Jack Bauer pushes a questionable patriotic logic in 24. Photograph: Albert Watson/Fox
As I've written on this blog before, the grim torture scene has always been the money shot of 24, dancing on a thin moral edge between criminal abuse and imminent apocalypse. Brutal but necessary is the 'harsh decisions for harsh times' patriotic logic it has always pushed; but now it's like they're pulling out the pliers with every tick of the beating 24 clock every episode. Surely it's time to worry when even the Pentagon has decided that it is going too far?
Just to recap some of the lowlights for those of you that haven't been keeping up with 24's Day Six Amnesty report: so far we've seen Jack liberated from a Chinese torture gulag (they couldn't break him after two years, of course) only to be handed over for another round by an al-Qaida-like gang (what did they think they could accomplish in an hour?); watched some gung-ho Feds beating up Muslim prisoners in a makeshift detention centre; and seen this year's crop of nuclear suitcase-wielding terrorists take a DIY approach to getting Chloe's tech-friendly on/off ex Morris to help (power drill in shoulder).
But all this really pales in comparison with Jack's unique approach to family reunions: less than five minutes after being reunited with Graeme, the brother he hasn't seen for years (who just happens to be the secret mastermind behind the hits on Michelle, Tony and David Palmer), he has got him tied up in his living room and is whacking him around (wonder what their Christmases were like?). Then real baddy Daddy Bauer steps in to kill him after a second round of CTU interrogation, just in case he's not as tough as Jack, and does actually break. Have we had enough yet?
