In the penultimate episode of 24, a friend said to Jack Bauer, "Listen, Jack, I sure hope you know what you're doing, because this path you're on, there ain't no coming back from it."
To which Jack Bauer replied: "I wasn't planning on coming back."
We always sort of suspected as much, didn't we?
Nonetheless, whether Jack meant it literally or figuratively remains to be seen, what with a feature film possibly in the offing.
This much we know: 24 is done as a TV series as of Monday, May 24 with a two-hour finale on Fox and Global.
The series, which debuted in November 2001, obviously catapulted Kiefer Sutherland — who plays Jack — from second-tier celebrity status to top-tier celebrity status. But the truth is, 24 stopped being a top-tier "buzz" show a couple of seasons ago.
Case in point: 24 and Lost (ABC, CTV) have been getting virtually the same ratings in Canada over the past couple of months (between 1.2 million and 1.5 million viewers per week). But way more attention has been paid to the series finale of Lost coming up on Sunday than the series finale of 24 approximately 24 hours later.
While the overall quality of 24 has remained fairly high, we think Jack's high-intensity adventures just kind of wore people out.
Watching 24 through the years has been emotionally exhausting, with Jack continuously foiling one threat just as another begins. And while everyone probably had a different breaking point, many people who still call themselves fans of 24 have stopped watching on a must-see, week-by-week basis.
The most innovative aspect of 24, of course, has been its real-time approach of presenting the story in a sequential, hour-by-hour format. We asked executive producer Howard Gordon if he is comfortable with that being 24's legacy, or if he would prefer the legacy to be something else.
"I think you're right, one of the legacies of the show, and perhaps the most important one, is the revolutionary concept," Gordon said. "But I think the legacy of the show also, having been here from the beginning, is that we just never let go of the reins and truly never let down our guard.
"I'm just proud of the effort that everybody put into the show, from our end creating the show. I think the audience stayed with us, by and large. And that is a measure of the fact that we kept the story interesting.
"The legacy of the show, too, we certainly seemed to have an interesting dance with the culture and with our society and with the world after 9/11. So I think we very much were part of the first decade of this century, we played a role in it somehow, and I think that legacy is a significant one as well."
So as of the episode earlier this week, Jack seemed to be on a moral collision course with President Taylor (Cherry Jones) while at the same time battling an unspecified bleeding wound.
Do you think Jack could die?
There is the movie to worry about.
Unless the movie is a prequel, God forbid. As Homer Simpson once said with unwitting sarcasm, "EVERYBODY loves prequels."
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