Reviewing for Sales, and I have the second season of 24 on in the background, just as white noise for the most part (there's a marathon on WGN).
You know in the 8AM hour, where Jack's avoiding CTU's calls but finally picks up when they have Palmer's office contact him? Dennis Haysbert and Kiefer Sutherland are really quite good there. I mean, they're always good but I just love the dynamic between their characters. Both Jack and David are proud men and I'm just such a huge fan of the way they relate to each other in the language of strong/proud men. No wasted words, everything meaning exactly what it seems to. When Jack, despite himself, agrees to go into CTU, I am never quite sure how much of it is patriotic duty and how much of it is his personal respect for David Palmer. I suspect it's more of the latter than the former and I just love that, because not too many people have an influence on Jack at all.
Last season, I remember being a little taken aback by the fact that Jack cried when the news broke that President Palmer had been assassinated. I thought it was absolutely the right call by the writers (or was it Kiefer's call, I wonder?) but that it felt right didn't take away from how stunning it was to see Jack moved to tears by the death of someone who wasn't family. It suggested such an unconsidered depth of feeling.
Um, basically the whole point of this post is that I love the relationship between those two. It's not quite G'Kar-Mollari, Pembleton-Bayliss, or Jed-Leo, but for something developed over the course of a handful of scenes together, most of those in the form of split screen phone conversations, I'll always be impressed. Do they ever even see each other again face-to-face after the first season? I try to compare it to something like the Tony-Jack dynamic and even after everything they've been through together, I somehow feel like Tony-Jack doesn't come anywhere close to the richness of Palmer-Bauer. And I love that I can still get excited and into gen relationships, because
johnnybvo says I slash things indiscriminately ^_~
(Also, I forgot how irritating it is when people don't listen to Jack. You call him in, you cry about how much you need his help, and then you jump in his face and ask him if he's losing it when he starts doing what you brought him in to do? Ugh. But the way the writers ended up turning me around on Mason by the end of the next hour is pretty amazing.)