24 - no comparison

First of all I have to issue a disclaimer and say that in my books Kiefer, as great as he may be, will never be a Donald. Sky One has a strange habit, during 24, of always advertising programmes starring the same people as 24, and now they’re advertising something called Human Trafficking that has Donald Sutherland in it. Seeing him in the commercial makes going back to dour Kiefer after the break that little bit less enticing a prospect... Kiefer lacks that twinkle, the amused detachment, the freedom of perspective that makes his dad, even in his seventies, by far the more sexy of the two. See for yourself:But my real issue is the plotting. Okay? I’m sure someone has written about this but I haven’t seen it, and every week the issue of plotting distracts me from the rest of the programme. It's all so patently for effect, I sometimes begin to feel used. What’s the formula? Every week there’s a sacrificial victim — or an apparent one — and that potential casualty is dangled in front of us till the plot sweeps (like a swollen river) past them and we engulf the next one. Often they are decoys. Audrey’s all right (I think; are we feeling safe, with her in the car?) but of course her father’s the one who plunged off a cliff rather than let Henderson’s men kill him with their evil laser beam.

Call me old-fashioned, though. Are we ever going to hear of that kid from the first few episodes again, and his mother? Or is there a rationale around the verisimilitude of real-time (sans commercial breaks) to the real-life habit of never tying up loose ends? As satire I think this is incredibly important television, and TV as the medium of maximum saturation must certainly be as pointed as possible about this administration, but the lack of integrity and symmetry in the plotting is bothering baroque moi.

Two asides: the First Lady is SO well-named as Martha! This gives me pleasure from the beginning to the end of every episode. And President Logan looks deliciously like Nixon. I've never seen this poignant touch mentioned, but then I'm not versed in the literature.