Seattle Post-Intelligence: “The first 15 minutes of the four-hour season opener…are stuffed with a number of unexpected brutalities that suggest this may be Jack’s worst day ever.”
Here is a sneak preview of 24‘s first 15 minutes.
7:00 AM: Jack Bauer makes coffee. Terrorists have designed Jack Bauer’s coffee pot to break, causing Jack Bauer’s left hand to be scalded with third-degree burns. Jack screams and then squints into the morning sun.
7:02 AM: Jack Bauer scowls, in that uncanny Kiefer-like way. But he is unfazed. He’s seen it all.
7:03 AM: Somehow, Jack Bauer’s omelet has been replaced with C4 plastic explosive. With 30 seconds to spare, Bauer runs out the door. His house explodes in a giant conflagration that can be seen by CTU’s satellites. His lover is dead. The poor sap renting out the guest room is dead. The adopted puppy he brought from an animal shelter yesterday is dead. This time, it’s personal. But isn’t it always.
7:04 AM: Jack Bauer tries to call CTU to track the terrorists down. But he forgot to pay his cell phone bill this month. Jack Bauer growls and grabs the cell phone of a conveniently adjacent 12 year old kid, accidentally dislocating the kid’s shoulder in the process. He calls CTU and reports that there’s been “an incident.” The kid’s father is angered and proceeds to shoot Jack Bauer in the face with his bolt-action hunting rifle. It is revealed that Jack Bauer will require plastic surgery because Kiefer’s paycheck is now too high.
7:06 AM: Jack Bauer steps on chewing gum and cannot get it out of his shoe. Jack Bauer hacks off the sole with the Bowie knife he has hidden up his anus. It is all by instinct.
7:08 AM: The paramedics arrive to take the injured Jack Bauer to the hospital. While speeding on the Los Angeles freeways at 95mph, the ambulance is hijacked. The paramedics are killed, leaving Jack Bauer to take on fifteen terrorists single-handedly in hand-to-hand combat.
7:09 AM: The gurney wheels out the back of the ambulance at 95 mph with Jack Bauer and one of the terrorists fighting. Jack Bauer is stabbed fifty-three times, but the terrorist is somehow thrown off by Jack Bauer at the last minute and run over by a yellow Toyota Tercel.
7:11 AM: Jack Bauer’s right eyeball falls onto the 110.
7:12 AM: The terrorists plant a nuclear bomb in the ambulance and fly away in the helicopter.
7:14 AM: The nuclear bomb explodes, killing thousands of Angelenos. Amazingly, despite being at the explosion’s epicenter, Jack Bauer walks away with limbs still intact and, through the miracle of hack screenwriting, without radiation sickness.
7:15 AM: President Palmer arrives on the scene and gets Jack Bauer hooked up with a special White House surgeon. Jack Bauer says, “I’ll kill the bastards if it’s the last thing I do.”