Skip to main content

The retirement of Jack Bauer

I admit that I gave up on 24 after about Season 4. It was all too stressful and didn't agree with my blood pressure medication. According to recent reports, it's now become too stressful for the TV executives too, who are pulling the plug on the show after they finish shooting the current batch of episodes.

24 was to the noughties what The X Files was to the 90s - a seminal series, which managed to create its own vivid parallel universe. To conspiracy theorists, both shows revealed supposed truths about the actions of sinister government agencies. But 24 was more shocking and brutal because its subject matter was terror rather than the paranormal and extraterrestrial. It will be remembered for its social and political context - the climate of fear existing post 9/11 - as much as for its relentless pace and amphetamine-driven plotlines.

The question now is whether Jack Bauer can ever truly retire. I'm picturing an old folks' home in southern California in about 2040. An aged CTU agent is served dinner in his chair and excess soup is mopped from his chin by a member if staff. Suddenly a call comes through. It's the President.

One last mission. He will be back by this time tomorrow night. Godammit! Where's his razor? He starts barking orders at his carers. 'Get my phone on a charger. And bring the SUV round the back...'

Comments

  1. Brian Gilbert11:28 PM

    Thankyou for the best report of my candidature yet, if a bit lighthearted. I am not 'intent' on a career in Parliament as at 78 it would be rather short. I am rather intent on waking up the sleeping voters who feel that as the chains of slavery to the EU are not yet physical they will not become so. The Germans in the 30s and the Russians immediately after their revoloution probably felt the same. Read 'The Road to Serfdom' by Friedrich Hayek. Start saving up to pay off the £300,000 or more debt this government has incurtred on your behalf.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Special Constable update

I've now studied the Special Constable poster in more detail (see blogs passim ) and can reveal the idea is even more complex and bizarre than I first thought. You'll recall that a Special is on some seedy looking street corner, just yards away from where a drug deal is in progress. He's keenly observing events and looks ready to take some kind of action. The copy says that Specials wear uniform and always have back-up. But this guy is on his own in plain clothes. Worrying. Perhaps he's off duty but just can't leave the policing thing alone? Once a part-time copper, always a part-time copper. But wait. There is back up. It comes in the form of the constable's own reflection in a puddle. If he took his eyes off the criminal activity for just a second and took the trouble to look down at his feet, he'd see that in Puddle Land, he is wearing a uniform and carrying a radio. There's enough material here to fill a semiotics seminar for a day. If I disco...
4 comments
Read more

Captain Birdseye and other people of rank

Regular readers may recall that I once doubted the existence of Yeo Valley. I'd never heard of the Yeo mountain range and I therefore rated the likelihood of there being a valley at somewhere between 0 and 5%. Of course, I had yoghurt all over my face when I discovered that the place really does exist. Somewhere in Somerset, I seem to recall. Today, having read an article in the latest edition of The Marketer magazine, I'm astonished to discover that there really was a Captain Birdseye. Well, I need to qualify that just a little. There was a Mister Clarence Birdseye who invented the fish finger back in 1955. The avuncular, uniformed figure who dominated our TV screens for about thirty years may have been an invention of over-eager advertising creatives, but he didn't blow in on a trawler during a squall. There was actually some connection to a real human being. These revelations about fish and yoghurt are causing me considerable disquiet, because I'm wondering h...
3 comments
Read more

Tune in next week, when we'll turn another pretty woman into a high-class hooker...

I like to think that I keep up with most of Mrs W's viewing habits, but she's been watching more and more trash since emerging from her hospital trip and things are spiralling out of control. I understand the need for rest and recuperation, but fear the virus has eaten away at the part of her brain responsible for quality control. Somehow or other, I've never previously settled down to How to look good naked on Channel 4. For the uninitiated, the show is presented by a man called Gok Wan who has the kind of face you could happily slap for a week. No, make that a fortnight. Mr Wan is a firm believer that a woman hasn't lived until she's dressed herself up as a tart and paraded herself naked in front of TV cameras. The only thing holding her back is her self-esteem. With the help of hairdressers, make-up artists and a load of disingenuous patter about how great the girl is now looking, he persuades her to sway down a catwalk in lingerie and pose on a chair like...
3 comments
Read more