Amph 24: The Jack Bauer Power Hour Discussion Thread - Jack is back in "Live Another Day" miniseries!!!

Cat?s Claw (2006) ? John Whitman

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*So, I was actually kind of excited about this one. Excited is probably too strong. I was interested. Veto Power was so great that I couldn?t wait to see what Whitman was going to bring to the table this time.

*Anyway, this one starts with Detective Mercy Bennett investigating a particularly vicious murder. Jack, meanwhile, is returning from a vacation with Teri.

*I don?t have Vengeance?s timeline in front of me . . . so I forget how he worked all this stuff out. But Jack & Teri are most definitely together in this one and their relationship is not entirely terrible.

*Then, as the day proper starts, Jack accompanies Kim to one of the big protests outside the G8. Apparently, she?s going to spend the day there as part of a school project. School project? Participating in a riot? I love our public school system.

*Janet York, last seen in Trinity, has a brief cameo here as part of Kim?s school group.

*So, while also ?chaperoning? Kim at the protest rally, Jack is working with Tony to try to spot a couple of terrorists, Muhammad Abbas and Ayman al-Libbi that Jack thinks are going to try to start something at the G8.

*Then Mercy Bennett shows up to spin a tale of eco-terrorists (huh, that?s a new one) who she thinks are planning something at the G8.

*On the whole, this book is pretty weak. It?s not as bad as the godawful Trinity (no pun intended!), but it?s certainly not as good as the consistently excellent Veto Power. It?s just pretty bland.

*However, in Mercy Bennett, who knows Jack through a liaison position with CTU she once worked, Whitman does have one legitimately interesting, complicated character.

*So, then Jack, on the way back to CTU to check some leads (while still ?chaperoning? Kim . . .) gets snatched off the street and taken to a basement room where he?s told by an unseen captor that his daughter has been infected with a horrendous, awful, wicked bad virus and that if Jack backs off and doesn?t investigate anything for the rest of the day, he?ll receive the antidote via messenger the next day. If he keeps poking around the G8, she?ll die quite messily.

*Okay, so I hate this right off the bat because . . . well, we?ve already talked about my opinion, shared by many of you, that the only way Day One really works as compelling drama is if it is Jack?s literal ?day one,? the first day he?s been pushed to these limits. For Day One to be as great as it needs to be, Jack needs to start the clock on Day One as a, more or less, normal guy. So, when this book series posits that Jack has actually been involved in about ten major day long ops prior to the series starting, I call them on that and say I don?t agree.

*Especially given that we?re in an incredibly compressed period here; these ops all have to take place within a confined space of some two years (or maybe a little more, if you do some retcon backflips). Regardless, the pace of all these major ops is just a bit much for me and work toward making Day One not nearly as compelling.

*There is, however, one defense that can be made and it revolves around the fact that Day One is pivotal because it is the first time that Jack?s family has really been dragged into his work in any serious way and that this therefore makes Day One more intense and life changing than any of the other ops he?s worked prior to Day One. I mean, that defense, which I do not agree with, can be made.

*Prior to this book, that is. Because in this book, as in Day One, Jack spends the entire day trying to save his daughter?s life. So this just really cheapens Day One. If it really happened, which it did not in my canon.

*Also Kim gets infected with the ol? needle to the wrist thing that Robert Ellis already used to kill Soren Ungar at the end of . . . Collateral Damage. And, it strikes me, I seem to remember hearing that this is used in the

Yeah, I have to agree, having Kim's life in danger crosses a line into "I can't accept that".

24: Day Zero (2007)

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*So, after a few novels and a comic story or two, we finally move to the medium where 24 most excels: the moving image. Specifically, we move to a series of animated ?webisodes,? sponsered by Degree Men.

*Well, perhaps this isn?t quite the medium . . .

*Also, I hate the word ?webisodes.? But not as much as I hate the word ?webinar.?

*Anyway, Day Zero was a series of eight mini-episodes, sort of animated comic format, each about two or three minutes long. Of the show cast, only Kiefer Sutherland was on board for these, but they are official 24 material.

*The original website where they aired every week for two months has long faded. But the entire series is still available on youtube.

*Okay, the music is right.

*?The following takes place between 10:17 PM and 10:27 PM.? And that is definitely Kiefer Sutherland.

*The first words of the series are spoken by an unbelievably trampy looking Nina and spoken with relish, I might add. ?So, how are things at home? It must be hard on Teri. With you in the field all the time.?

*So, they?re watching a bad guy who has an Apple computer . . .

*Anyway, this guy, Lazlo, is supposedly going to put some classified information out for sale. But then he gets killed; Jack and another agent, Devin, find his body and also a bomb that has only three minutes left on its timer.

*It is somehow hilarious to see this all done with horrible animation: ?JACK WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? ?DEVIN I SAID GET OUT OF HERE NOW THAT?S AN ORDER!?

