Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Jack Bauer Finally Tortures Someone

Now when Jack Bauer tortures someone, he doesn't do it for very long, and he’s really sorry afterward.

June 10, 2014 at 3:28 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

It only took half a season. — It only took half a season.

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Finally. Not until after 5 o'clock in the afternoon -- that is, more than half the season of "24: Live Another Day" -- did Jack Bauer have the chance to torture anybody.

But it's OK. Jack doesn't do it for very long, and he's really sorry afterward. We know he's sorry because he says he shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have squeezed and twisted the stump of Simone Al-Harazi's mutilated finger until she lost consciousness, because, as he explains to Kate Morgan (who already during the day has been suspended not once but twice by the Central Intelligence Agency), Simone was never going to tell them the location of Mommy's hideout. (Moral lesson: Torture should be reserved for people on whom it might work.)