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 70 and 61. 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)
70. Marlow
Day: 9 (Live Another Day)
Hour: 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Performer: Mark Dexter
Alive? Yes.
69. Trevor Tomlinson
Day: 3
Hour: 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
Performer: Simon Templeman
Alive? No.
Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) barely trusted his own CTU colleagues let alone counterparts from analogous antiterrorist agencies. So when Jack put the word out to someone in a pinch, you knew they were good people. Thus, a combined respective entry here for pitch-in pals from Day 3 and Day 9 (Live Another Day). Trevor Tomlinson is an MI6 agent in Los Angeles on Day 3 who helps Jack track down terrorist mastermind Stephen Saunders (Paul Blackthorne), himself a former MI6 agent. In Live Another Day, Jack gains far more intel from Marlow, a fast-working CIA lackey whose skills Jack praises before calling, including the evidence that London CIA Station Chief Steve Navarro (Benjamin Bratt) is actually a traitor. During a thrilling sequence, Trevor is cut down in a flurry of bullets as Saunders’ crew attacks the MI6 office from a helicopter. Marlow, uh, lives another day. But in an alternate universe, they’re both multi-season allies popping in every so often to help Jack.
68. Farah Azizan
Day: 9 (Live Another Day)
Hour: 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Performer: Tehmina Sunny
Alive? No.
It’s not hard to spot the new people on an hour of 24 whom you will know will be toast before the clock’s final beeps. Farah Azizan is the sister-in-law of Simone Al-Harazi (Emily Berrington), who is a key part of her mother Margot’s plot to launch drone strikes all over London. But even terrorists have a soft spot, so Simone visits Farah to implore her and her daughter, Yasmin, to leave town before the cataclysmic attacks. At least Farah is an extremely proactive doomed person — sprinting to the phone to ring police rather than just sobbing and whimpering and also trying to get Yasmin out of there at the same time. Of course, Simone inadvertently murders Farah in the process. And even though Farah is only in one episode, Yasmin bravely carries her memory through a subsequent hour.
67. Gus
Day: 2
Hour: 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Performer: Adam Vernier
Alive? Yes.
66. Trap Door Agent
Day: 2
Hour: 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Performer: Dane Northcutt
Alive? Yes.
Day 2’s pivot to an oil-baron conspiracy about fomenting World War III and reaping great profit brought the season to a wobbly finish. One of its more successful first-half gambits, though, was just which members of the uber-rich Warner family had aligned with terrorists’ attempts to detonate a nuke in America. The fully innocent Kate (Sarah Wynter) buddied up to Jack for the day (and a bit more beyond that), but little sister Marie (Laura Harris) was all malevolence all the time … and on her wedding weekend no less! Throughout the day, Marie used her lily-whiteness to her advantage, especially as it seemed she would escape capture yet again at Norton Airfield. Enter Gus, a beefy CTU agent who lets Kate circumvent screening protocols to chase down Marie, then alerts Jack to their whereabouts so he can set up for a good debilitating shot at Marie. A-plus, Gus. A couple hours earlier, Trap Door Agent discovers a trap door in the floor of a mosque where terrorist leader Syed Ali (Francesco Quinn) has tried to escape. He helps Jack find Ali and runs a trace on a call from Kate to Marie to determine her whereabouts. Collectively, these two are a nice reminder CTU isn’t entirely staffed by a bunch of hothead incompetents.
65. Dr. Rose Kent
Day: 1
Hour: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Performer: Judith Scott
Alive? Yes.
Dr. Kent is among the few to comprehend the full measure of what Jack’s wife, Teri Bauer (Leslie Hope), endures on Day 1. Teri’s sexual assault is so violent it ruptures a cyst in her body. But that’s not the biggest development in Dr. Kent’s medical examination. It turns out Teri is pregnant with a second child. Despite Teri’s looming despair and doom, there is a certain grace and wonder that washes over her as she receives this news and contemplates the possibility that she and Jack really could start all over. It’s unspoken but unmistakable, and Judith Scott does a fine job playing off Hope’s work to neither diminish Teri’s joy nor downplay the day’s horrors.
64. Stovich
Day: 6
Hour: 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Performer: Endre Hules
Alive? No.
Pretty much every Russian on 24 is rotten. Even Russian President Yuri Suvarov (Nick Jameson) shifts from a sympathetic supporting player on Day 5 into a full-blown conspirator gunning for Jack’s head by Day 8. So it’s refreshing to see Stovich swing the other way. He’s the head of security at the Russian consulate, where Jack is detained after a very non-diplomatic encounter with Consul Anatoly Markov (John Noble). Like most things in Day 6, explaining Markov’s misdeeds would be a headache and a half. But Stovich’s own suspicions about Markov are stoked by how brutally he treats Jack, and Stovich tells Jack he will contact CTU with what he knows about the convoluted conspiracy. Wouldn’t you know it? Before he makes the call, Stovich is shot in the back of the head by Vasili, a Russian FSB agent. It’s the thought that counts.
63. Cam Strocker
Day: 2
Hour: 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Performer: Antonio David Lyons
Alive? Unknown.
Jack never wants innocent folks to die but sometimes must stand idle as they do. So it goes with Danny, a telecom repairman whom Jack must let militiamen murder to maintain his cover and stop an attack on CTU itself. (The militia is trying to disrupt the phone lines there, you see.) Cam is Danny’s colleague, whom Jack cuts loose once they’re alone believing it will cancel out all of Cam’s concerns about what’s happening. Yeah, Cam isn’t having it. He wallops Jack with a forceful tirade about how cold he was to just let his friend Danny die out there in the field. Taken aback, Sutherland expresses the right amount of remorse and shock without yielding control of the situation. Amid Jack’s vast, violent trail of havoc, Cam offers a sobering reflection on Jack’s dangerous imbalance of values abandoned and upheld.
62. Judge Ruffin
Day: 8
Hour: 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Performer: Jack Shearer
Alive? Yes.
With an executioner like Jack, 24 rarely afforded much time to juries or judges. There might have been others before Judge Ruffin showed up 75% of the way through Day 8, but they hardly left the same impression as this crusty old New York adjudicator. Ruffin is presiding over a case against Russian crime boss Sergei Bazhaev (Jürgen Prochnow), whom Jack busted the night before. Judge Ruffin grumbles that there certainly won’t be any bail posted, and when Bazhaev’s lawyer pleads that Sergei is the only source of support for his daughter-in-law and grandson, Ruffin replies: “That’s because he killed his own son.” On top of that, he can’t even pronounce Bazhaev’s name correctly. And you thought Jack was having a bad day.
61. Larry Rogow
Day: 1
Hour: 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m.
Performer: Keram Malicki-Sanchez
Alive? Unknown.
Notions of class struggle and confronted privilege are about the last thing anyone expects on 24. It happens, however briefly, in an hour when Kim Bauer (Elisha Cuthbert) and her friend Janet are on the run after their double dates turn out to be goons hired to hold them hostage. Hurtling through North Hollywood alleys, they discover Larry engaging in an act of prostitution. When his john flees without paying, Larry takes Kim’s purse and Janet’s necklace — ignoring Kim’s plea for help amid their plight. What’s another couple of touristy white girls in over their heads to a guy like Larry? But later he turns up to save Kim and Janet from a violent pimp and suffer his own beating. Even in his brief scenes, Larry gets you wondering whether the life he was once so eager to escape was really so bad. The scene also establishes an empathy in Kim for those less fortunate than her that carries through the remainder of the series.
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