24 good and eeeevil things we've learned from "24"

Now, Jack Bauer can rest.

He has been running since January, no time to shower, shave or eat, running in his dingy hooded jacket, running to save the world from people who stole nerve gas and murdered an ex-president and shot up the Russian president's motorcade and gassed Jack's friends at the Los Angeles Counter-Terrorist Unit and did a whole lot of other nasty things.

Jack has had to do a whole lot of nasty things, too. Jack does things that would make James Bond flinch, but he has to do those things because it's a dangerous world. Now, the danger is over for another year and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) can finally take a bathroom break, and American TV viewers can again answer their phones between 9 and 10 on breathless Monday nights.

Which is all another way of saying: Fox's "24," the save-the-world thriller that plays out in real time, one hour per episode, concluded its fifth season Monday.

The clock is always running on "24." This season's first episode — broadcast way back in the dark depths of January — began at 7 a.m. Jack Bauer time. (By 8, a lot of characters were dead.) When the story line concluded Monday, four months later for the audience, it was only 23 hours later for Jack. Every minute is jam-packed. Miss an episode and you'll never catch up. Clever, Fox. Clever.

Here are 24 things we've learned from this year's "24" story line:

1. When you're a federal agent who's supposed to be dead, working at a California oil refinery is a good way to pick up extra cash, and "Frank Flynn" is a good, nondescript alias to use.

2. When you're a federal agent who's supposed to be dead, you should always keep your spy gear in a satchel stuffed inside an air vent so you can grab it fast.

3. Check under the car for bombs before driving off to work.

4. Flying a helicopter: A good skill to have. Hot-wiring a car: Another one. Configuring the California Department of Transportation traffic spycams to search for one particular license plate out of millions: Even better.

6. Despite what America's sweetheart Laura Bush says, being first lady is a nightmare and a half.

7. Actor Sean Astin is a short guy but not nearly as short as when he played a hobbit in "Lord of the Rings." Even when he's not a hobbit, he's still pretty short.

8. Traitorous presidential aides can withstand any punishment — except the prospect of having an eye gouged out right in the president's office, with the president standing there and probably thinking, "Gross."

9. Federal agents and foreign terrorists alike would be helpless without their cellphones.

10. If you're a federal agent or a foreign terrorist, your cellphone battery is good for, like, 800 hours.

11. If your evil former boss simply refuses to talk, shooting his wife in the leg probably won't change his mind, because he's just too eeeevil. And that diamond ring doesn't shine for him anymore, and that diamond ring doesn't mean what it meant before ...

12. JoBeth Williams ("The Big Chill," "Poltergeist") has really grown old, or maybe she has played too many evil former boss' wives.

13. Even when Peter Weller plays the evil former boss, he'll always be Robocop to us.

14. If your sister is a drug addict and she wants money from you, don't meet her in some deserted parking lot because her drug-addict boyfriend will conk you in the head and take your wallet.

15. If your company gives you an electronic key card to get into the building, and if your key card is lost or stolen, report it right away. Otherwise, you're just begging terrorists to waltz in and nerve-gas everyone while they're getting M&M's from the vending machine.

16. If you work at a federal law-enforcement agency, you probably should keep a gas mask in your desk. Just a suggestion.

17. If you work as a security guard and wear a red shirt, you are dancing with death. Just like the security guards on "Star Trek."

18. If you could hold your breath a really long time, you would never have to worry about nerve gas.

19. If you put something in a safe-deposit box at the bank, it's not really safe, because the bank manager will get up in the middle of the night and open the safe-deposit box if you terrify him enough.

20. American spy satellites can see absolutely everything that happens anywhere — except when it's more dramatic for them not to see something, such as right before a commercial break.

21. "Martial law" is bad. "Military-enforced curfews" are bad, too.

22. If someone cuts the brachial artery in your arm, you'll bleed to death in 30 minutes. And if you're wearing a white coat when that happens, you will never, ever get it clean again.

23. It's all about oil. But you already knew that, since you're paying $500 to gas up the SUV, and there's absolutely nothing Jack Bauer can do about that particular form of economic terrorism.

24. Next year, viewers in Columbia, S.C., need to find another Fox affiliate to watch the "24" season premiere on, because Columbia's WACH-TV accidentally chopped off the last 10 minutes of this year's January premiere and people got so upset we thought terrorists had taken over the station or something.