Amy's Robot

24 gets creepy

Over the years, 24 has gotten pretty good at some basic set pieces that they can use over and over again to keep viewers involved: torture scenes, arbitrarily killing off key characters, some big shoot-out action scenes, a few super-sexy villains vamping around. But these scenes aren't usually what you would call creepy, or fucked in the head, which is what set apart a scene in last night's episode.

Here's the scene I'm talking about. Kiefer has his evil brother tied up, and is interrogating him using injections of that pain serum they're so fond of at CTU that makes people writhe and scream in agony. The torture technician guy says things like "8 cc's could send him into cardiac arrest!", and Kiefer says things like "give it to him now!"

But since the torture victim who was sweating and howling in pain was Kiefer's brother, he was torn. Duty to nation and hatred of his dickwad of a brother vs. the unbreakable bond of fraternal loyalty. So during the torture scene, Kiefer actually put his arms around his screaming brother, holding him tenderly and stroking his head, and saying "breathe, breathe" like he was starring in the scariest Lamaze video ever made.

Yeesh. It was actually reassuring, in a brutal kind of way, when James Cromwell came in and gave his own son a lethal pain serum injection and just clamped his hand over his mouth until he was dead.

categories: TV
posted by amy at 5:04 PM | #