10 Reasons Why the “24” Finale Provides Useful Survival Tips

1. Don’t get an office with a view of the city.

  Although you might enjoy getting up close and personal with smog, and pigeons who apparently consume a lot of fiber, it’s really not a good idea to have one or more office walls composed of plate glass. This allows very bitter men with high-powered rifles to both torment you with rude wireless calls as well as potentially take your life in a non-pleasing manner.

  Instead, you should arrange for your office to be securely located somewhere in the interior of the building or, better yet, in a bunker far below the surface of the earth. This is especially important if your daily activities include killing innocent people and/or lying to the President. People don’t take these things lightly, and there could be retribution.

  On a related note, if you stupidly took the glass-walled office anyway, and you have just survived a narrow brush with death by rifle-fire, you should immediately vacate the office as soon as possible. Don’t stand there and breathe heavily, mopping your sweaty face with a fine-linen handkerchief that you probably stole from one of your victims. Run like the wind and fill out some change-of-address cards.

2. Don’t get a job transporting lying government workers in fancy limos.

  Despite the fact that you are just innocently steering the vehicle and not an actual participant in the deadly cover-up, your life will be considered expendable if enraged people show up with guns and ugly masks, especially if you do something careless like ask one of the thugs why they are being so pushy. You will be mowed down and left to bleed, with no one even bothering to check on you because your name was not in the opening credits and your survival is not critical.

  If times are tough, and the chauffer gig is the only thing you can find, you should at least take preventative measures to ensure your safety. If hooligans approach the vehicle with the apparent intent of foul play, always remember that guests should be treated cordially. Let them do what they want, offer hors d’oeuvres, and discreetly point out exactly where they can find their victim. It doesn’t matter if your passenger might take this as a sign of rudeness. Since he will be dead within 15 seconds, you will most likely not get a tip, and perhaps the still-living hoodlums might need a ride somewhere. Hey, you gotta pay the light bill somehow.

3. Don’t trust the Russians.

Yes, we’re supposed to be all politically correct these days, leaving the Cold War behind us and such, but things aren’t working out as planned. Somebody somewhere didn’t get a memo and the Russians, despite whatever they are calling their country this week, are still mean people with violent tendencies and surnames that have too many consonants. They will kill people you love, especially if you’ve just had sex, and they will feel no remorse whatsoever. Delete them from your Facebook friends immediately.

4. Don’t work as an assistant for busy political figures.

  While you might get to experience a few exciting moments, such as random gunfire at Starbuck’s or running through old subway tunnels while people yell into walkie-talkies, most of your time will be fairly boring. You have to take calls from people with strange accents, and then go interrupt your employer while she’s playing bridge with the Sultan of Brunei. You have to get her a glass of water when she needs to take tranquilizers after threatening foreign heads of state. And you have to look at her with sad disappointment when she violates two-thirds of the Constitution with one aggressive conversation.

5. Stay away from vending machines.

  It’s not just the threat of a sugar coma that you have to worry about with these things. Apparently they also serve as tracking devices, capturing your scurrying image and then broadcasting it to the laptop of horny CTU workers named after dead folk singers. (Let’s not dwell on how Arlo managed to find that one fleeting snapshot of Jack, accomplished in roughly 37 seconds, despite the fact that all known frequencies have been jammed in the entire city. Never dig very deep when it comes to “24” logic. Madness lies in that direction.)

6. Be aware that your ears can be considered snacks by certain members of society.

  This should be fairly understandable. No further detail is necessary.

7. Don’t go near any of the United Nations buildings.

  Apparently they are not very safe, judging by the sheer number of unpleasant things which took place in or near these structures this season. No wonder we don’t have more peace treaties signed in the world. The delegates are too scared to show up, what with all the breaking and entering and dying and poor room service. And the Russians. Stay at the Holiday Inn instead, where death is not surprising and the press won’t bother you.

8. Learn how to drive a drone.

  These are magnificent flying devices which allow you to gather intel about anyone in the city, regardless of what they are doing, where they are doing it, or how many protective measures they’ve taken to stop you from seeing any of this. Oh, and these things can shoot missiles as well. (Which sort of begs the question: If they can do all this, why do we even need CTU? But I digress.) This is not your grandpa’s Hindenburg.

9. Learn how to sew.

  You never know when you might suffer a serious injury that requires your skills with a needle and thread, although in a pinch you can always use weaponry to make other people stitch you up. In any case, once the sewing is done, you will instantly feel better and stop bleeding immediately, allowing you to continue with the head-butting and the single-handed decimation of an entire police force using only a crouton and some dental floss.

10. If you want to end a series on a perfect note, have Jack Bauer on a giant video screen, tenderly saying goodbye to Chloe.

  Perfect, right?

  (And you’re lying if you say you didn’t cry.)

  End trans.

10 Reasons Why “24” Is Just Like the Place Where You Work

1. Most of the people in the office don’t have anything important to do.

Despite several redesigns of the CTU headquarters over the years, one thing has remained the same: There are always tons of people hanging around even though you don’t know what purpose they might serve. They sit and stare at monitors or fiddle with high-tech props that are not actually plugged in. They never say anything, and they certainly never come running up to any of the serious employees, excited about some critical piece of intel they have just discovered about this week’s terrorist.

