Really Bad Nosebleeds

After weeks of Am Idol nonsense pre-empting it, Fox’s 24 returned last night. And with its fuller focus on the actual bioterrorist threat in L.A. plot, the show happily seems to’ve recovered much of its dwindling energy. Watching Kiefer Sutherland’s hard-nosed Jack Bauer do the undercover bit in Mexico earlier, I found myself growing progressively more removed from the goings on.

Last night’s ep provided a clue as to why the show nearly lost me: during that long stretch of story, you never had the sense that ordinary people were in jeopardy, just a buncha of ultra-resilient superagents. Watching Michelle (Reiko Aylesworth) attempt to calm a panicky Angelino to keep him from leaving a contaminated hotel, I realized that – as dopey as she could get – one of the main functions of Elish Cuthbert’s daughter Kim in the first two seasons (along with Bauer’s wife Teri in the first ‘un) was to provide a needed element of Regular Folks in Peril.
As for the secondary plot involving President David Palmer and his duplicitous ex-wife Sherry (Penny Johnson Jerald), I’ve gotta admit a part of me shared the woman’s indignation last night when Palmer laid into her for all her misdeeds. It’s a scorpion & frog thing: c’mon, guy, you knew that Sherry’d get you entangled in something messy – it’s in her nature. For all his supposed smarts as a leader, Palmer has a real wavery learning curve. . .