torture on tv.

i am so, so sick of seeing people tortured on television. I had had it with Jack Bauer a while ago for torturing captives in order to "stop terrorism" (which, by the way, is the OPPOSITE of what torture does).

In cop shows, the torturees are always women. They are almost always sexually abused/raped. They are often partially naked, and they often end up dead (except the one they save at the end).

These shows are lazy. Rather than putting resources into good writing, plots and characters, they throw a naked girl in a dirty room with chains and force the audience to watch as she is tortured, brutalized, or anticipates both while the heroes (strong men and sympathetic, emotionally tortured women) work on finding out where she is.

CSI (all of them), Law & Order (especially SVU), Crimial Minds, Without a Trace; they're all guilty of the worst kind of television - exploitative, sexist, and violent. For no reason.

"The Wire", an extremely violent and brilliant cable show had maybe one scene in all five seasons that matched the above description. They killed loads of characters. But each death had a reason; each instance moved the plot forward or developed the characters. "The Wire"'s writers didn't throw in a torture scene and call it a plot. Once a week. Every week. With new characters who disappear the next week. That's just lazy. And irresponsible.