back to back Jack

[rubberdinghy]

tonight....

set yer PVR's early or hit the couch...

2 hours of 24...tonight!

[Davey Boy 2.0]

in tonight's episode jack will- against the odds- take on the enemy to his own peril and against the advice of his CTU seniors who think he's getting a bit out of control

also in this episode, jack defies a direct order, and enlists the covert help of someone who has to hide their actions so that no-one knows they are helping out the very person who CTU thinks is trying to subvert their authority

after coming close to saving the day, expect jack to encounter a setback near the end of the episode but also proving that his initial hunch that led him to defy authority was, in fact, spot on

[Booche]

Dont forget that someone will summarize the past couple of hours, President Palmer will say that he wont "compromise" his morals, at least one CTU employee will look at another suspiciously and there will be a lapse in continuity.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

and a 45 minute drive will take jack 3 minutes to complete

[paisley]

I heard that Jack's goin back on the junk this season... for old time's sake.

sad but true confession: have been watching The Sopranos on 24 night... think it lost its sparkle once I realized I'm born on the exact same day as Keifer, obviously meaning that I actually AM Jack Bauer. (so who the fak is that acting like me on the telemobile... could get ugle)

Edited February 12, 2007 by Guest
y

[Davey Boy 2.0]

jack bauer could never have written:

lovelorn postalgirl on sidewalk full of thoughts

[Ms.Huxtable]

2 hours? Holy fack I hope I can stay awake this time. bouche had to act out for me how last week's episode ended. I have to say he plays a convincing Arab.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I should start watching this show. Apparently 24 makes people want to torture other people more.

Group: TV Torture influencing Real Life

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

Sun Feb 11, 12:12 PM ET

NEW YORK - Demanding information, Jack Bauer faces a terrified man tied to a chair in front of him. Through a window over Bauer's shoulder, the man sees his two children bound and gagged.

Tell me where the bomb is, Bauer orders, or we'll kill your family. Silence. The prisoner watches as a thug kicks down the chair his son is tied to and fires a gun at point-blank range. He screams but still doesn't relent — until the gun is pointed at his second son. Having gotten what he needed, Bauer whispers that the execution was staged.

The scene from Fox's "24" is haunting, but hardly unusual. The advocacy group Human Rights First says there's been a startling increase in the number of torture scenes depicted on prime-time television in the post-2001 world.

Even more chilling, there are indications that real-life American interrogators in Iraq are taking cues from what they see on television, said Jill Savitt, the group's director of public programs.

Human Rights First recently brought a West Point commander and retired military interrogators to Hollywood for meetings with producers of "24" and ABC's "Lost" to talk about their concerns about life imitating art.

One man in the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former U.S. Army specialist who questioned prisoners in Baghdad's infamous Abu Ghraib prison and several other facilities around Iraq. He said he saw instances of mock executions like that in "24." Once, some fellow interrogators asked an Iraqi translator to pretend he was being tortured to strike fear in a prisoner, after they had just watched a similar scene on a DVD.

Television is hardly the only factor at play; Lagouranis said many American interrogators are young, receive little training and are pressured by commanders to extract information from prisoners as quickly as they can.

But it's enough of a concern that one professor at a military academy told Savitt that Jack Bauer represented one of his biggest training challenges.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Stu Herrington, who learned interrogation techniques in Vietnam and is an expert asked by the Army to consult on conditions at Guantanimo Bay, said that if Bauer worked for him, he'd be headed for a court-martial.

"I am distressed by the fact that the good guys are depicted as successfully employing what I consider are illegal, immoral and stupid tactics, and they're succeeding," Herrington said. "When the good guys are doing something evil and win, that bothers me."

Prior to 2001, the few torture scenes on prime-time TV usually had the shows' villains as the instigators, Savitt said. In both 1996 and 1997, there were no prime-time TV scenes containing torture, according to the Parents Television Council, which keeps a programming database. In 2003, there were 228 such scenes, the PTC said. The count was over 100 in both 2004 and 2005.

They found examples on "Alias," "The Wire," "Law & Order," "The Shield" — even "Star Trek: Voyager."

In one "Lost" scene, Sayid Jarrah was depicted holding a knife to the face of one adversary, suggesting that "perhaps losing an eye will loosen your tongue."

Howard Gordon, an executive producer of "24," suggested that a helpless feeling in the nation because of terrorism and the Iraq war may be what creators are reflecting in their shows. There's been a surge in general in the level of violence tolerated in prime time.

"Perhaps at some level it's an expression of our anger and our helplessness," he said.

On "24," which a week ago depicted Bauer torturing his own brother by sticking a bag over his head and injecting him with a fictional drug that causes intense pain, producers say they try not to glamorize such scenes. Gordon said they try to show the acts take a toll on Bauer, too.

But Herrington said he's concerned that much of what's on TV is misleading.

Television interrogation frequently works to a ticking clock: someone needs to find out the location of a bomb from a prisoner within the hour or it will explode. That's so rare in real life that it's essentially mythology, he said.

Herrington called prisoners his "guests." When taken into custody, the "guest" would get medical treatment, a shower, a good meal. Herrington would tell him he'd be treated with respect. If it's a military officer, Herrington would salute. It built a relationship far more likely to yield solid information, as opposed to lies told simply to stop torture.

One German officer in World War II was so meticulous that he found out the birthdays of his prisoners, and wished them happy ones, as happy as they could get in prison. The officer was brought to the United States after the war and honored by a veterans group, even as many acknowledged they had spilled their guts to him.

"It seems to me dramatically much more powerful to actually use psychological approaches when you are interrogating," Lagouranis said. "It's really a test of wills. He has information and he doesn't want to give it to you. To me that's much more interesting than an electricity sensor."

Not necessarily to a television producer, though.

Television has a limited time and a need to keep viewers from changing the channel. As much as he learned from the interrogators and respects their point of view, "24's" Gordon said their desires and his are going to naturally be at odds sometimes.

"We're not a documentary or a manual on interrogation," he said. "We're not a primer on the war on terror. We're a television show."

Savitt said she understands. The goal is to educate people who are writing interrogation scenes without ever speaking to a real interrogator. She's seeking Hollywood's help in spreading that message, perhaps inviting Kiefer Sutherland to West Point to drive home the point that Jack Bauer is fiction.

Human Rights First's ultimate desire is to drive home the idea that torture by Americans should never be tolerated.

"We would never try to censor anybody," Savitt said. "We would never tell Hollywood what to do, but we are trying to tell them what legal interrogation looks like. If it makes them pause, that's a bonus."