Jack has got to go for '24' to stay

In order for "24" to live, Jack Bauer must die.

That isn't an easy thing to say. Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) is one of the great TV characters to emerge over the past decade.

And I've been a fan of "24" since it debuted in 2001.

Well, somewhat less of a fan as the seasons progressed and became increasingly indistinguishable from one another.

A third of a way through Season 8, "24" has such a been-there, done-that feel that it's hard to work up the enthusiasm or the energy to watch an episode. At least for this longtime fan.

This was never a show that sweated the details. That so much could happen in a single 24-hour period is tough to take without a near total suspension of disbelief.

Hey, just the way counter-terrorism demigod Jack has been able to navigate through traffic in Los Angeles and New York is totally beyond belief. And let's not even talk about the terrorists in scuba suits who broke into the White House last season.

I am not making that up.

The outlandishness of so many plot twists didn't really matter, though, because "24" used to be enormous fun to watch. It was the TV equivalent of a roller-coaster ride.

It was easy to ignore the little details — you know, like Jack dying one hour and coming back to life and saving the world the next — because it was just so darn much fun.

But no matter how much you love roller coasters, riding the same one over and over and over again gets to be a little dull. And predictable. And, well, just plain boring.

There's so much going on in "24" it's all but remarkable that the show could be termed boring. But, c'mon, how many times can we see Jack getting tortured? It's happened, what, about 50 times in the show's 176 episodes to date?

When the show began, Jack was a pretty average guy. Well, a pretty average spy guy — a highly trained agent who performed almost super-human feats to save the world.

Now he's pretty much not even human anymore. He's a superhero of sorts, and it's gotten to the point that it just seems silly.

That the events of one season could happen to one person is a remote possibility. That the events of eight seasons could happen to the same person is ludicrous.