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From Jonathan Storm's "Eye of the Storm"

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/storm/

It was time for Jack Bauer to go, and - spoiler alert - don't read any more of this if you haven't yet watched the two-hour finale.

Tuesday's coincidences were simply out of hand. The ballistics alone were basically impossible.

Chloe O'Brian, cyber-jock extraordinaire, is not so much with guns, even if she did have some ack-ack adventures a few years ago. But she manages to shoot Jack through and through, without hitting any organs?

And that lying Logan. How did he ever get to be president? He puts the gun under his chin, points up, pulls the trigger and still turns out alive? Even as much of a conniving numbskull as he was, that seems pretty unlikely.

I've been forgiving 24 its silly sins for eight seasons. Maybe they just got to me Tuesday because I knew the show was ending. Bad guy sutures Jack's stab wound at gunpoint? Please.

But the finale, with almost zero special effects and little choreographed mayhem, held lots of the rewards that characterized the ground-breaking action show ever since it bowed in 2001. And most of them involved one of the great American heroes in all of fiction.

Jack really can't go any further in his moral righteousness. He was so intent on serving justice that not only was he ready to sacrifice his life, but also to force his only friend in the world into probably killing him, just so the secret video chip would go public and the truth be told.

And wasn't it perfect that scowly Chloe, almost as much of a loner as Bauer, was the last bastion of defense, before the president finally saw the light, exposed the lies, and put peace off for another time when it might actually have a chance?

Once again, Jack was forced to sneak into the loneliest oblivion, as we - Chloe, in particular - got stuffed up and teary about the price he had to pay. It may have been time to go, but I'll miss him.

But I won't bet that it's forever. There's a deal in the making for a 2012 movie, and even if there weren't, I share ex-President Logan's analysis of Bauer - maybe the one thing he got right in his multiple seasons with show.

"He will find a way," Logan told President Taylor. "Mark my words. He will rise up out of the deepest hole in the ground. He will claw his way back from the ends of the Earth."

It's good to know Jack Bauer's still out there somewhere.