I’ve rewatching season five of the tv show 24 in preparation for the imminent start of season six and I’m starting to feel some pity for the character of Rick Burke.
Who is Rick Burke you wonder?
He is the CTU interrogator/torturer played by Martin Papazian. Why should I feel pity for a torturer though? Well as if his occupation wasn’t bad enough it seems that half the people he is asked to ‘interrogate’ by his superiors in CTU are entirely innocent and have no information at all for him to extract from them.
Not only that but when he does actually have a genuine suspect to interrogate, Christopher Henderson, Burke is knocked out by Tony Almeida before he can finish the job.
I had initially thought that Burke was in season four also but he is in fact the second iteration of a character whose sole purpose is to take over the role of torturer from Jack Bauer so that Bauer’s heroics are not so diminished by carrying out such acts as they have been in previous seasons.
The season four CTU chief interrogator was an Agent Richards as portrayed by Butch Klein who has the thankless task of torturing Richard Heller and Sarah Gavin, who of course were innocent of conspiring with the terrorists.
