Right now, two decades have passed since the action-drama 24 premiered on Fox. My wife and dog have binged the entire show with me, and people that I work with may be involved in what’s below. I’m Midwest Film Journal editor / co-founder Nick Rogers, and today, I continue the longest thing I’ve ever written. Across 205 episodes, there were numerous fantastic characters on 24. But what about those who got in and got out in an hour or less — whose time was short but somehow memorable? Thus, Midwest Film Journal presents Gone in 60 Minutes: 24’s Best One-Hour Characters. The following list takes place between 90 and 81. Rankings occur in real reverse chronology. (Many thanks to Mollie Siu-Chong for baller banner photo design, as well as the administrators and users of Fandom’s 24 Wikia for meticulous information and copious images)
90. Ben Kram
Day: 6
Hour: 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.
Performer: Spencer Garrett
Alive? Yes.
Again: Day 6 is pretty terrible, so it’s going to populate a good portion of this list’s lower half. Ben Kram is an amazing name for an abrasive bureaucratic functionary. He shows up in the middle of the night at the L.A. CTU branch from the show’s ubiquitous Division, which seemed to exist solely for the purpose of sending people to scream at CTU for its many screwups. By now, Chinese terrorists have raided the place. Lots of folks are dead. Spencer Garrett does a good job of making you hate this guy during the 60 seconds or so in which he dresses down both interim director Nadia Yassir (Marisol Nichols) and goodest-guy Bill Buchanan (James Buchanan) for leaving Nadia in charge. But this hardcase whom you believe will gum up the works in the day’s remaining three hours disappears and … leaves Nadia to keep running things. Day 6 gonna Day 6. But hey, some people were still big fans at the time.
89. Omar
Day: 6
Hour: 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
Performer: Adrian R’Manté
Alive? No.
Moles weren’t only a government agency problem. Reformed terrorists that sought more peaceful futures contended with them, too. So it was with Omar, who was feeding information to extremist Abu Fayed about the movements of Hamri Al-Assad (Alexander Siddig), Fayed’s former partner turned diplomat. By Day 6, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) torturing someone for information had become part and parcel. Al-Assad is the one who strikes the deadliest blows (including with the knife that kills Omar), making you question his whole commitment-to-non-violence thing.
88. Jamal Nasawa
Day: 6
Hour: 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Performer: Merik Tadros
Alive? Unknown.
No characters on this list are directly adjacent to Day 6’s dumbest development — that Jack apparently hails from a family of supervillains, including the revelation that actor Paul McCrane’s previously unnamed baddie from Day 5 is his brother, Graem. (Yes, that’s how it’s spelled.) It takes over so much of the season that here’s what passes for a reasonably intelligent plot turn for the day. Jamal is a CTU field agent posing as a member of an adjacent terrorist cell to get big-bad Fayed to lead CTU to the remaining suitcase nukes not yet recovered. Fayed catches on and initiates a distress signal that leads to an ambush on the truck. We never hear if Jamal survives, so he’s also the first character on this list for whom a final fate is officially unknown.
87. Karl Rask
Day: 9 (Live Another Day)
Hour: 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Performer: Aksel Hennie
Alive? No.
Compared to its eight previous days, Live Another Day operated on a compressed timeline of 12 episodes that, thanks to a final-episode time jump, still spanned 24 hours. Unsurprisingly, there are fewer notable one-and-dones, but rascally Rask is among them — an arms dealer / drug kingpin / human trafficker whose work Jack has facilitated and sabotaged over his several years off the grid. With a background suggesting a big clash, it’s a major disappointment that Rask doesn’t get more of an arc in Live Another Day. But Hennie, a go-to character actor of late, has fun as a brooding villain with ties to the season’s big bad, Margot Al-Harazi (Michelle Fairley). Plus, Rask has a suitably dramatic death, going out in a self-detonated blaze of glory rather than going into federal custody.
86. Agent Franks
Day: 7
Hour: 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
Performer: F.J. Rio
Alive? No.
