There are times when television drama transcends the mundane, the ordinary and elevates the genre to a place where only great literature has gone before. Stephen Bochco’s Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue achieved that status on occasion as has Law and Order and ER.

This is not surprising. Most TV dramas in the past relied on tried and true formulas to be successful: Good guys and bad guys with the villains getting their just rewards in the end and precious little in the way of controversy to offend the sensibility of viewers. TV executives believed that mass audiences didn’t want to be surprised or disturbed, that they watched TV to escape from moral dilemmas and uncomfortable truths.

But with the advent of premium cable alternatives like HBO and Showtime and especially the strong showing of Fox Network’s shows, most of the over the air network dramas now carry controversial story lines with shocking twists and surprising moments – all designed to if not disturb the viewer then certainly get a rise out of the audience that will keep them tuning in week after week. Shocking audiences simply for the sake of doing the unexpected may make for interesting television. But in the end, such schlock fails to rise above the level of emotional manipulation thus becoming cheap and tawdry rather than elevating and sublime.

Last night’s episode of 24 went far beyond the kind of shallow, attention-grabbing, gimmicky plot lines of ordinary drama and entered the nearly uncharted territory of conflict and angst worthy of what is found in the best of western literary tradition.

While many may have expected Jack’s father to end up being a villain, I daresay no one expected him to murder his own son nor to acquiesce in the death of Jack. The revelation that much of what has transpired within Jack’s family during the last few hours was part of an elaborate ruse to throw Jack off the trail of the family company’s involvement with the nukes sets up a confrontation with Jack’s father that will prove both horrific and fascinating in the end – like watching a train wreck in slow motion. And the heavy burden that Jack carries for the sins of his father – something the Bible tells us shall be revisited on the sons for “3 or 4 generations” – now includes the death of Graem as well as the death of 12,000 innocents.

And it is perhaps a measure of how vulnerable Jack Bauer’s character has become this season that the extraordinary scenes of him torturing his own brother should bring such a rush of mixed emotions for both Jack and the audience. The schizophrenic combination of tenderness and blood chilling rage that Jack directs at his suffering brother are, in my opinion, among the most powerful images ever seen in a weekly dramatic television series. The scene where Graem states under horrible torture that he and Jack are alike, causing Jack to lose control of his sanity is all the more affecting because we realize that Graem is right – that he and Jack use measures that are outside the law for the same reason; they love their country. Does this make Jack a terrorist or a patriot?

Of course, Jack’s love of country is pure and unsullied by motives of profit or personal gain of any kind which is the one saving grace that separates him from his brother and father. Does it make Graem a tragic character in the end that he fails to realize this? I thought so. While certainly not redeeming him, his death at the hands of his own father is tragic because it was obvious that his love for his father and hatred of Jack led to his own destruction – a victim of the sin of envy.

The writers of the show have now set the bar for quality very high. Let’s hope they can live up to the standards they’ve laid down over the coming weeks.

SUMMARY

In a meeting with President Palmer, Tom cries crocodile tears over the resignation of Karen and offers up the explanation that perhaps she quit because she opposed the draconian “Executive Order 1068” that Tom and the oily and untrustworthy Vice President (played with great effect by Powers Booth) have cooked up that would curtail civil liberties even more than they already have been. He convinces Palmer to reconvene the National Security Council to approve the measures. Palmer seems torn and once again, it is hard to tell if he is indecisive or simply cautious. The jury is still out on what kind of President he really is.

In resisting the shredding of the Constitution, the President states that he doesn’t want to redefine the country. Tom reminds him that “If one more nuke goes off, it will be Fayed who redefines our country.”

Who’s right? The answer, if I may be allowed to be cryptic, is both and neither. I covered what would happen in the event a nuclear weapon was detonated on American soil here. The real world concern would be what measures the government would take in order to insure that such an event never happened again. The American people might very well support measures as outlined in Tom’s plan but would it in fact mean the end of America as we know it? I think it would as do most civil libertarians. On the other hand, the idea that some rational compromises couldn’t be made in order to ferret out the enemy among us is suicidal. It appears that the writers don’t do “nuance” very well – especially when it comes to debates about civil liberties.

In the van that is taking Jack and his father to their presumed deaths, Jack’s father opens up and tells his son that everything he’s done, he did for him. Jack rightly protests that he doesn’t know what to say to that, apparently not wanting to assuage his father’s conscience.

Arriving at a conveniently located cement factory in the middle of nowhere (less than 10 minutes from McCarthy’s office by the clock) Jack and his father start to walk toward a freshly dug hole with a truck standing by to cover their dead bodies in fresh cement. If we were to ask how Graem knew even before the bomb went off that he would have need of the hole, the truck, and his father’s goons, we would discover a weakness in the plot. Not to fear. Everyone knows that bad guys always have contingency plans and that the execution set up could have been for anybody. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Cheating death once again, Jack wriggles out of his execution with the help of his father who distracts one goon while Jack overpowers another, using the gun held by one villain to shoot the other. When Jack’s father offs the second goon before he can be questioned, we immediately suspect him of trying to hide something. But at this point, it appears that he is still obsessed with protecting his company and perhaps Graem.

