopping a rogue nuclear bomb from detonating in Los Angeles, stopping World War III from breaking out, stopping the deadly Cordilla virus from infecting and killing a sizable portion of the U.S. population, stopping the meltdown of more than 100 nuclear power plants across North America, stopping a nuclear missile from decimating Southern California, halting a hostage situation at Ontario Airport, stopping nuclear missiles from a submarine and stopping 19 canisters of nerve gas from being released in Russia … and at a mall … and at a hospital … and at a natural gas plant.

On top of all that, he’s been through at least four serious relationships, none of which ended well. His partner has dated his daughter, and he has dated his boss’ daughter.

And what does he get for all this trouble? His wife gets killed, President Palmer orders Nina Myers to kill him, he’s forced to fly a suicide mission to detonate the nuclear bomb over the Mojave, he becomes addicted to heroin, his hot Mexican honey Claudia (pronounced Cloooud-ia) gets killed, he gets fired, he gets dumped, has to fake his own death, has to dump another girlfriend, gets framed for a President’s murder, and then gets kidnapped and tortured by the Chinese anyway.

And that’s just five days! Honestly, how many bad days can one guy have?