People who torture people are good guys.

Are you calling the people who torture Jack good guys? Or are you limiting yourself to this season? Because if that's the message, they're going back on their previous message.

I'd posit that "good guys torture too" is a closer message -- it's not been shown to be the tool of just one side.

good guys torture too

Anathema. If abstention from torture is removed from the defintion of "good guy", I don't want to be a good guy.

Let's go back to your sentence.

People who torture people are good guys.

This implies that the people who torture Jack are good guys. Is this actually the point you're making? I'm getting mixed messages.

Sometimes it seems you're saying that Jack isn't actually a good guy because he tortures people.

That - I get.

This implies that the people who torture Jack are good guys.

No, that is not the point I am struggling to make. People who torture Jack are bad guys. Jack has done bad-guy things. Jack is a bad guy, too, unless Jack's actions are justified in some larger context.

The 'larger context' here is Jack's actions versus the actions of a dude who is trying to reduce Minneapolis to a radioactive rubble.

My discomfort might be with the comic-book scale of the bad guy. Jack's actions are particular and immediate, shown to us in full detail. Marwan's awfulness is sort of remote, with network-announced body counts and poor dead Nerd Mommas we never actually see dead.

I get a sense of permission for Jack's actions, nevermind the reason.

Let the court show that the witness stood mute.

What am I supposed to say? I'm not arguing with you.

Pointing out that Jack's an unconventional hero who does dodgy-assed things in the pursuit of the greater good isn't going to start a kerfuffle or get you a medal. It's kinda the premise of the show.

There are no good guys.

I do not want my hero to torture people.

Then 24 is probably not a good show for you.

Gus, bringing race back into it just for a moment, weren't all of the bad guys (or the biggest bad guys, anyhow) white, to begin with? The only black bad character I can remember (this season) is the analyst (who is now dead) who threatened Curtis (they'd had a prior relationship) to get in the door at CTU.

I do not want my hero to torture people. My hero can be conflicted and confused, and be moving under the press of current events in a way contrary to his better motivations, but he should eventually recognize that his actions were wrong.

I get that, except that I do like my hero to have flaws. Do you think you find it more objectionable, because of the real world right now, like the evil that went down at Abu Ghraib?

Out of curiosity, did it bother you when Buffy would beat up Willy the Snitch, or the time (maybe in "When She Was Bad", in season 2) that she stuck a cross down a vampire's throat, to get her to give up where Cordy, Xander, Willow, and Giles were being held? There were rounds of Kick-the-Spike, where Buffy would find Spike, and beat him until she got him to do what she wanted. Was that also objectionable to you, or is 24 harder to accept, because it takes place in a universe more like ours? I'm not giving you a hard time by the way, just thinking about it.

People who torture people are good guys.

This implies that the people who torture Jack are good guys.

Well, or it implies that torture is part of the repertoire of good guy actions, no less so than for bad guys. I think you're taking Gus's sentence in a stricter logical sense than he intended.

My take on 24 is that, in service of a SHOCK!!@!, they will do anything. Which, you know, I get bored with that. And once I'm bored, I can sit there and analyze the social-political-cultural thoughtlessness of the plotting, and that is when it becomes time to change the channel.

I mean, I suppose it would not be a fun plot for Jack to torture somebody in Hour 17 and discover in Hour 23 that the information he obtained thereby was totally wrong and led him into a series of stupid mistakes. But cavalier use of a Taser in the workplace sort of warrants some, you know, electricity in kind as a response. Also possibly some hair-pulling, dope-slapping, and a beating about the head and shoulders with a psychology textbook.

Actually I think the cavalierness-to-reality weakens the show substantially. It is like outlandish serial-killer movies: in order for the outlandishness not to become a joke, the contextual details have to be nigglingly perfect (i.e., real-world). I think 24 would be a more effectively gripping show if it did not require viewers to accept that its central premise is a joke.