Every Jack Needs His Chloe

24: Day Six
FOX
THE NATIONAL POST

The Bauer And The Glory

Mary Lynn Rajskub doesn't think Chloe O'Brian should ever die. She says so in a 24 fan magazine. She's biased, of course, since she plays Chloe, but most followers of the show would agree with her. She's the first funny character the show has had since George Mason, in the second season, forestalled a death from plutonium poisoning by crashing an airplane into the desert for the public good. George was a wisecracker, and the closer he got to his end the wittier he became. Chloe's humour is the opposite, and maybe more durable; earnest and tactless and incredibly good at her job, she doesn't know she's funny. There are, I know, some Chloe-haters out there who don't get the joke either, but the rest of us have found her increasingly delightful. I can forgive the show for killing off George, Tony, Michelle and even Edgar (though it's hard); like its hero, Jack Bauer, it has to keep up a reputation for ruthlessness. But I would never forgive it if anything happened to Chloe.

Compared to its Fox stablemate Prison Break, 24 has been short on memorable characters, but Chloe has entered into the culture: if not witty in herself then the cause of wit in others, even in other fictional stories. There's a character in Little Miss Sunshine, identified in the credits as Pageant Assistant Pam, who has to marshal the beauty contestants in the movie's last frantic section. We don't get a clear look at her to begin with, but then someone gives her an order on her walkie-talkie and she snaps back "copy!" And just as we're thinking how much that word and that voice remind us of Chloe, she comes into full view and it is Chloe. Or at least it's Rajskub, an accomplished comedienne even when not playing Chloe or - as in this case - knowingly ripping off Chloe.

Anyway, Chloe cant die because she's Jack's love interest. I realize that this on past evidence is not something a lady would advertise when buying life insurance, but maybe I phrased it the wrong way around. Jack is her love interest, even if she doesn't fully realize it; at all events she hero-worships him ("don't worry," she remarked insouciantly last season while watching him take out the opposition, "he's good at this") and will do anything for him. This is just as well because he's always asking her to do things for him, some of them dangerous and most of them borderline illegal. They're a team, even if they're rarely together, what with her being mostly in the CTU office and him out in the field. She makes him possible; it's her prowess at the computer (she carries geekiness to the point of genius) that allows him to make full use of his toys. As good as he is with old stuff like guns, Jack's real weapon is the multitasking cellphone.

And either he has a better model than anybody else or he's more resourceful at using it.

Here he joins hands with a long line of action heroes. They've all combined their native strengths with the fanciest hardware. Beowulf went out to fight the monster Grendel equipped with the latest thing in axes. Achilles started with the unfair advantage of being invulnerable (save his heel) but his thoughtful mother still had him fitted out with a new suit of armour before he went to smite the Trojans. The 20th century cheapened the tradition by equipping its superheroes with superpowers - which, cheating still more, they had to change identities to wield. But the old ways made something of a comeback with James Bond, who started his later cinematic adventures by picking up gadgets from John Cleese. (A dubious source, I'd say.)

The Bond of the new Casino Royale seems to have been influenced by Bauer. He's less suave than in his previous incarnations; he even declares, admittedly at a moment of exceptional weariness, that he doesn't care whether his Martini is shaken or stirred. Bauer of course is notorious for never tasting a drop or taking a bite during any of his day-long vigils. More crucially, the new James breaks the rules, infuriating his long-suffering superiors in the way that Jack has been doing since hour one of Day One.

Bond still hasn't taken on Bauer's weltschmerz; he actually had premonitory traces of it in Casino Royale the book, but his author dropped the idea thereafter. Jack does have doubts, mainly stemming from the death of his wife at the end of Season 1. However well Kiefer Sutherland plays him, though, it's never been possible to take them seriously; they're just gestures. I see from that same 24 fanzine (honest, boss, my kids brought it into the house, I just happened to peek at it) that we'll be meeting Jack's father, regrettably not played by Donald Sutherland, even though Jack himself has always seemed like one of nature's orphans. Here 24 seems in its turn to be taking a leaf from Prison Break, whose brother-protagonists suddenly acquired a dad, and as suddenly lost him.

I see too that the late President Palmer's brother will now, in a sort of alternate-universe tribute to Bobby Kennedy, have succeeded him in the White House. Wayne Palmer was always a more corruptible figure than his saintly sibling, so he may also be more fun. David Palmer was always a boring character, and in the first season, he seemed to come not only from a different plot but from a different script. And when the two did finally meet up at CTU it was unfortunate, if I may quote a young lady of my acquaintance, that the president brought his dialogue over with him. I don't suppose there's much chance we'll see any more of the disgraced President Logan or, sadly, of his feisty disillusioned wife, a role in which Jean Smart set the bar for acting higher than it's ever been raised in this show before. I wonder if she ever shacked up with Aaron, the White House security man, whom she plainly adored and to whom she came a lot closer than Chloe ever has to Jack. I hope at least that he comes back, if only for sentimental reasons. Did you know that -- apart from Jack, Palmer (deceased) and Tony (ditto) -- he's the only character to have figured in every season to date? Solid and hulking, his immovable earpiece standing out in stark relief from his hairless dome, he has progressed over five years from virtual walk-on to untrumpeted hero. I don't recall ever seeing an interview with Glenn Morshower, who plays him, but I'll bet he doesn't think Aaron, who's had some near-misses, should ever die. Even if he does, I don't.