Jack calls Bill and tells him of Graem’s perfidy and requests a TAC team to recon Graem’s house. Few viewers don’t realize that this will set up the ultimate confrontation between Jack and his brother. What Jack will do to get the information he needs from Graem, we can only guess at.

Meanwhile, McCarthy calls Fayed with the good news that he’s found an engineer to construct additional triggers for the nukes but that he’ll need to be coerced. He sends the terrorist a picture of the victim along with his qualifications.

Good thing for us that the NSA has been violating the law and the Constitution because they intercept this completely domestic communication – including the picture of the engineer target. Morris begins to decrypt the corrupted file containing the picture, using some typical geek magic.

At Graem’s house, the CTU TAC team informs Jack that Graem is indeed at home and that they have the place surrounded. Curious, Jack’s father asks his son what he’s going to do:

JACK: I need to question Graem alone.

PHILLIP: What are you going to do to him?

JACK: Whatever it takes to find out what he knows.

Any doubts we may have had that Jack will put the screws to his own brother in order to get the information we need are laid to rest. The only question is, what method will Bauer use? His famous “electrotherapy?” Perhaps he’ll pressure Graem by using the former love of his life Marilyn and put a bullet in her thigh? Perhaps we’ll be treated to Bauer’s tried and true “Countdown” technique where he holds a gun to the head of his victim and calmly informs the subject that if he doesn’t get the information he needs by the time he counts to 3, the poor unfortunate’s brains will be spattered all over the wall?

The TAC team breaks into Graem’s house and the confrontation between the two armed brothers lasts only a few seconds but is extraordinarily intense. Graem surrenders and hears his own brother tell one of this team members to “prep” his brother for interrogation.

The ensuing torture scene has got to rank right up there with the best in the history of the show. Before Jack even starts, Graem offers the lame excuse that he “panicked” and that he was just trying to protect the company. Jack doesn’t buy it and begins firing question after question at his bound and helpless brother. “Where’s McCarthy? How do I find him?” Where is he?” Graem’s denials only seem to enrage Jack further. The patented CTU “Lie-O-Meter” detects deception and Jack decides to go for the gold: “Bring me the Agent Package,” says Jack.

Graem knows exactly what that means and visibly blanches.

Cut to CTU briefly where we discover that Morris’s brother is on his way to the hospital with severe radiation sickness. Milo balks at telling Morris, wanting him to continue working on the puzzle of the engineer’s picture. Chloe, once again making Milo looking impotent and powerless, tells Morris anyway and then convinces him to stay until the work on the corrupted image file is complete.

After being told by Bill that once they get a hold of the engineer, the nukes will become operational in 45 minutes, Jack tells his brother exactly what he’s going to do. He orders up something called “Cyacine Pentathol” which is a “neuro-inflammatory” designed to induce excruciating pain. Already sweating in anticipation of his ordeal, Graem continues to deny any knowledge of McCarthy’s whereabouts. Calmly, Jack orders Dr. Richard to administer 2 cc’s of the drug.

The effect on both men is hard to watch. As Graem screams in agonizing pain, Jack suffers along with him. What can possibly be going through his mind?

After ordering Richard to administer another two cc’s, Jack is unable to hold himself in check and rushes to the side of his suffering brother whose screams of agony actually causes us to feel pity for the man who has tried so hard to kill his own brother. As he cradles his brother’s head in his arms, he alternates between tenderness and rage, begging his brother to tell him what he wants to know one moment and screaming at him the next. Graem’s denials only seem to enrage Jack even further:

Jack: The machine says you’re lying! I know you’re lying! TELL ME THE TRUTH! TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT McCARTHY!

Finally, Graem appears to break down. It has nothing to do with McCarthy (what he is holding back). It has to do with Palmer, and Michelle. He set the whole operation up to assassinate the ex-President, kill his friends, and lure him out of hiding so that he could take the fall.

Jack is flummoxed. But why?

GRAEM: Because I love my country!. And in the real world, sometimes that means you have to do things, terrible things, even unforgivable things for the sake of your country. (Bitterly) But you know all about that, don’t you brother. Why do you look at me? We’re the same.

JACK: WE ARE NOT THE SAME! (attacks Graem).

Jack has killed for his country. He has tortured for his country. He has broken into private homes and offices for his country. He has terrorized civilians for his country. He has treated the Constitution like a “list of suggestions” as Karen accused Tom of doing – all for his country.

The fact that Jack’s motives are pure may not excuse his behavior. But because we can see that Bauer’s patriotism and fidelity to duty are in service to a higher, more noble cause, Jack is a hero while Graem is a heel.

Graem’s charge that Jack is just like him hits too close to home for comfort. An enraged and out of control Bauer orders 4 more cc’s of the pain inducing drug. When Dr. Richard refuses because it would kill the subject, Jack points a gun at him and orders him to do it anyway. And when Richard calls for help, Jack aims his weapon at a fellow CTU agent. Bauer has quite simply, lost it. It is left to Phillip Bauer to calmly stand in the doorway, not saying anything, to bring Jack back to reality.

