By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed July 9, 2014
Most characters on Fox’s “24” are either up to no good or trying to save the world. Jack Bauer’s breathlessly urgent demands define the dramatic appeal.
Then there's Chloe O'Brien. Since season three, actress Mary Lynn Rajskub has given her computer whiz character a quirky sensibility, a perpetual scowl and a sardonic attitude that made her an immediate fan favorite.
Her natural comedic drive helps. She's worked sitcoms. She's been on sketch shows. And she's now a regular stand-up comic, returning to Laughing Skull Lounge this weekend, a year after her first visit. (Here's my interview with her a year ago.)
“I honestly think it’s too soon for me to come back,” Rajskub said by phone earlier this week. “I was just there. But I had a really great time. I love the club so much.”
She’s a story-telling conversationalist on stage: “It’s a lot of silly personal stories. Me having worked at the Hard Rock Cafe, going to the Playboy mansion. I talk about my son and husband a lot.”
And she’ll bring up “24” — of course. How could she not?
Rajskub was thrilled the show came back this summer after a four-year hiatus. And Chloe has been as crucial as ever to the plotline, which concludes after 12 episodes this Monday. The show has run in real time the first 11 hours but will leap forward for the finale.
"The 12 episodes worked really really well," she said. "It made the story streamlined and compact."
Since the end of season eight in 2010, Chloe has gone rogue, no longer a loyal government employee. Her son and husband had been killed in a car accident. Embittered, she signed on as a hacker with a Wikileaks-type leader named Adrian who evokes real-life whistle-blower Julian Assange. She opened the series in London, captured by the CIA, who are torturing her for information about her boss.
"I knew she'd have some sort of evolution," Rajskub said. "I thought it was pretty clever. They had me start out being in this awful place. It was fun to play. You get this adrenaline rush. You get to release all this pent-up emotion. It's very strange."
Fortunately, Jack Bauer arrives to save her and uses her to help him save London from terrorists who possess a special device that enables them to over-ride U.S. drones and direct them at population centers in London. She assists him to disable the drones, then leaves with Adrian. But she soon discovers Adrian helped design the over-ride device and gets it back from a CIA connection. He wants to give the device capabilities to everybody, Edward Snowden style, rending all weapons systems open source. Chloe isn't exactly thrilled with Adrian's ideas but reluctantly goes along with him.
Unfortunately, during this past Monday's episode, when Adrian arrives at his offices, he finds all his workers dead. Who's there? Cheng, the evil Chinese terrorist who had tortured Jack Bauer a few seasons ago, ready to take back his over-ride device. He had paid Adrian to develop it and didn't want Adrian to just give it away. He forces Chloe to free up the device before killing Adrian. Cheng then has a U.S. sub shoot missiles at a Chinese ship in hopes of starting a war between the two countries.
Cheng doesn't kill Chloe, thinking she is still useful to him. He is so nonchalant about her, he doesn't tie her up. Whoops. She grabs a pipe that just happens to be sitting in the van and starts creating mayhem. She manages to get out, tumbling down a long hill in the dark. Cheng's henchmen can't find her and eventually leave her behind. She wakes up near the end of the hour, still alive, at the bottom of the hill.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
"It made me want to sign up for stunt classes," she said. "The stunt guys make it look great."
With the finale coming up, she couldn't say what happens to Chloe or whether she even lives to see another day, so to speak. But I doubt they'd kill Chloe any more than they'd kill Jack.
"She and Jack have this real relationship," she said. "She is a bit under his command when he needs her. Although she was part of this Wiki-leaks organization, she was very quickly drawn back into helping Jack. It's not an abusive relationship. It's just strange, a little twisted."
Chloe's tech skills are as sharp as ever though her worldview has gone dark - and so has her hair and make up.
"I was really into it at first," she said. "Now I"m over it. I'm over the dark, short hair. I'm done with this look. It's something I would never have done in my real life."
She even had the question: "Why am I wearing so much eyeliner?" If anything, she said, it evokes Daryl Hannah of "Blade Runner."
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
And taking a suggestion from a friend off Facebook, I mentioned Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees, which is even closer:
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Marshall Chiles, who runs the Laughing Skull, said he booked her again because she did really well last year. "It was the first time she had headlined on the road last year," he said. "She had been in LA opening 20-minute sets around the city. We did a show together in Santa Monica and started talking. She had heard about Laughing Skull. When she came, we got along. We worked out together and hung out a lot. She is really funny and really nice. She's one of my favorite people. She's a real person. You feel like you're talking to her as if you're good friends."
I agree. She is fun to talk to.
Get a taste of her here on "The Soup" last week:
And here she is on Comedy Central:
The Benson Interruption
Get More: Watch More Stand-Up.
Comedy
Mary Lynn Rajskub
8 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m., 10:30 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m., 10:30 p.m. Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday
$20-$30 depending on the night
Laughing Skull Lounge
878 Peachtree St., Atlanta
www.laughingskulllounge.com, 1-877-523-3288
On TV
"24," 9 p.m. Monday, July 14, Fox (season finale)
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