When I'm finished with you, you're gonna wish that you felt this good again. -Jack Bauer

Instead of studying, I'm of course cruising the Internet. Story of my life. I found this article posted in the comments section of the Jack Bauer Torture Report. Executive producer Howard Gordon said that the final episodes of the season will be less torture-heavy than the first half has been. He claims this has nothing to do with "the U.S. military, human rights groups and children's advocates" wanting it to.

"It's not something that we, as writers, want to use as a crutch. We'd like to find other ways for Jack to get information out of suspects,'' said Gordon. "Our appetite has decreased. Personally, I think the audience may be tiring of it as well. My wife says it's too much.''

That's a good point. It's really easy to just have Jack torture someone to fill up the episode. I think the writers should be branching out more to have Jack obtain information more creatively, and not just having Agent Burke come in with his torture juice when they can't think of anything. Personally, I like it better when Jack just threatens to torture someone, like in one of my favorite Jack Bauer moments from way back in season 1:

You probably don't think that I can force this towel down your throat. But trust me, I can. All the way. Except I'd hold onto this one little bit at the end. When your stomach starts to digest it, I pull it out. Taking your stomach lining with it. For most people it would take about a week to die. It's very painful.

Needless to say, the guy told him who he was working for. I'm sure this shying away from more gruesome torture scenes will make some viewers happy, and hopefully we can see Jack use more clever devices to get the information he needs.

P.S. I read a very disturbing story this morning about a blogger in Egypt who is going to jail for 4 years for insulting Islam. That's no good. I really love the First Amendment.