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A few weeks ago, Howard Gordon, longtime producer of Fox’s real-time thriller 24, said that audiences shouldn’t expect a happy ending for its central antihero, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). I can’t imagine why anyone would have expected anything but a dour denouement for a character who was always steeped in tragedy—constantly watching colleagues and loved ones die around him, torturing leads out of suspects at the cost of his own peace, perpetually on the verge of suicide. I saw a sad conclusion for Bauer coming miles away, but I hoped for a more optimistic ending for President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), who by the final seconds of 24 is disgraced for participating in a cover-up and on the verge of submitting her resignation. Over the course of eight seasons of 24, buildings and cars and entire city blocks were destroyed by all manner of weapon. But it can be argued that nothing sustained more damage in 24 than the image of the presidency.It didn’t start out this way. The show got its first president in season two, when David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), the candidate Bauer was protecting in season one, ascended to leader of the free world. Palmer was cut from the same idealistic cloth as Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (Martin Sheen), the too-good-to-be-true head of state in The West Wing. Palmer was steady in times of crisis, firm but not a pugilist, with natural leadership skills and charisma. In season two, members of his administration tried to persuade him to mount a military response to a terrorist threat, but Palmer would not be swayed. When they attempted to overthrow him and usurp his authority—which they did, temporarily—he returned to power and forgave everyone rather than hold a grudge. In a recent interview, Haysbert talked about how fans of the show would come up to him on the street and tell him they wished he could be the real president. Then things changed.
By season three, Palmer was still as principled, but got involved in so many shady dealings that by the end of the season, he had withdrawn from his reelection campaign. His opponent, John Keeler (Geoff Pierson) was in office for the majority of season four, but the audience didn’t get much of a chance to know him—he was killed when a rogue fighter pilot shot Air Force One out of the sky. That left his sniveling vice president, Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), to graduate to the Oval Office. Logan was so antsy and possessed judgment so unsound that Palmer had to be called in to consult him. Then the state of the presidency really went downhill. Palmer was killed by an assassin, part of a grand conspiracy that could be traced back to President Logan himself. When Logan’s complicity was exposed, he was forced to resign, and was replaced by Palmer’s younger brother Wayne (D. B. Woodside). Following a lengthy hiatus imposed by the Hollywood writers’ strike, 24 returned with Taylor as president, marking the show’s first female presidency. This would have been a nice stroke, a what-if dramatization for Hillary Clinton supporters, if Taylor weren’t such a flighty nitwit. The actions that led to her decision to resign in the finale stemmed from a troubling tendency to blindly follow the most recent suggestion from one of her male advisers.
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