The new season of 24 is about to start, and it sounds like it suffers from the same malady that caused me to lose interest about a third into season two: Jack Bauer’s daughter, Kim. The New York Times review, Countering Terrorists, and a Dense Daughter, sums it up exactly:
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The bad news is that Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), Bauer’s impossibly dense daughter, is not only alive but working for her father at the counterterrorism unit as a junior analyst. Even though she now has her own security-clearance pass, she never seems to understand when national security is at stake….
Kim is annoying not because the writers wanted to create a heroine who would be fun to hate (that is President Palmer’s treacherous estranged wife, Sherry), but in order to stretch the plot. Hitchcock used the word “MacGuffin” to describe the arbitrary thing (baby tiger, Maltese Falcon) that brings characters together in a movie plot; on “24,” Kim is the MacIdiot, a character whose time-consuming missteps help postpone closure.
You get the sense that Elisha Cuthbert may not be a bad actress, but the crap she’s forced to do and say in 24 overpowers everything else. When her character isn’t onscreen, the show seems pretty good, but I’m not willing to invest the time on this go-around.
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 