Several years ago, Time estimated that America’s government would have spent upwards of $900 billion trying to save fictitious characters played by Matt Damon. What might those numbers be for efforts to protect Jack Bauer’s daughter, Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), across multiple seasons? The tally here includes whatever life insurance payout goes to the family of FBI Agent Franks, tasked by fellow law enforcement officer Renee Walker (Annie Wersching) to keep an eye on Kim and make sure she safely departs Washington, D.C. for Los Angeles. And what does Franks get for his troubles? A discourteous death in an airport bathroom at the hands of a long-haired assassin named Bob.
85. CTU SWAT Team Sniper
Day: 2
Hour: 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Performer: Manny Rodriguez
Alive? Yes.
Day One’s silent-clock final seconds are among TV’s most unforgettable. Jack sobs as he clutches the limp, lifeless body of his wife, Teri (Leslie Hope), and, by default, their unborn second child. The two were murdered by Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke), the second-in-command at CTU, Jack’s one-time lover … and a duplicitous information broker working under deep cover. Nina persisted as Jack’s pop-in nemesis across three seasons, always enjoying some sort of leverage thanks to some key bit of intel she’d acquired. Sutherland and Clarke played each of their increasingly antagonistic clashes to the absolute hilt every time. But kudos to this nameless CTU ally, who clips Nina with a bullet on Day 2 — just as she’s about to murder Jack in a crime for which President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) has been forced to preemptively pardon her.
84. Newman
Day: 1
Hour: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Performer: Randy J. Goodwin
Alive? Yes.
For all the guff given to incredulous developments in later seasons, Day One leaned really hard on Teri’s slide into amnesia — a traumatic response to her mistaken belief that her daughter, Kim, had died in a car accident. Before that, Teri is raped by a terrorist lackey to save Kim from a similar violation. Hope’s only season on 24 was filled with barbarous moments for the actress to play, reflective of the show’s general inability to write anything meaningful for women who weren’t villains until at least halfway through the show’s run. There were also never many kind people on 24, so here’s credit where it’s due to this benevolent security guard who recognizes something is wrong with amnesiac Teri after she trips an alarm at her home.
83. Anna
Day: 2
Hour: 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Performer: Susan Gibney
Alive? Yes.
On the subject of kind people, here’s another. One of Kim’s silliest endangerments in Day 2 saw her stuck with a backwoods doomsday prepper named Lonnie (Kevin Dillon). He lies to Kim about a bomb detonating in Los Angeles to get her to stay in his fallout shelter. Kim learns of Lonnie’s deception and gets a drop on him before he lets her go, claiming he was just lonely. After Kim fends off a lecherous backroad driver, Anna shows up to give Kim a lift. She also offers a helpful ear when Kim takes what Jack intends to be a farewell phone call, seeing as he’s chosen to manually pilot a nuclear bomb with an unstoppable timer to a safe detonation in the desert. Of course, Anna doesn’t actually bear witness to Kim’s last words for her father in this scenario. But more about that later on.
82. Hale
Day: 7
Hour: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Performer: Winston Story
Alive? Yes.
Plenty of everyday folks on 24 were pressed into impromptu service alongside Jack or one of his colleagues. Quite a few ate bullets for their trouble. There were also plenty of civilian security-guard screwups. But not Hale. He works security at a hospital where Sangalan terrorist Iké Dubaku (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) is undergoing treatment after serious injuries. Like so many injured terrorists on 24, Dubaku knows too much to survive, and an assassin is successfully sent to take him out. I know what you’re thinking; that’s not Hale’s fault. In fact, Hale gets Agent Walker the security-camera footage she needs and a license plate, which allows Walker to track the assassin and his compatriots. Hale is asked to help and he over-delivers. A good ‘un.
81. Bruce Margolis
Day: 3
Hour: 4:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.
Performer: JD Cullum
Alive? Unknown.
Day 3’s plotline about the extremely contagious Cordilla virus led to some disgusting gore and primo moments of panic for characters exposed to it. Bruce is one of them … and almost the classic example of an oaf who makes things so much worse by not trusting the authorities. He’s a security guard at the Chandler Plaza Hotel, where everyone has been exposed. When Bruce learns this, he pulls the fire alarm so he can sneak out and sets off a mass panic that CTU agent Michelle Dessler (Reiko Aylesworth) struggles to control. Thankfully, Bruce’s better nature prevails when Michelle encourages him to not go home, where he would infect his pregnant wife and countless others. Bruce’s official fate is unknown. But come on. He dead.
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