u/JasonLeeDrake

Audrey was initially in danger because of her connection to Heller and they were even about to commit suicide together, but fortunately it failed and Jack saved both of their asses.

Jack's actions later in the day were necessary to prevent to potential collapse of the country itself. While the consulate raid lead to a sequence of events that resulted in Audrey's torture, if he didn't do that Los Angeles would have gotten nuked along with all the people he loves, including Audrey but also Heller's son.

Which I why I never bought into the idea that Jack dooms himself from having a normal life, and his work or need to get back into action can ruin the lives of the people he loves. Larry Moss even brings up Curtis and Ryan, when Curtis died because he was about to something worse than the kind of shit Larry dislikes Jack for, and Ryan died because he works the same kind of job, Jack was just picked to pull the trigger. But fundamentally, the stakes in each season get so insane, the argument doesn't work at all. I can't imagine Kim would like the stake of the country or be fine if all the nuclear power plants melted down, and LA got nuked while she was in Valencia, if she even survives at all.

Jack washing his hands of the responsibility would eventually just lead to either he himself dying from a nuclear bomb, or him living in a failed state. It actually is literally his problem, and also Heller's problem because his son lives in LA.

It's only Season 8 where you could argue it would have been better if he wasn't involved, since New York only ends up in danger because he saves Hassan, but Hassan dies anyway. The russian conspiracy would have remained secret, but it's not like uncovering it did much good anyways.

Besides the obvious fact that killing the dude literally affected nothing because he knew nothing and already called everyone he knew who might have anything to do with the nuclear rods, refused to call anyone again, with said people sending guys to kill everyone because they ultimately *weren't* willing to sell, why would anyone even need to take the fall besides whoever is supposed to be responsible for making sure fuel rods couldn't enter the country or be easily made by criminals.

The whole uncover operation was a long shot that CTU was only even able to start because Davros was exposed and Hassan was in the room. They had basically no information to work with. Everyone literally did their part to the best of their ability, with Jack being able to almost cobble up a solution despite the Russians not wanting to sell, by letting himself get captured, which only then failed because the son went off the reservation. Who is really going to be crying to fire someone over this, and would blaming Renee even take the heat off Hastings or Weiss if people did want someone's head? She was not a federal agent, she was a civilian with a known record of instability, working for free with Hastings approval. If the story is really that she fucked up the mission because she was crazy, how does that still not fall on Hastings for letting her do the mission?

Turning the story into her fucking the mission up because she wanted to murder the guy frankly seems to accomplish nothing except make Hastings look even more incompetent and sending Renee to jail. It just fucks them both over.

On a character and story level, it makes so many moments kind of pointless except for dramatic irony. Like George asking why she's so dedicated to Bauer, the awkwardness of Nina trying help Teri and Kim knowing she slept with Jack. Maybe her being the mole could work in this sense if she wasn't a complete psychopath who truly didn't give a shit, instead of someone like Jamey. Perhaps she's not uncompromising at all, but she still loves Jack. This angle would hard to work though since the bad guys entire plans is to kill Palmer and the Bauer's. Perhaps she doesn't know they also want revenge on Jack and believes it's only about Palmer. I don't know, it just feels weird to have literally everything about the character we spend so much time with be a complete performance. No sincerity whatsoever.

On a logical level, there's a shit ton of holes. Even if she wasn't working *for* the Drazen's she's clearly working with them, and even if they did a setup where she's not "activated" until a certain point and the other groups aren't aware of each other's plans, this thwarts so many plans for no good reason, it makes the bad guys look like idiots.

The first plan succeeds and Palmer is dead if Nina doesn't return to CTU and just stays "dead" without calling Secret Service. Of if she doesn't confront Jack at all about the keycard. The whole plan fails purely because of Nina's intervention, and she would have died for real if Jack didn't pull a fast one.

Jamey the mole for Gaines also ends up framing the only the other motherfucker who's a mole instead of literally anybody else so they can get tortured wasting time.

After noticing fake FBI agents Nina also ends going out of her way to put Teri and Kim in a safer location, add an extra layer of security, and leaving before the assassins the Drazen's send arrive, instead of maybe helping them just kill Teri and Kim. This is the worst instance, because maybe you could argue in the other instances she couldn't play dumb at all when for example Milo just told her it's a different keycard he's working on, but here she literally has to just not ask questions.

She also doesn't warn the Drazen's they've flipped Nash, who having Alexis seduce is pretty pointless if they can just have Nina do the same shit more efficiently and faster.

But fundamentally, they had a high ranking agent on the inside who Jack trusted more than anyone. If they wanted him and his family dead, it would have frankly been pretty damn easy to make it happen. Palmer's assassination? She could literally just take Jack's place, get the weapon to the breakfast, give it to the assassin and leave before it happens.

Hell they go out of the way to kidnap Kim again to make Jack kill Palmer (What happened to not recycling plan A) instead of getting Nina in the room? The plans just feel really unnecessary if the had the second in command already working for them with everyone trusting her.

Though this also leads to the question of why they did a motherfucking plane bombing to get Belkin's I.D. hoping no one catches them erasing someone from the flight list instead of just killing him before or after he gets on the flight and having the assassin take his place.

Terrorists be dumb, I guess.

While power levels can be all over the place in Star Wars, canon seems to consistently show that even high tier Jedi and Sith can be sent running or die from too much blaster fire, it's literally how most of the Jedi died, though they were taken from surprise.

Maul himself along with his brother was sent running from Hondo's men though they had more people. Dooku even surrendered to them.

I suppose Maul had the freedom to dodge and take cover, but in the movie problem his presences forces Padme to take the long way around, and he kills Qui-Gon. If the Jedi just team up with the Naboo guards, shouldn't it be a stomp against Maul. I guess a problem would how to avoid friendly fire, they'd need some good coordination.