I’ve been an inconsistent viewer of 24 over its 7 seasons (there was that brief, ultimately disappointing “Heroes” phase) but I’m back now. The current season has been really good. Or rather, it’s been really … watchable. “Good” implies a certain level of artistic/dramatic consistency the show can never, ever reach due to its innate preposterousness. But it seems to work best when it acknowledges the very faint undercurrent of farce always present just beneath the noisy world-about-to end action. This is what worked so well in season 5, when the weaselly President Charles Logan and his wacky wife Martha managed to be crazy, unpredictable and kind of funny all at the same time. The same applies to the ever-present, socially-inept Chloe.

This season, the show has layered the earnest action and farce with something else – a straight-up advocacy of torture (at least in the “ticking time bomb” scenario, which is 100 percent of the show but in real life, exceedingly rare).

So last night the show went completely bonkers, featuring a) Jack Bauer torturing a guy – a traitorous aide to “Blaine Mayer,” the insufferably self-righteous senator who has been investigating Jack for torture – in the White House; followed immediately by b) a terrorist assault on the very same White House in which the president and Sen. Mayer are taken hostage, presumably to be rescued by Bauer.

Watching this, I was trying to figure out what the hell it meant, if anything. Obviously, Joel Surnow’s position is that torture is useful. But was the show saying the president should condone it? (She didn’t. Nor did that seem like a good option for her.) Or is it saying that only Jack Bauer – someone willing to cross any line to get the job done when necessary, then face the legal/moral consequences – should do it (implying those lines should remain in place)? That’s the impression you’re left with; Jack at one point urges good-guy Bill Buchanan to go start tasering the traitor again, and he won’t do it.

On the other hand, the show is reveling in its own transgressions. The torture-ee is a smarmy young asshole who obviously deserves it. So we’re rooting for it. And Jack’s doing it in the West Wing, maybe in Dick Cheney’s old office. It’s appalling. Sen. Mayer (a joke on writer Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side), is a terrible, nattering caricature of torture opponents. Yet his preening senatorial pompousness really is spot-on, so it’s hilarious to watch him get a comeuppance. So: appalling, hilarious, provocative, farcical: a solid hour’s entertainment – if you don’t take it too seriously. But not a particularly good guide for those devising Obama administration’s interrogation policies.