Jack's Kill List

Back when it was originally on the air, I had a simple test for determining whether a season of 24 was fully successful or not - did Jack kill an average of 1 person per episode, for a total of 24 over the course of the season. Unsurprisingly, no season was ever completely successful - it's an action show, but it's not THAT action-y, but a few of them got close.

It seems that the producers of 24 understood that I wasn't the only one engaging with the show that way, so they included an Easter egg in the first episode of season 9, letting the audience have a look a Jack's list of 'Confirmed Kills'-

Which is a lot of fun, but just amazingly inaccurate for two reasons. First, it's kind of hilarious that whoever was putting the list together just went by the character names from the scripts (or possibly IMDB), so we quickly come face to face with the fact that the majority of the people Jack killed either have first or last names, but generally not both. Would it really have been so hard to make up some additional names for those guys so the screen looked a little better?

Jack Est Retourner

So 24 is back! As one might well imagine, I'm fairly excited about this fact, but not so excited that I can't be bothered to offer some good-natured nitpicking of a couple of the show's weird choices. Specifically, I'd like to discuss how strange it is watching two episodes of 24 back-to-back. Despite the show's premise inviting marathon viewing, actually watching two episodes in a row brings the implausibility of the show's timeline into sharp focus.

Take, for example, the end of the first episode, wherein a hacked drone blew up an joint US/UK convoy in Afghanistan.

The Makers of Alien Raiders would like you to know...

That they’ve seen “John Carpenter’s The Thing”

Seriously, that’s the only piece of information that they would like you to have. Based on the film I just watched, it may be the only piece of information that they actually possess. How do I know this?

Let me remind you of something – You know that scene from The Thing where Kurt Russell ties everyone up in the rec room so he can prove, through his blood test, who’s an alien and who isn’t?

Cool scene, right? Yeah, I know.

So why am I reminding you of that scene? To save you the 90 minutes it would take to watch Alien Raiders. Because the film only exists to remind you of how great that scene was.

24 Deathcount Part 7: Episode 13

Finally it's another big week for Jack!

After spending two full hours in a jail cell or locked in a small room with the President, Jack was in full for tonight, gunning down four of Tony Todd's henchmen before finally killing the Candyman himself. It was incredible.

We also lost our first cast member of the season, as Bill sacrificed himself to save the president's life. Some of the tragedy of his death was undercut by how awesome it was (shooting a gun into the air, detonating a room full of explosive gas), but the loss of a long-running cast member was still sad. No Ryan Chappelle, but powerful.

24 Deathcount Part 7: Episodes 7-12

It’s been an action-packed couple of weeks here on Jack 24, so let’s get to it. Hour seven was absolutely action packed, with Jack, Tony, and the rest of the post-CTU gang attacking Dubaku’s hideout. The editing is a little confusing in this scene, with plenty of people shooting and getting shot, but I’m calling Jack’s kills using a simple rule – if a shot of Jack firing is immediately followed by a shot of a mercenary being killed, it counts. Obviously, these numbers can swing another way if one of the Mercs shows up in the hospital in a subsequent episode. In this scene, Jack killed 6 people.

Often Jack takes a little murder break after a big episode, but not this time – Jack was back in rare form, stabbing an evil Secret Service Agent before shooting the rest of Dubaku’s henchmen to death. Between the stabbing and shooting, Jack killed 5 people.

24 Deathcount Part 7: Episodes 5-6

Another light installment for Jack 24 this week. Things were pretty dry on the casting front, as well.

After killing no one at all during hour 5, Jack finally managed to kill someone in hour six, and he in part made up for the lacking quantity by killing a mercenary using an abundance of quality: In this case, by shooting him with a sniper rifle from just fifty feet away.

Tony picked up the slack with great efficiency, though, killing three people in hour six, tying him with Jack for the day so far, and reminding all of us just why we've been missing him so intensely the past two years.

Don't ever leave us again, Tony.

24 Deathcount Part 7: Episodes 1-4

While I might not have mentioned it here previously, one of the things I'm most passionate about is the television show 24 - not because of its strange, schizophrenic politics or ludicrous plot twists, but rather because Jack 24 is the only character on television that I can count on to shoot a whole lot of people through the course of a season.

Every year, I judge the relative success or failure of 24's season by two criteria: the number of people Jack kills, and the number of geek-friendly guest stars the producers cast in minor and major parts.

This season is off to a middling start - in four episodes, Jack has only killed two people, mercenaries that he cooperatively shot with an FBI agent. For a while it looked like he had been responsible for another death - he used a third Merc as a human shield to defend against bullets, but then the guy turned up alive later on.