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One of the many admirable aspects of 24's first year was the fact that the main event (the Palmer hit) was over after eight episodes, with the rest of the season dealing with the sinister plans behind said major storyline. Season 2 is radically different: twelve hours in, still no sign of the dreaded nuclear bomb that could destroy Los Angeles any time of the current day.In order to prevent such a massacre, Jack has taken Syed Ali into custody, only to learn he has been following a red herring: the person who will take care of the final stages of the attack is Marie Warner, the most unlikely of suspects. Until her father reveals some new facts, that is: Marie never really got over her mother's death, and spent a lot of time abroad to cope with the loss. It was probably during that time that she became the threat to national security she is now. Speaking of national security, tension rises within David Palmer's staff as Ted Simmons keeps torturing Stanton and one of the President's advisers, Lynne Kresge (Michelle Forbes), discovers a connection between Stanton and Sherry Palmer. As for Kim Bauer and her recent problems with the law, she has managed to escape from the police and, after encountering a cougar in the previous episode, she seems to have found a safe place in the woods, where she meets a solitary hunter named Lonnie McCrae (Kevin Dillon).It is the last plot strand that raised most of the negative criticisms aimed at the show when the second series originally aired: according to several people, the Kim character lost all her dramatic strength in Day 2, as her misadventures had practically no connection to the bigger chain of events and were deemed narratively pointless. That is totally wrong: in fact, a lot of lesser genre films have been lambasted for having screenplays that lay their foundations on a bunch of coincidences in order to connect everything. Why, then, should a product as intelligent and precedent-setting as 24 be scolded for aspiring to a heightened sense of realism, a factor that requires that not all sections of the script be linked all the time? Sure, the woods subplot may not be the most interesting part of the episode (that would be Penny Johnson stealing every scene she is in once again), but it deserves a re-evaluation, not least for giving Kevin Dillon his actorial dignity back an entire year before Entourage debuted.
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