The clock stops ticking for Jack Bauer and ‘24′ Monday

Whether it’s Los Angeles, New York or Washington D.C., you can get from one destination to another in 20 minutes or less, no matter what time of day or geographic inconvenience. Your cel phone battery never dies. And you never need to eat, drink or sleep.

But if Jack Bauer is in town, assassinations, terrorist attacks, nuclear bombs and kidnappings follow way too often. And forget about being president. Or a friend of Bauer’s. Or God forbid, someone he falls in love with. That’s a ticket to the morgue.

"24" leaving now

And yes, all this happens in “real” time, a gimmick that seemed absurd to pull off. Yet it has lasted eight seasons, ending in a likely river of blood Monday night in a two-hour finale on Fox.

"It could have fallen apart," said Mary Lynn Rajskub in an interview Thursday. As Bauer's only major confidante who hasn't died, her character Chloe went from obnoxious CTU computer programmer to head of the operations this season."It turned into this wonderful thing… Viewers can feel that it's challenging. You know it's on this time clock. How are they going to make it work? How are they going to make this fresh again? They keep it exciting."

Indeed, Kiefer Sutherland's intense take on Bauer, the head-turning plot twists and sleek production have all kept the fans around. His torture techniques were celebrated and questioned.

"The timing was great," said Paul Zehe, a 38-year-old Atlanta realtor who has watched the show since season one, soon after 9/11. "He was the guy getting it done. He was the guy you wanted to see to deal with terrorism. We're always hoping there's a real Jack Bauer out there."

Sharon Goldmacher, head of an Atlanta marketing firm communications 21, dubs Bauer "a good bad guy. He's heroic but still human. You feel all the emotions he's feeling."

Bauer lately has amped up the violence after his lover Renee Walker caught a deadly sniper bullet. He killed a CTU mole in cold blood. He knifed a Russian operative to death to get a phone SIM card he swallowed. During the most recent episode, he kidnapped and threatened a slimy ex-president, slamming the wimpering Nixonian look-a-like repeatedly into a chain-link fence and choked him unconscious once he got the info he needed.

And he himself has hardly gone unscathed. Just this season alone, he’s been tortured, shot and knifed. He enters the final two hours bloodied, like a “wounded animal,” as one bad guy called him.

Executive producer Howard Gordon, in a media phone conference earlier this month, said the show is effectively a tragedy. "We tried a couple of different endings for size," he said. "One thing we tried and didn't work was happily ever after for Jack… We leave him in a compromised place morally, ethically and emotionally."

But not dead. A movie is being planned.

– That was the column that runs Monday.

Here's an interview I didn't get into the story: Tara Bennett, who has written four officially sanctioned books about "24″ covering the first six seasons. She's been on set with the actors and producers numerous times. (Check them out on Amazon.)

“The show is remarkably constrained by its conceit,” she said. “You don’t have that much space to be able to play around with. So you end up with the repetition of moles and interrogation techniques. They  don’t have opportunities to break free. ”

“They literally didn’t think they could get past seven episodes in the first year. They didn’t think they’d get a renewal. Every show is a marathon. As writers, they really get exhausted by the last third of the season. I see how exhausted they get. I really saw the last two years how difficult it was to come up with ideas.”

Her take on Kiefer: “It’s a perfect marriage of character and actor. He was up to the demands. He plays angst and grief so well. If you go back to season one. He was more the every man. He has evolved into a superhero. He’s become the citizen we want protecting us. We admire his sacrifice. We admire his patriotism and unfailing dedication to the mission. The man is really a loner aside from Chloe. She’s the only thing that connects him to humanity. Audiences have really connected with that. People don’t like it when he’s weak. They don’t like it when he cries. They like Jack with a gun making very black and white calls. It defines the character.”