Bauer, He's the Man
He might cut off your head, but he would cut off his own if needed. Out-of-breath, sweaty, piping-hot Jack Bauer, the character in 24, not Kiefer Sutherland (although he might think he is Bauer given the recent head-butting incident), is the ultimate man. Men want him; women want to be him. He has the power to pull reverse gear on a clutch.
Bauer fearlessly saves our asses over and over again. He goes undercover and gets a heroin habit (to protect his CTU ID), then grits his teeth and overcomes the addiction. No biggie. He rises from the dead. He is our contemporary Jesus. He re-re-rises.
During each hour-long episode of a 24 season, or 24-hour day, Bauer accomplishes the unfathomable: He turns bleeding-heart liberals into hard-ass patriotic Repubs. Just for that hour. Torture? Why not, we say. Kill? Yeeeees, go ahead, maim and kill! But, of course, Bauer would never do anything cruel if it weren't necessary, and that makes him especially great. He might cut off your head, but he would cut off his own if needed. He gets the job done, and the job is saving the world, applying that Benthamite principle greatest happiness (or, in this case, lives saved) for the greatest number of people.
Bauer is the hero archetype, and we route for him, no matter how inhumane or how humane we call ourselves.
But I am not yet doing Bauer justice. There is something so tender about Jack (if I may call him that): his selflessness, his open-armed willingness to die for what he believes in, his quick-fire instinct to protect, his ability to be intimate in an intimate situation, his profound unwavering love for his often-idiotic daughter Kim.
Physically, Bauer does not appear to be a big man, he is not the quintessential stud, but he is sinewy, strong, compact, like a tight fist. He moves with speed and grace. He can out-strategy the seemingly most strategic even when his mind is on the blink because he has been infected by the lethal fumes of a bio-weapon (Season 7). Bauer is a left-brained man, a logical thinker, who can, and is often called upon to (a device the writers of 24 seem partial to) remain in control of intense emotion when dealing with someone he has every justification to despise.
But Bauer is also a right-brained guy; he flip-flops when needed: loving, nurturing, intuitive, even creative (he can cobble together the necessary makeshift apparatus with whatever's on hand to accomplish any do-or-die task). He loves with a love that is more than love. And there ain't no one fucking with the ones he loves. If you want to know Bauer's Achilles tendon, it's Kim. America can take a flying fuck if you are threatening to hurt his daughter.
With women, Bauer is sweet and faithful. He looks his lovers in the eye while caressing their faces. Although, once, he did have to make a choice between two ladies, but it really wasn't his fault.
It is Bauer's admixture of toughness and vulnerability that makes him supersexy. You want to jump Bauer's bones, but gently, because he's had a long difficult day (or hard if he wants it that way). You want to hop in a helicopter and pilot away to the next batch of mayhem so you can fix things the way he does.
Actually, you are not sure what you want to do. You are befuddled like crushing schoolgirl or schoolboy by your feelings for Jack. All you know is that you can go on and on about him.
