When
it came to picking villains, the writers of 24 tended to run out of imagination
shortly after deciding the latest terrorist mastermind's nationality. Vengeful
Serbians, vengeful Englishmen, vengeful Middle Eastern terrorists, incredibly
smug Turkish terrorists (you do have to have a soft spot for Harbib Marwan, and
his Sauron-like levels of persistence in trying to blow up America), vengeful
thinly-disguised Chechens, vengeful unspecified African country...ans, and
of course lots and lots of powerful American WASP business and political types.
Most of them were just fodder for Jack Bauer's deadly thighs; according to tried and tested formula, many apparent string-pullers were exposed as mere pawns of the real uranium-toting Dark Lord of Explosions around the current season's half-way mark. But out of this endless pageant of thugs and rebels and assassins, one face stands out. One slimy, shifty, insidious individual, who made a bigger mark than any other villain in the show's history, apart from perhaps the ever-hissable Nina Myers. I speak of course of the best Bad President America never had, the spectacularly Nixonesque Charles Logan.
The character was introduced as a pretty standard archetype, a vacillating inept coward elevated beyond his abilities. After Season 4's blandly heroic President Keeler (my memory of minor 24 characters can be scarily good sometimes) was left comatose by one of menace-of-the-moment Harbib Marwan's eighty different terror plots, his quivering Vice President was launched into the Oval Office, and started making screamingly daft decisions so quickly that he had to call in blandly heroic ex-President Palmer to re-kindle some of the old Jack/Palmer magic and save the day. Needless to say, he wasn't very interesting.
But by Season 5, Logan had settled into his unexpected Presidency and even won re-election on his own merits, gaining character development as a skilled and capable politician with a history of self-doubt and a poor track record of dealing with country-destroying crises (which to be honest would doubtless apply to most of us). The writers made Logan a little more intriguing and believable than his square-jawed predecessors, inching the viewers towards being a little more sympathetic to his travails and reminding us that being President in the 24-verse would be really super-difficult and that the upper echelons of government probably wouldn't split evenly between the Competence Captains and the Stupid Bureaucrats being stupid on purpose.
And then we found out he was behind the terrorist ring his government was trying to stop.
As a twist, it was insane, ridiculous, what would have been a shark-jumping moment if Jack Bauer hadn't filleted the shark and mounted its head on the wall many episodes ago. I dimly recall there was some semi-plausible motivation brought up for the President's bold strategy for securing re-election, possibly involving petrol prices. But it instantly, decisively propelled Logan from "weak-chinned placeholder for the next POTUS" to "unpredictable Master of Lies" and for that it is to be saluted. For the rest of the season, the usual Bauer antics were accompanied by a riveting sub-plot of Logan's efforts to cover up his part in some serious atrocities, justifying it with sly sophistry along the way, and countering the efforts of his disturbed, horrified wife to expose him along the way. You could almost admire the sheer audacity of his tight-rope walking act of trying to play the role of President while concealing his villainy; it was honestly gutsy stuff for a character introduced as a standard-issue coward.
He naturally met his downfall in the end, but spun his defeat into a cushy house arrest, his true nature kept secret from the fragile psyche of the American public. He even staged a comeback in 24's final season; having wrought more devious shenanigans than a thousand Nixons, he was STILL determined to secure his political legacy at any cost.
Compared to that level of commitment to the political dark arts, nuking Los Angeles starts to seem relatively tame.
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