More Thoughts on Season 6

Some more thoughts on this season (I'll add to this as I think of more -- feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section):

I'm a huge fan of symbolism so this season was perfect for me.

**Jack walks out of Jim Heller's beach home, after saying goodbye to a comatose Audrey, and walks across the yard to the ocean overlook. Gun still in hand, he looks down at the pounding surf, 100+ feet below him, and contemplates suicide. Still, the rising sun reminds him that it's a new day and new beginning for him. As uncertain as that makes him feel, he accepts it. The screen fades to black with a silent ticking clock and subtle overlay of ocean waves. The silent clock usually signifies that someone has died. But I think the director used it in this instance to show the "death" of Jack's old life.

**Sean Callery does an excellent job with the music. My hubby and I noticed countless times in this season when Jack's and Audrey's love theme is played quietly in the background. The first time Jack mentions Audrey's name after he's been handed over by the Chinese the theme is there. Then when he and Audrey are together in the basement of CTU and then again when he says goodbye to her. The theme is haunting and sweet, reminding the viewer that though their love is very real and beautiful, it is never meant to be.

Jack's own theme is also used this season when Jack first sees himself in the mirror (the same sort of scene is played in Season 2 when he looks in the mirror after he rejoins CTU after his wife's death). And it plays in the final segment when Jack is looking into the sky, thinking about his future.

**The juxtaposition between the last scene in Season 5 and this season is so vivid.

At the end of Season 5, Jack sees a beautiful and vibrant Audrey getting out of a CTU vehicle. He waves off medical treatment and hurries over to her. They embrace and kiss, touching foreheads to look into each other's eyes. Jack promises that everything will be alright, that he's never going to leave her. Then he's taken from her by the Chinese.

This season he goes into the bedroom where she lays sleeping. (We see a glimpse of hospital equipment in the corner, implying the seriousness of her condition.) He greets her with his familiar "hey" (used in most of their conversations from Season 4 on) and talks to her, hoping to awaken her, to bring back the Audrey he'd been taken from 20 months earlier. She doesn't move. He tells her that he's at a crossroads, that he's letting her go to protect her, and that he hopes she'll understand and forgive him one day. Then he kisses her and touches her forehead, still hoping against hope for some kind of reaction. But he realizes that she's been taken from him by the Chinese.

**Jack tells Jim Heller that he's "good at killing people," afterall, he'd killed Nina, Curtis, Fayed, and countless other unnamed "baddies." But he couldn't kill the most significant bad guy to date: his own father, Phillip Bauer. It was what his father wanted, but Jack wouldn't give him the satisfaction, nor would he live with the guilt. Instead, Jack let him die when the F-18s bombed the oil platform. Jack told his dad he was "getting off easy." Jack isn't "wimping out" by not killing him first -- he's choosing the high road and not letting his anger and hatred control his actions...something he doesn't always choose.