No fun allowed ‘24’/7

When “24” debuted in 2001, critics thought it might be too soon after Sept. 11 for a show about a crisis-bedeviled counterterrorism unit. Then they worried that the series’ real-time premise couldn’t remain both exciting and plausible for 24 episodes. (They forgot that when a show is exciting enough, no one cares if it’s plausible.) This season, the fourth, provoked complaints about stereotyping Middle Easterners.

Meanwhile, the show’s become a bona fide hit, without anyone pointing out the real menace to “24” and its viewers: tedium. We’ve spent the better part of four very long days with Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer, and it’s become obvious that he’s a boring man, surrounded by boring people. Yes, “24” has the plot twists and revelations that make it a weekly hit of narrative crack. But the series utterly lacks those charms that cause your thumb to hover over the remote when you find an old “X-Files” episode. I remember these people, you think, looking at Mulder or Scully. I like them. I’d kinda like to hang out with them again.

No one wants to hang with Jack -- except for the drippy, earnest female who serves as his designated rescue object each season. He is a man of only two moods: angry urgency and gloom. He is self-righteous and self-pitying, a dreary combo not unknown among American action heroes. But even the most cardboard of those creations has something Jack doesn’t: Jack Bauer has no -- absolutely no -- sense of humor.

Now, some people will protest that jokes have no place in a sleepless chase after a nuclear bomb or a killer virus that threatens to devastate Los Angeles. Those people are probably accountants. Anyone who’s ever worked at a pressure-cooker job dealing with matters of life and death -- cops, soldiers, emergency medical technicians -- will testify that humor comes with the territory. The humor may be pitch-black, but it’s funny, and necessary. That’s why it’s called comic relief.

You can bet that at the real-world version of “24’s” CTU (Counter-Terrorism Unit), the people -- if they’re any good at their jobs -- make a lot more wisecracks. Bauer’s co-workers, alas, are every bit as robotically humorless as Jack himself. They have no slang, no in-jokes and no esprit de corps.

Of course, these are federal agents fending off catastrophe. Yet they always find time for a fresh opportunity to furrow their brows. What better moment than on the verge of multiple nuclear-reactor meltdowns to to insist that your boyfriend tell your dad about your secret romance?

The same motifs appear over and over. Which sleekly tailored and castratingly ambitious female official will screw up Jack’s investigation this time? Who is about to be accused of not “functioning at 100%” because of some emotional blow and will have to shout “I can do my job!”?

And then there’s Jack, who, despite all his soul-searching about the toll on his private life, is clearly in his element barking orders and commandeering vehicles. What other job entitles you to get called a hero for behaving like a jerk? More to the point, who wants to spend yet another day with this guy?