What I learned from the TV show 24
Now I dunno what season 1 was like, or 2, 3, 4 or however many bloody relentless save the world efforts there have been, but the 5 episodes I watched tonight were created along the following lines:

• There are bad guys everywhere from any and all types of groups so you have to be ready to torture anyone any time
• We only know they’re bad guys via information obtained by torture, other information is unreliable
• We can only be safe through letting Jack loose on the bad guys to extract information
• Good people might object to torture, but they’re portrayed as bad or weak people or purely doing it for their own gain
• So long as “people sacrificed/tortured” is less than or equal to “possible people saved assuming worse case scenario is averted” then that’s ok, if not then so long as jack’s doing the killing/torturing then that’s ok
• The whitehouse/president of the USA/FBI have the worse security on the planet, meaning that instead of locks and security we actually need constant torture to make sure things aren’t compromised
• Warrantless wire tapping: is there any other sort? Get feeds of phones, internet usage or whatever else you like at the click of a button

Oh, and as an IT geek I was amazed at the new levels of ridiculous attempts to make computers as jargony as possible (“we’re going to need to tie the computers together with a macro uploader matrix motherboard” I think was one line in there). That and computer terminals that appear to have the green streams of the matrix running in “raw form” in the background. Must be windows 7 and some “send the user bat shit crazy” version of google maps with that mobile phone tracker thing turned on.

Jack only tortures the guilty of course

So aside from plot holes wide enough to break into the whitehouse through (one scene trying to drill underwater cuts to next scene with a metre and a half hole and a cave leading into the whitehouse.. but anyhow..) the relentless message is torture works. Torture works. Torture works!

I can't believe it's not torture!

Rest assured: Jack only ever tortures people he KNOWS are guilty though, and they without fail turn out to be. I guess he tones his psychic abilities with weekend trips to guantanamo bay in between writing the memos for fox news on how best to describe human rights violations in a positive light.

Anyone anti-torture is weak/evil/stupid or a coward

Oh and that brings me to a senator in the episodes I watched (who happens to have a chief of staff who is a bad guy and needed to be tortured) who is campaigning for human rights to be explicitly accepted and torture banned.

He’s made out to be an evil man, you know with those scheming squinty little eye close ups as he plans his next plot to force human rights down the democratic throat of the nation.. Ooooh.. Evil evil man. The whitehouse wants him to pardon Jack for his earlier 7 seasons of torture or else the president will use executive power to pardon him and this guy objects. I suspect he’ll learn a valuable lesson on how torture could have solved everything or will meet a sticky ending. All because he stopped Jack from taking electrodes to someone’s testicles to get some information out. Torture is like that magic putty stuff I posted about a little while back. It fixes EVERYTHING.

Cruel and inhumane punishment: dialup

Oh and then there’s his friend who Jack tries to get to go deliver some torture because Jack’s locked up for illegal torture. The friend refuses because he’s not a sadistic goon and it’s shown like the friend is betraying Jack by not joining the little torture cult Jack is demigod of.

Brainwashing the masses to accept the validity of torture

So after watching a handful of episodes I’m pretty sure I don’t want to watch any more of this sensationalist crap that they’ve pumped out. Evildoers everywhere who we could expose if only Jack has enough time between his busy schedule of pulling wings off butterflies and disembowelling the neighbour’s puppies.

• “We did what we had to!”
• “It was necessary”
• “It saved lives”
• “We have to get him before he lawyers up”

Terrorists: set Jack on them. Scientists: they’re just holding out the secret cure to cancer, just send ol’ Jack in there. Kids who won’t do homework: give Jack a cigarette lighter and a pair of pliers and he’ll sort ‘em out.

Feels a bit like they might as well just strap us to the chair and blast us with the CIA guide on how waterboarding is good for the skin and how sleep deprivation techniques free up so much time for reading.

Torture is good. Torture is good! Jack says so!

Remember, when in doubt: torture something. It works!