You are gonna tell me what I wanna know, it's just a matter of how much you want it to hurt. -Jack Bauer

I recently discovered that Slate.com does a weekly podcast chronicling each episode of 24. I've only listened to the one for this week's episode. The show is hosted by June Thomas and Slate's Culture Editor, Julia Turner, and Slate's Literary Editor, Meghan O'Rourke, joined her this week.

The first thing the women discussed was if the show had too many subplots to follow. Turner and O'Rourke, who did most of the talking, did not think there was. However, they all agreed that after the bomb went off, the show seems to not really be focusing on it as much. Since the bomb exploded, we've been mostly seeing Jack deal with his family. Fayed has barely been in the picture, and he's who CTU is supposed to be using all their resources to find. Thomas said that she would like to see more people panicked, which is a good point. Apparently no one is fleeing Los Angeles because the streets are still clear for Jack to drive on. They feel there should be more urgency surrounding finding the other bombs.

Thomas brought the conversation to the scene where Jack tortures his brother. They talked about the intensity of this scene and the juxtaposition of Jack torturing and consoling his brother at the same time. I think that this scene is probably the best I've seen Kiefer Sutherland act in anything I've ever seen him in. He shows us a roller coaster of emotions in a span of 6 minutes. They talked about the fact that none of them were surprised that Jack's dad turned out to be a bad guy, and how this worked because the writers didn't seem to care if the viewers saw it coming or not.

They also brought up the good point, that had occurred to me too, that Jack will now feel responsible for the death of his brother. As far as I can remember, Jack has never killed anyone via torture, and the fact that his brother will be the first one will no doubt have an intense impact on him. I always love it when the audience knows something that characters on the show don't, and this will probably lead to some great television in the weeks to come. Watching the episode last night it really hit me that Jack has nothing left to live for. I don't see how he will emotionally survive the day.

If you stop and think about it, you have to feel a TINY bit sorry for Graem. He truly believed that what he was doing was in the best interest of the country, and he probably just wanted to make his dad proud. And his dad rewards all of his hard work by killing him. I personally wish we could have seen some more Graem - Jack drama, three episodes wasn't nearly enough.

The podcast is worth listening to, it's only about 15 minutes and they make a lot of good, funny points. I might have to listen to them every week now.