A GROUP of terrorists is planning to kill millions of Americans. Only one man can stop them: Jack Bauer. Unfortunately, he has been imprisoned in a secret facility. And tortured. Then decapitated and fed to boars. “Fortunately,” says the president’s chief of staff, “he was trained for exactly that.”
   That was a spoof of “24” by Dave Barry, a comic writer. But the real thing is not much more realistic. In a typical day, Agent Bauer is shot and stabbed more often than he takes bathroom breaks, but it never seems to slow him down. The last two episodes of the eighth (and allegedly final) series of Fox’s hit show, which aired on May 24th, were as furiously absurd as ever. Russia is involved in a Middle Eastern plot to set off a nuclear weapon in New York, which the American president hushes up for reasons viewers quickly forget because—Dammit Chloe, there’s no time!—Bauer is disembowelling a bad guy to retrieve a SIM card with vital information on it that he has swallowed.