The FOX drama 24 is a guilty pleasure for me. I especially enjoy the cast lead by Keifer Sutherland, and “story told in real time” format, which allows for the endless cliffhangers I’m a total sucker for. The show was prescient when it presented us with a fabulous portrayal of an African American president by Dennis Haysbert. I hope this season is also a herald of things to come in real life with Cherry Jones’ portrayal of President Allison Taylor.

The two episodes we were treated to last night, 7.10 and 7.11, were a rollicking good time, ending in a terrorist takeover of the White House and the kidnapping of the president and her daughter. Rogue Agent Jack Bauer, after being released from his cell to help, is currently waiting quietly with the rest of the hostages outside the now open lock down. You know its not going to take long (perhaps another hour) for Jack to get back into action.

Last night’s episodes not only presented us with entertainment, but a continuing moral discussion on the subject of torture. Just before the terrorists seize the White House, Jack is interrogating Senator Mayer’s Chief of Staff, Ryan Burnett, who is in with the terrorists, for information to stop the attack. He’s using a taser again and again, and threatening to paralyze Burnett from the neck down. Burnett begs like the whoosie he is, but won’t give up the information. Just before Jack threatens the fatal jolt, the President’s guards blow through the door with explosives and save the traitor, who minutes later sneers for his lawyer. Justice interruptus. 

Perhaps in this case, I wish Jack had been given time enough to finish his work, but overall, I disagree with the idea that America should torture prisoners. If the 24 writers are trying to make a political point, even in the tense “ticking time bomb” situations they present Bauer facing, they’re still missing something in their argument: Jack doesn’t seem to have any moral uncertainty about his own actions. This is in no way meant to criticize Sutherland’s otherwise brilliant performance, I just don’t think that depth is on the page, and it should be.

In a recent episode, FBI agent Renee Walker took on the part of the audience and challenged Jack’s certainty that his methods were acceptable. She even slapped him in the face, demanding “Did you feel that?” Does he feel anything about what he does?

It isn’t that we don’t think that Jack feels anything, it’s just that he has such moral certainty that he’s doing the right thing, that there is no internal struggle about it. Maybe after all this time, with all the service he’s performed for his country (read: bad-assing), his heart has become that hardened, his outlook that cynical. But I think the show would be better served if Jack was portrayed as at least a little more disturbed by what he does, and a little more haunted.

He should be the wounded torturer. It’s been done before, and done better.

On ABC’s Lost, one of the castaways, Sayid Jarrah played by Naveen Andrews, is a former Iraqi Republican Guard, specifically trained in interrogation techniques: a professional torturer. But the Lost writers and Andrews have always portrayed Sayid as someone ashamed of his past, wanting to leave that life behind. He will occasionally, and usually with great hesitation, call upon his skills to get information that will help the castaways of Oceanic flight 815 survive. Sometimes he’s successful in extracting that information, sometimes not - especially when he’s beating up Benjamin Linus, the island’s mysterious bad guy.

But every time Sayid pulls something out of his old bag of torturer’s tricks, it costs him. He is tortured himself with memories and regrets. He deals with it, or not, and moves on. But it always costs him something: he feels it deeply. And that’s the genius of the portrayal of Sayid by the writers and by Andrews.

Another great example of the wounded torturer archetype is from the film L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson and based on the book by James Ellroy. Set in the 1950s, when gangster Mickey Cohen is sent to prison, the LAPD is dealing with an influx of organized crime from New York and Chicago. Bud White, played by the incomparable Russell Crowe, is selected to be a member of the strike team that will persuade the bad guys to go home. The torment takes place in the abandoned Victory Motel, oh so ironically. With the gangsters tied to a chair, its Bud’s job to basically beat them senseless white Captain Dudley Smith gives them the ultimatum: “Go back to Jersey, sonny. This is the City of the Angels, and you haven't got any wings.”

Bud White has a personal back story of being the white knight for abused women, due to the fact that his own mother was killed by his abusive father in front of him when he was a child. Bud White uses the burly body he was given to punish wifebeaters, but now its being used for his Captain’s own crusade. (There are more turns and twists and surprises here, and if you’ve never seen the film, I suggest you go rent it now.)

Like Sayid, Bud White knows what he’s doing is - if not completely wrong - at least questionable in these circumstances. He’d much rather be beating up wifebeaters. At work he wants to be valued as a real detective, not just hired muscle and a dirty cop. He does what he’s told, but it always costs him. He questions his superiors directly, and when he’s told to shut up and do what he’s told, he joins forces with his nemesis, the LAPD’s choir boy, Det. Ed Exley (played by Guy Pearce) and ends up bringing down the Captain’s conspiracy.

Perhaps the 24 writers are headed this way in an arc. Perhaps they’ve already been there. I honestly have to admit that I’m not a rabid 24 fan who remembers every detail over these many seasons. The show moves so fast, it’s hard to keep up with, and I love that about 24. But as a viewer, and as an American who would like to imagine that her country is better than that, I’d like to see more.

Ironically, Keifer Sutherland starred in a doomed pilot of L.A. Confidential the television series. His character was strangely an amalgamation of Bud White and Ed Exley. I can see why he’s drawn to characters like them, but I balk to think of the opportunities missed by the writers playing those two off each other episode after episode by combining them. I guess they thought it was too confusing with two leads (three in the movie). I guess its better that they didn’t dilute the story by doing a bad version.

And that goes to the question of challenging the audience. Does FOX really want to challenge their audience? I think they want to give the impression that they do, but then they spoon-feed their political point as the clock ticks down. The disappointment is that they don’t have to. They didn’t in the much superior FX series The Shield. (Not so surprisingly, Vic Mackey (the fabulous Michael Chiklis), the Farmington Strike Team leader, can be seen as a direct literary descendent of Ellroy’s Bud White.)

The next time Jack Bauer brings that taser down, ready to shock the answers out of some unwilling terrorist, I’d at least like to see him wince a little. That’s all it would really take. If they write it, Keifer will bring it home.