24, Jack Bauer | featured news

The finale was up 4 percent in total viewers over last week, averaging 9.3 million over a two-hour span that saw Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) sent off to an uncertain future on the international lam.

How many more ways could Jack Bauer have saved the homeland from a world of terrorists?

The drama "24" won't be ticking much longer on TV. Fox announced Friday that its action-packed real-time show starring Kiefer Sutherland as anti-terrorism agent Jack Bauer will wind down at the end of its current eighth season on May 24.

Sutherland said in a statement that the show's cast and crew "always wanted '24' to finish on a high note, so the decision to make the eighth season our last was one we all agreed upon." He also said he was looking forward to creating a film version of "24."

Poor Jack Bauer. He's gone from saving the world to dozing off on a couch while his granddaughter watches cartoons. Still looking as though he's feeling some of the effects from his exposure to a bioweapon and the subsequent stem cell surgery, Bauer is hanging around New York with his daughter, Kim, and her milquetoast husband, who are getting ready to return to Los Angeles and want him to join them. Bauer seems to move a little slower and is unsuccessfully trying to convince himself that he's ready for life as a grandpa and, gasp, a desk jockey back in Los Angeles.