Meanwhile, the same three or four people have to carry the workload for everybody else. Jack is running out the door every five minutes to bring down a jetliner using nothing but a rubber band and some pebbles, but these boring and useless people never lift a finger. A disillusioned maniac has just snuck into the building with a single drop of poison that will annihilate the entire staff? The losers don’t care. They keep surfing the internet for porn and let somebody else kill the bad guy. Then they file a grievance with the union about the distracting noise caused by the killing.

2. The Human Resources department is completely worthless.

Okay, first there was CTU’s hiring of Kim Bauer back in the day. That girl could barely figure out how to use an ATM machine or escape from cougars, but suddenly she’s a well-qualified, crime-fighting data technician? I don’t think so. Yet there she is, pounding on a keyboard and decrypting files while Daddy is in the other room torturing prisoners with a ballpoint pen.

Anyway, the shining example of HR ineptness this season can be found in one “Dana Walsh”. Here we have a woman who had a previous life as “Jenny Scott”, a country gal who did something naughty with her boyfriend that resulted in jail time. Once released from the slammer, Jenny/Dana apparently bought a new wardrobe and filled out some change of address cards, and that’s all it took for her to get hired by CTU.

Are you kidding me? CTU is supposedly on the cutting edge of information technology, where Chloe can hit one button on her keyboard and instantly know exactly what some villainous Russian had for breakfast 37 years ago, but they can’t figure out that Dana was involved in criminal activity on the dirt roads of Yahooville? Please.

3. Some people get away with taking really long lunches.

Dana, or Jenny, or whatever name she is going by this week, is able to slip away from the office and drive to a remote pond in the hopes of confronting her ex-boyfriend who doesn’t understand that she has different needs these days. There are NO remote ponds in New York City, so you know this girl had to hoof it over to Jersey. That takes time.

Oh, and she’s joined by her NEW boyfriend, who also works at CTU. (This would be Freddie Prinze, Jr, he of the weird pancake makeup that results in him looking like an extra in one of the lesser Anne Rice novels.) Both of them are busy killing people and shoving them in the remote pond, which is clearly not company policy. They need to quit screwing around and get back to CTU so they can answer the phones.

4. Upper management is clueless.

We go through this every season. Some big wig doesn’t understand that Jack Bauer ALWAYS knows what he’s talking about. So we have to plod through scenes where Jack’s advice or talents are questioned, thus resulting in carnage on the subways or a needless delay in the saving of the planet. Eventually the loser leaders finally come to their senses, but not before a considerable number of actors have dropped out of the opening credits.

5. Annoying, sexist people always sit in the cube next to you.

Arlo. Enough said.

6. Employee parking sucks.

What’s up with the odd, underground main entrance into CTU? This is a busy place, but there’s only two parking spaces in a stupid tunnel that makes no logistical sense. And really, if you study this set piece, there’s no way for people to actually leave this area without backing up. Throw Kim Bauer into the mix, and nobody’s getting out alive until she remembers her lines.

Of course, there’s that OTHER parking lot we’ve seen, monitored by a questionable guard that apparently doesn’t think twice about unwashed thugs rolling up in a Grateful Dead van. The sky’s the limit over here, you can do whatever you want, including blackmail your ex-girlfriend into helping you rob an evidence warehouse while your messed-up buddy kills someone with a baseball bat. Good times.

7. The cafeteria blows.

These people are working around the clock, just trying to save the country so they can go home and watch “Modern Family”, despite the fact that it‘s on a competing network. Yet nobody’s providing any nourishment. Have you ever seen any of the CTU folks eating anything? This is an outrage. At the very least there should be a vending machine. In a pinch, Jack can use the contents of this machine to create a nuke-yuh-ler device. (I’m thinking a bag of Funyons and a bottle of Grapette would do the trick.)

8. The Health Care plan is abysmal.

People are always getting sent to “medical” in this joint, but nothing good ever happens there. Chances are really strong that you will get killed by an attending physician, some random cast member will hurt you with surgical instruments, or you will decide to take your own life by shoving your ass through a glass wall. It’s not a happy place.

9. People on conference calls don’t speak clearly.

This is for you, Kiefer. I know you’ve got that sexy cool rasp going on, which is hot, but we can’t always hear what you are saying. You can still whisper from time to time, that’s fine, but when some terrorist has his gun up your butt I’m thinking you could probably manage to use ALL of your vocal cords. Just a suggestion.

(On a side note, I’d really like to know who provides the CTU folks with their cell-phone coverage. They always seem to have great reception, even if they’re huddled in a fallout shelter in Bangladesh. I can’t even get a good signal from MY service when I’m standing next to the broadcast tower.)

10. The best employees are always the least paid.

Why is Chloe still treated as a minor underling in all this mess? She should be head of CTU by this point, despite her inability to smile or her questionable social skills. She always manages to triumph of over tremendous odds, like Jack constantly yelling that we’re running out of time or her mystifying marriage to a husband that is clearly gay. Give her a promotion, even if it takes another one of those legally-questionable documents faxed from the White House.

As long as Chloe’s got access to a computer and Jack on speed-dial, the entire world is a safer place. Word.

Oh, and for the record? Cherry Jones rocks as the President.

09:59:57