the times-- they are a-changin': Jack Bauer and torture

From Rebecca Dana in the WSJ..., the origins and evolution of 24-- within the political environment in which it finds itself. (The article is inherently interesting, but especially so for me, since it's the only show we watch with any regularity.)

During its first five years on television, the terror-thriller "24" built a huge fan base by creating the first true superhero of the post-Sept. 11 era: special agent Jack Bauer. Ruggedly handsome and righteously defiant, Jack was willing to do anything to defend his country.

That "anything" has always included torture. Jack has snipped off fingers, poisoned associates, shot through kneecaps and faked executions, all in the pursuit of national security.

Against the real-life backdrop of global terrorist attacks, "24" at its peak fulfilled the fantasies of an insecure nation. It became one of the most important franchises for Fox Broadcasting Co., with 17 million viewers tuning in some weeks and millions returning to watch on DVD....

But those who ride the tide of the times can also get upended by them. As public opinion about the Iraq War turned south, the show's depiction of torture came to be seen as glorifying the practice in the wake of real-world reports of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques used on detainees.

Ratings dropped by a third over the course of last year's sixth season. Producers would later experience trouble casting roles, once some of the most desirable in television, because the actors disapproved of the show's depiction of torture. "The fear and wish-fulfillment the show represented after 9/11 ended up boomeranging against us," says the show's head writer, Howard Gordon. "We were suddenly facing a blowback from current events."

Last spring, Fox executives asked producers to come up with a plan for what to do with their onetime crown jewel. The producers decided to take the radical -- and rarely attempted -- step of reinventing the show. While some fans complained "24" had grown too formulaic, the producers also grudgingly saw the importance of wrestling the show from its ties to an unpopular conflict.

The result: "24" is nowhere to be found on the TV schedule. For weeks the show's producers tried to reconcile the show's premise with the new public mood. Should Jack atone for his sins? Is Jack bad? The script rewrites and philosophical crises left the show so far behind schedule that when the Hollywood writers went on strike in November, Fox had no choice but to delay its premiere date. The show could premiere this summer, next fall or as late as January 2009....

When "24" was first conceived, no one imagined it would court such controversy. In 2000, creators Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow developed the idea of a high-quality television action show in the mold of the "James Bond" or "Die Hard" movies: heart-pounding, if not exactly plausible. The major conceit of the show was that it would take place over a 24-hour period. Each hour-long show would depict an hour in Jack's life....In 2000, Fox ordered up 13 episodes.

"Then terrorism arrived at our doorstep," says Gail Berman, former president of Fox entertainment. The show premiered 25 days after Sept. 11, 2001.

Instantly, "24" became inextricable from the aftermath of the terror attacks. Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, became a stand-in for the Bush administration's antiterror strategy. Jack's interrogation techniques and the numerous "ticking time bomb scenarios" he confronts -- situations where he must quickly extract critical information from a suspect to deter an imminent threat -- were raised during serious discussions of terror and torture on Sunday morning talk shows, in Republican and Democratic presidential debates, on newspaper editorial pages and in the halls of Congress.

At certain moments the show's ratings have dovetailed with the approval ratings of the president. Both spiked during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the capture of Saddam Hussein and the 2004 presidential election.

The article goes on at great length about the attempts to re-work the plot. But I'll stop here...