*So, in episode two, Jack gets Jamey on the phone and he quickly does this whole thing with his thumb drive and then dives out the window just as the computer blows.

*By the way, these episodes still open with a ?Previously on 24? segment. Which is sort of hilarious when you consider that these episodes are like thirty seconds long.

*Jamey appears here.

*Boy, that is some horrible animation of people typing.

*Jamey?s expression when the bomb goes off is just hilariously forlorn. OH NOES JACK!

*So, in episode three, we open with this hilarious visual of Jack?s arm protruding skeleton-like from this massive pile of rubble.

*So, seriously, even if you don?t want to watch the entire like 16 to 18 minute series, you gotta see episode three, if only to see Jack rise from the rubble. It?s like Nosferatu or something; he just sort of ascends like Christ on the mount. It?s just horrifyingly awful animation. I was rolling on the floor.

*Okay, so, yes, I like 24. And, yes, this was cheaply produced. Still, it?s funny.

*?Are you all right?? ?Yeah, I?ll be fine.? I only dove through a plate glass window, fell two stories onto concrete and then had a mountain of rubble land on my head. Why do you ask?

*So, Mason appears and has a fairly substantial role. Tragically, not voiced by Xander Berkeley. As any fan of Berkeley knows, part of the brilliance and iconic status of the actor is his great voice.

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Tragically, also not looking like Xander Berkeley

*Back at CTU, Jack and Devin meet with George Mason while Nina searches the thumb drive for info on Lazlo?s buyers.

*And now that I think about it, it?s even less likely that the thumb drive survived all that.

*Tony appears in a split screen shot, glowering fiercely. Despite the fact that it looks nothing like Carlos Bernard, just his expression cued me in on who it was and I just burst out laughing.

*Tony enters doing his usual schtick: ?Are you all right?? ?It was Jack that barely escaped.? ?You always make him sound like some kind of superhero.?

*Hilariously, during this scene, Tony is holding a file folder in the way that *ahem* well, let?s say, you know, when you?re trying to hide something . . .

*So, in epi

You're right. It's actually not.

Chaos Theory (2007) ? John Whitman

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*So, here we go with Whitman?s swan song in the series.

*It opens, appropriately enough, as Jack murders a man in cold blood.

*So, then we jump forward three weeks for the book to begin at 8PM. Jack Bauer is in prison awaiting trial for the murder. A young agent named Peter Jiminez strongly believes that Jack shouldn?t be in prison for doing what he thought was right. Chris Henderson and Ryan Chappelle appear, arguing the other side.

*This book has a couple of strong action sequences early on. The first comes now as Jack Bauer is attacked in the prison showers.

*Not for the reason you might think though; someone?s out to kill him.. He, completely naked, takes on three fully clothed and armed assailaints in the shower room and just beats the ever living stuffing out of them. This is pretty great.

*We are introduced to Mark Kendall, a former MMA champion. He?s being forced to come out of retirement because his daughter has some kind of very bad unspecified disease and his family needs the money for her treatments. This character will, I am sure, be not at all sentimental.

*Jack?s cellmate, Ramirez, is introduced. He?s in prison because he was involved in embezzlement and when someone found out, a glass trophy ?fell on him.? Jack and Ramirez share the following dialogue: ?The DA says the trophy fell on him nine times. They say that?s not possible.? ?I never took physics.?

*Meanwhile, as Tony and Nina give a threat assessment briefing, Chappelle collapses and slips into a coma. Meanwhile, a guard at the prison is knifed.

*So, then some more gangbangers try to kill Jack and Ramirez in the library. Another great action sequence. This could be awesome if the whole book is Jack trying to stay alive in prison. That?s pretty great.

*Or, wait, Prison Break got cancelled. So maybe it wouldn?t be as great as I think it would be.

*So, after this attack, Jack demands to talk to Chappelle on the phone. He?s told that Chappelle is in a coma. He demands to talk to the warden and is told that the warden has just had a heart attack. He asks to speak to a certain guard and it just happens that this is the guard who?s just been knifed. Jack gets rather pissed and starts pounding on the walls of his cell.

*At this point, it?s obvious that the whole murder thing is just a cover and Jack is actually in prison in order to get information from Ramirez. It?s also obvious that only Chappelle, the warden and this one guard were in on this op. So, it?s obvious that someone is trying to take Jack out and whoever it is has arranged to take out all of Jack?s outside contacts.

*The book will try to maintain the mystery about this for an obnoxiously long time. Very late in the book, it?ll finally be ?revealed,? as if we didn?t know it already from the very end of chapter three.

*It?s also revealed here that Jack has named Christopher Henderson to an Internal Affairs investigator on a list of people who might have taken money.

