Haven't got time for the pain: Day 6 dawns on Fox's '24' and Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer has to confront his inner demons before he can start saving the country.

Byline: Verne Gay

Jan. 14--Perhaps this is faint praise indeed, but torture -- like time -- has long been a foundation of "24," TV's best, smartest and most mind-bending thriller. Both, as it turns out, are intimately linked.

For five seasons, the picture has typically gone this way and (as you may know) the details are never pretty. It is 8:37 p.m. or whenever and Jack Bauer (Emmy winner Kiefer Sutherland) is interrogating a prisoner. He must have the information now, and because the prisoner has decided not to oblige while the clock is ticking ferociously away, Bauer must resort to more imaginative forms of persuasion. There has been electroshock, fingers gouged into wounds and a bullet pumped into a thigh. And while what was about to befall Gregory Itzin's President Logan in the closing minutes of last season was even worse than torture. Let's just say it was gonna hurt real bad. But in the first four hours of this season's "24" (Sunday and Monday, 8-10 p.m. on Fox/5) something -- for want of a better word -- weird happens. There is no major torture, or at least none that Jack partakes of. In one pivotal scene, the opportunity -- so to speak -- presents itself, but Bauer ultimately passes. "I can see in his eyes," Bauer says softly of the bad guy, "that he's telling the truth." See in his…