I’m off to Victoria for a spell; our class is visiting a couple of publishers/booksellers on the island. This, of course, means I’m up at 5 a.m. for the ride to the ferry. As is sometimes the case, because I’m up very early, I remember the dream I had last night.

I was doing research for a paper (we have a 25-page research paper due at the beginning of next month). Only I was looking at some odd bookshelf/folio set up in a back alley on the bad side of town, and I was moving back and forth between the bookshelf and my car (!). I’m sitting in the back seat, reading, when I see someone trying to get in the driver’s door. Obviously I forgot to lock the doors. A homeless guy’s trying to get in. I keep trying to push him out, but he’s intent on driving the car away—so much so that after a minute he pulls out a tiny revolver and points it at me. “Alright, get in the car, I don’t want trouble.” He asks for everything on me—wallet, cellphone, etc. I have a cellphone in my pocket, and three more (!!) on the car seats. I point to those and try to convince my kidnapper I only have three phones; it’s tense.

Somehow we start driving, and the next thing I know we’re headed out of town. My kidnapper gets distracted and I try to take his gun. Two shots; then he’s out of the car, I’m pointing a gun at his head and I fire a round; I’m pretty sure I’ve just killed him. Next thing I know, the police are taking my statement and I can barely speak straight, I’m so distraught.

I think someone’s trying to tell me something, and perhaps it’s a bit more subtle than “my history course is trying to kidnap me and leave me for dead.”

[Some of you bastards like to "wait for the DVDs" when it comes to 24. If you're one of them, turn away now or risk being spoiled.]

Six pages and no one on the Television Without Pity boards have even discussed Jack’s scenes in the first fifteen minutes of tonight’s episode of 24. Even the kids at Metafilter saw some obvious concerns. Instead there’s a whole lot of talk about how Audrey’s apparently a loser for not simply accepting that sometimes Jack’s gotta do some dirty work. I call bullshit.

A lot of people have noticed the disturbing trend towards casual torture this season. In its first season, 24 was lauded for being a taut, gripping thriller that stood above other action shows because it didn’t talk down to the audience. While it’s hard to really deal with tough issues in the context of an action show, it’s worth noting that 24 premiered just after the September 11th attacks; arguably every season since has been a response on the part of the producers to the events of that day and the years since. As such, the second season dealt with the moral dilemmas of torture, racial profiling and pre-emptive strikes in a fairly intelligent manner.

With the third season being chalked up to a former British agent with a personal vendetta against the United States, 24 seemed to take a day off with the social critiques. This was fine; after all, it’s a television show, not a political science lecture. But now that the focus is back squarely on domestic terrorism, people are paying close attention to how the producers have decided to treat the story of Muslim terrorist cells executing an attack on American nuclear power plants. So far, it doesn’t look good.

The Muslim question, as far as I’m concerned, is a red herring; it seems fairly obvious that, despite their role as “the bad guys,” 24 is attempting to depict at least some of them as three-dimensional characters, and in some cases even sympathetic ones; witness the trials and tribulations of the Araz family. But where the question of torture is concerned, I don’t know if Kevin Drum is right when he suggests the random acts of torture are leading up to some greater statement on its ineffectiveness.

Certainly tonight’s episode did nothing to make me feel any better, and neither did the Television Without Pity episode thread. After weeks of complaining about the quick resort to torture on the series, suddenly everyone is quiet when it’s Jack doing the shocking. Not only that, but aside from Audrey’s protestations that “Paul would never be a traitor,” there’s practically no reflection on what Jack’s done; the episode moves on to other matters very quickly, and even Paul doesn’t seem overly displeased with his treatment.

Torture has been rampant throughout the season. This isn’t exactly a new development; President Palmer had his national security advisor tortured to find out if he had anything to do with that season’s events, and Jack threatened to kill a prominent terrorist’s children in order to get him to talk. But what’s different this time out is that next to no consideration is given to the ethical dilemmas each situation poses. Not only does anyone seem to blink an eye when torture is proposed, but the electric shock treatments and sensory deprivation tactics are trotted out as though it were just a regular interrogation procedure. The startling regularity with which torture is used is one of the least palatable parts of this season to date.

I remember thinking at the beginning of the season that the producers had to be going somewhere with the torture of the secretary of defense’s son, because they had been so good up to now with forcing good people to deal with the ethically unsound decisions they make. Now I’m not sure what the producers are thinking. It’s quite possible that the politics behind 24 really have changed, and that posing tough questions is no longer a concern of the show’s producers; if that’s the case, then no matter the rollercoaster rides they may have in the future, I may have to start sitting them out.

Update: Thankfully the big picture thread on the 24 boards is paying some attention.