'24,' Torture and Bureaucratic Incompetence

[The Straight Story]

'24,' Torture and Bureaucratic Incompetence
By Tom Shoop Friday, May 28, 2010 4:54 PM

I'm an on-again, off-again watcher of the FOX TV series 24. The truth is, I've grown tired of the series over the years, and didn't see much of it at all this season. That's only partly because the show's writers seemed to glorify torture through the repeated use of farfetched ticking time bomb scenarios requiring the hero, Jack Bauer, to go to extreme lengths to extract critical information from the bad guys.

For me, almost worse than that was the fact that the show featured quite possibly the most damning condemnation of a federal organization in the history of TV dramas. Its central fictitious organization, the Counter Terrorist Unit, was run by a series of woefully incompetent officials, was repeatedly infiltrated by terrorist plotters, and, with the exception of Bauer and his ally Chloe O'Brian, was staffed by people who either were disloyal to their country or couldn't manage the simplest of tasks--or both. Real-life agencies that appeared in the show, such as the FBI, weren't much -- if any -- better.

I'm with this reader of Andrew Sullivan's "Daily Dish," who offered a series of observations on 24's end:

What really struck me about the show was an outgrowth of a world, created by the 24 writers, where extreme institutional incompetence was the norm. When Jack is "forced" to torture, it is because CTU, in spite of technology and extralegal authority ... never has more than one active lead. Add to this that they are staffed in every department with treasonous moles and ass-covering bureaucrats, and supported by field agents and cops who cannot even successfully set a perimeter around a suspect.

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