*So, at this point, our villain arrives, a man named Zapata. He is dedicated to chaos and anarchy and throughout the book we get various flashbacks into his life, alerting us to his incredible genius and his journey to disillusionment in society. He is, not to state it too strongly, a great, great villain.

*So, Jack has no outside contacts, but obviously whoever is after him has underestimated him. Jack breaks out of prison, through a series of events so cliched I refuse to go over them for you, with Ramirez in tow.

*Zapata visits Mark Kendall, tells him that he will probably lose his fight tomorrow night and that if he does, all Kendall has to do is kill one guy and then go to prison for it and Zapata will see to it that his daughter is taken care of. Kendall blows Zapata off as a prankster, but he takes t

That cover has me wondering- why would it have to state "An Original Jack Bauer Novel". Wouldn't that be implied by the very nature of it saying 24 on the cover- a cover which shows Jack Bauer in a full body, near-full-cover shot?

Speaking of the cover, I find this to be about the most goofy pose on any of the covers. He looks like he's just remembered he left the water running in the tub or something.

He's lamenting the puddle of water he's just shot.

Head Shot (2009) ? David Jacobs

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*So, the first thing of great interest about this book is that it completely shakes up the status quo. Number one, Jack Bauer is in Colorado for the entirity of the book, having been sent there by Chappelle to chase down some leads on a mysterious Jonestown like cult that has vanished. All this happening just before a meeting of big financial movers and shakers at this place called Sky Mount, Chappelle is pretty sure someone?s going to try to hit the conference.

*So, Jack Bauer, and Ryan Chappelle in a couple of literal phoned in appearances, are the only two characters from the show that appear.

*But the thing that is really, really bizarre about this book is this: no cuts. This entire book follows Jack Bauer. There are exactly three scenes, and I?ll point them out as I come to them, that Jack Bauer is not in. Other than those three scenes, we see entirely through the prism of Jack Bauer.

*And I?m going to be having quite a few criticisms of this book, so I want to just say now that I think this idea of just staying with Jack the whole time . . . is actually a really, really great one.

*The execution is off for reasons we will talk about shortly. Well, let?s get started.

*So, this one starts at 3AM MOUNTAIN time (wooo!) as Jack Bauer and Frank Neal, an agent with CTU-DENV investigate the compound abandoned by the Zealots.

*So, New York isn?t important enough to merit a dedicated CTU, but Denver is? Weird.

*Jack muses briefly on a painful seperation from Teri that has just ended.

*So, while investigating the compound, they find a wild mountain man named Lobo who has come down to steal some food. He tells Jack and Neal a story about a green fog that fell on the camp the night the Zealots disappeared and some ?hog-faced demons? that showed up and killed everyone.

*Then a couple of gunmen show up and open fire. They manage to kill both Lobo and Frank Neal, but Jack drops one of them and then pursues the other in a lengthy chase through some curving mountain roads.

*One thing about this book. The pacing is lackadaisacal. The entire 3 AM ? 4 AM section is just Jack and Neal searching the compound and then finding Lobo. The 4 AM ? 5 AM section is entirely taken up with Jack and Neal questioning Lobo and then, as the chapter ends, the gunmen show up.

*Jack then chases the remaining gunman from 5 AM ? 6 AM.

*I mean, Cerasini, God love him, would have all this done with in the first twenty minutes of the book.

*Actually, if I can be perfectly frank, I find this slowed down pacing rather interesting and a likable decision on the part of Jacobs and the publishers.

*But then as he chases the car, Jack blows through this little town and he ends up rousting some cops and they call in time to set up a roadblock. The car Jack is pursuing manages to get through, but Jack is stopped by the block.

*We are introduced to Bryce Hardin, the head of a Mobile Response Team formed by the State Police as part of the security surrounding Sky Mount. His second in command is Cole Taggart. They are both chummy and warm and professional. Fisk, the third in command, is a psychopath. Sharon, the fourth, is a woman and has no defining characteristics.

*So, Fisk, of course, clocks Jack when he?s being arrested, so once CTU gets everything straightened out, Jack takes him out with a punch to the solar plexus. Interagency cooperation.

*I would just like to say at this point, that the prose in this book is just unbelievably awful.

*Anyway, Jack and Anne Armstrong, the head of CTU-DENV, go up to Sky Mount and meet the two security heads there, Don Bass and Larry Noone. They also meet Marion Clary, a completely annoying stereotypical old lady who loves the property.

*She explains why she loves her job at Sky Mount with the following: ?I can say without exaggeration that it?s one of the most fantastic realms in all the world.

Wow, that's worse than COPL dialogue. You almost get the sense it was written for another character whom they renamed Jack Bauer.

A tragic oversight I shall endeavor to correct in life from now on.

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You know, if they weren't already going to reboot the series, I'd half expect that to be the subtitle of Hellraiser IX.

So I'm guessing the movie will pick up with her either on trial or in jail.