There's a new administration in town, and a trailing legion of civil libertarians, do-gooders and smug senators with subpoena powers.
They want to crawl all over the recent past, second-guessing years of successful counterterrorism operations - which, of necessity, worked the dark side.
Jack Bauer is still saving America on 24, but the post-9/11 action hero appears to be grappling with the vociferous, real-world criticism of his hardball tactics.
For years, 24 has been in the cross hairs of not just human rights activists appalled by its casual depiction of torture but also military and law enforcement professionals who say it has corrupted impressionable recruits.
"There was always one or two Jack Bauers in the classroom," says Gary Solis, a retired professor who taught a Law of War course at the United States Military Academy in West Point.
The show "came up with surprising frequency. They thought that the whatever-it-takes mentality as exemplified by Jack Bauer was appropriate: 'If it saves the lives of my men and women, I'll do it'."
In one of the season's opening scenes, Bauer is asked if he tortured a suspect.
"According to the definition set forth by the Geneva Convention, yes I did," a defiant Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, says.
But later, in one of the few flashes of self-reflection in the show's first hours, Bauer says the American public has a right to know what's done in its name.
"We've written more deeply and in a more nuanced way on the subject," Howard Gordon, the executive producer and chief writer of 24, says, adding that the debate over torture intensifies as the season progresses.
"We felt we couldn't denounce Jack and wash away the last years of the show, but we do have him travel some distance on the subject and give voice to different points of view, particularly in the president's character, who isn't falling for the whatever-it-takes formulation. She holds fast."
President Allison Taylor (a Hillary Clinton manquee) is played by Cherry Jones.
In past years, Bauer and his colleagues at the Counter-Terrorism Unit in Los Angeles have variously shot, electro-shocked, drugged, mutilated and beaten suspects for information, as well as staged the mock execution of the children of one terrorist.
The bad guys always break.
"As a rule, people like to see Jack Bauer torture the [expletive] out of someone," former writer on 24 and executive producer of The Shield, a police drama, Adam Fierro says.
"Torture is done to such an extent they've cornered the market."
The show first aired in the US less than two months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the show's tick-tock conceit seemed tailor-made for the new zeitgeist of fear and security alerts.
The pulsating sense of panic wowed viewers and drew praise from some unlikely commentators.
Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, pronounced himself a fan, as did Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who told a legal conference that no jury would convict Bauer.
When the show's crew toured the National Counterterrorism Center while filming in Washington, the staff stood and applauded, according to Gordon.
But in its sixth season, 24 sagged, a victim of its longevity but also, perhaps, of the public's weariness of the war on terror and the scandals surrounding the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and in CIA secret prisons.
The new season of 24 is set in Washington rather than Los Angeles, an attempt to freshen the brand.
A woman president has just taken office and the country is threatened by operatives from the fictional African nation of Sangala, where a murderous thug has just staged a coup
