Day Four
Fired from CTU because of his heroin addiction, Jack found himself embroiled in an attempt to save the lives of the Secretary of Defense James Heller (Bauer’s new boss) and his daughter Audrey (Bauer’s new squeeze). The main baddie was terrorist Habib Marwan, who gained control of America’s nuclear arsenal and shot down Air Force One. This led to dodgy VP Charles Logan taking control of the nation as the new President Keeler was in a coma.
Logan’s incompetence saw target Bauer instead of the terrorists, but soon David Palmer and his advisor Mike Novich were brought back to call the shots behind the scenes. Marwan was eventually thwarted – but at a huge cost to Bauer.
He hacked off Audrey by making medics save the life of a terrorist holding vital information – instead of fighting to keep her wounded ex-husband alive. Then, Bauer was forced to fake his own death to avoid the US government killing him to pacify China after a botched mission in their consulate while trying to track down a suspect.
Day Five
A major shock kicked off proceedings as David Palmer was shot dead by a sniper in front of his brother (and future President) Wayne. Michelle Dessler was also killed in a car bomb that almost finished off Almeida too. Proper carnage folks!
Fortunately, Chloe O’Brien dragged Jack Bauer out of hiding and it looked like some Russian terrorists (led by hammy Brit thesp Julian Sands no less!) with some nerve gas were to blame for the day’s events. CTU came under gas attack and Edgar Stiles died right in front of her close friend Chloe.
Bauer then discovered that President Logan was behind the events, along with former CTU Agent Christopher Henderson. The latter killed Tony Almeida, but later bit the bullet courtesy of Jack. (Fans were a bit baffled that Tony didn’t get the ‘silent clock’ treatment on the end credits).
Logan was discreetly arrested after his wife helped to plant a listening device on him. However, the Chinese caught wind of Bauer’s miraculous resurrection from the dead and kidnapped him in the final moments of the season, whacking him on board a ship bound for the Orient.
Day Six
A bedraggled Bauer returned to US shores after nearly two years in a brutal Chinese prison, after President Wayne Palmer negotiated his release. 24 came close to totally jumping the shark when Jack’s brother Graem and father Philip turned up and revealed themselves to be highly implicated in an evil plot to sell some technology to the Chinese that they could use to kickstart a war between the US and Russia. Guess which one of those Bauers make it out alive?
Scattered in amongst this mess were Jack’s successful attempts to retrieve several ‘nuclear suitcases’ planted by terrorist mastermind Abu Fayed, although he was forced into killing reliable CTU Agent Curtis Manning in order to stop him from killing ‘friendly’ terrorist Hamri Al-Assad.
Day Seven
A feature length prologue called ‘Redemption’ set up Day Seven nicely as Bauer team up with an ill-fated buddy (played by Robert Carlyle) to save innocents from the brutal regime of General Juma in the fictional African country of Sangala. In the season proper, Bauer was put on trial for his torturous methods and CTU was disbanded by a government now spearheaded by President Allison Taylor. More importantly, Tony Almeida made a jaw-dropping return!
At first Tony was a bad guy who was part of a group of evil dudes who brought America to its knees by taking over the air traffic control and threatening to down all the planes unless America stops plans to assist in Sangala.
Then it emerged that Tony was working undercover for a top secret version of CTU run by Bill Buchanan and Chloe. Juma stormed the White House and Bill sacrificed himself to save the day, then Angelina Jolie’s dad Jon Voight took centre stage as the head of Starkwood – a private defence company who had possession of several canisters of a lethal pathogen.
All of a sudden, Tony turned bad again and pinched a canister so he could get nearer to Starkwood baddie Alan Wilson – the man who ordered the murder of his wife Michelle Dessler years earlier. Jack, who had hit it off with FBI Agent Renee Walker, was exposed to the pathogen and faced certain death – so up popped his daughter Kim who (yawn) became caught up in another kidnapping subplot.
Jack prevented Tony from killing Wilson and refused stem cell treatment to save his life, which hung in the balance as the clock ticked over to signal the end of Day Seven. We’ll soon find out what Day Eight has in store for Mr Bauer…