Television just doesn’t get any better than that.

We revisit the President’s sister Sandra who is looking in on a badly beaten Walid who says he is “ashamed” that he spied on possible terrorists. Better I suppose that the real terrorists can plot in peace without having to worry about “good Muslims” like Walid informing on them. We are also told by Sandra that Walid shouldn’t feel that way, that those poor detainees were taken from their homes and their jobs largely on “trumped up” immigration charges.

Absolutely. Violating immigration laws – even being here illegally – is nothing to get in a snit about. Why should the United States care if it’s sovereignty is at risk? There are more important things at stake – like leaving illegal aliens alone and not angering the grievance mongers at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

When the President calls, he expresses surprise that Walid was treated so rudely. Sandra treats us to another speech about how evil her brother’s policies are which leads us to believe Palmer will probably not authorize Tom’s little Constitution shredding party.

Back at Graem’s house, Jack has what passes for a heart to heart with his father. Phillip says that Jack deserved “a better family” and regrets all the lost years between them. Jack agrees. In light of what was to come, this is actually rather poignant. And when Phillip says that he needs “a couple of minutes” alone, Jack’s instincts perk for an instant as doubt clouds his face temporarily. But after all, it is his father and they appear to be making some progress toward reconciliation.

Cut to a conference room where Tom is being congratulated by the Vice President for convincing the President to sign off on his civil liberties busting plan. The Veep mentions that he is happy that we are “finally going to stand up to them” – who exactly is unclear. Terrorists? Civil liberties absolutists? The ACLU?

As the National Security Council meeting starts, the President begins by saying that he had revisited his decision earlier in the day regarding the draconian executive order. He then surprises everybody when he once again declines to authorize the extraordinary measures contained in the order.

PALMER: Some of your seem to feel that the Constitution is valid only during times of peace not during wartime. That is not what the Founders intended.

TOM: With your indulgence, sir, George Washington’s enemies wore bright red coats and marched in a straight line. The Founders never could have conceived of stateless enemies, hiding among us, that targeted not our soldiers but our civilization.

Since the Founders did indeed realize the Constitution could be a hindrance in times of a domestic emergency, they allowed for certain extraordinary measures. While martial law is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the suspension of habeas corpus is mentioned in Article 1, Section 9, and the activation of the militia in time of rebellion or invasion is mentioned in Article 1, Section 8. Limited martial law has been declared to cover certain regions and territories – the south after the civil war for instance – but has never been applied nationwide.

Tom’s argument is sound but his recommended measures to deal with the crisis are over the top. Palmer’s reaction is noble but potentially suicidal – especially his rather lame statement about American Muslims being “marginalized and thus radicalized” as a result of measures against them. One certainly doesn’t follow the other. And given Walid’s “shame” at spying on his fellow Muslims, the President’s words about American Muslims being such a great resource for law enforcement ring hollow indeed.

And just to show that the writers have been playing close attention to Democratic party talking points, we get this bit of nonsense:

PALMER: We Americans need to demonstrate that we are governed by the rule of law and not the politics of fear.”

This is hardly a way to get a discussion regarding civil liberties in wartime going when you automatically accuse your opponent of delving into the “politics of fear” if you want to compromise with the Constitution in any way.

Back at CTU, Morris has worked his magic and the picture begins to come into focus. Excusing himself, he heads for the hospital where his brother is supposedly near death. Imagine our surprise when the picture that appears is of Morris himself. His friends get in touch with him too late. McCarthy and his ditzy girl friend grab him on the road and hustle him away.

With Jack gone, Phillip asks to be alone with Graem. What could be the harm, right?

The ensuing conversation between Phillip and Graem is, to say the least, shocking. It also contains elements of pathos, poignancy, and a queasy realization at what a truly cold fish Jack’s father can be.

Graem crows that Jack has fallen for the “ruse” and that both his father and the company are insulated from harm. But something is wrong. Phillip seems pensive and lost in thought. Graem begins to get nervous. Did he realize what his father was capable of? He must have because he begins to, in effect, beg for his life. He sounds like a little boy reminding his father that he always told him to “make a plan and stick to it” – something his father agrees with but adds the caveat that “sometimes adjustments must be made” to the plan.

With a chilling “I love you” Phillip moves the plunger on the hypo containing the lethal drug all the way down and clamps his hand over his son’s mouth so that his screams of physical and mental agony will be stifled. And we realize that Jack is in for more emotional trauma when, after calling in the CTU medical team to tend to the now dead Graem, Phillip accuses “them” of killing his son. Since Jack was in charge of the interrogation, we know where blame will fall.

Jack will think he’s killed his own brother. What this will do to his already perilous emotional state is an unknown. And what Phillip’s role in the day’s events was and how it will be revealed is anyone’s guess.

BODY COUNT

Jack scores for the first time in weeks by offing a goon. Phillip murders the other one on purpose and commits “Filicide” to boot.

TOTALS:

Jack: 4

Show: 354