Yvonne Strahovski on Kate Morgan’s storyline: “It’s dark”

Yvonne Strahovski
Yvonne Strahovski

New York Post has a nice piece on Yvonne Strahovski. Most of it is about her personal life but here’s the 24 related info.

“You meet Kate at a point in her life when she’s feeling dejected and doesn’t have a lot to hold onto,” Strahovski says. “When Jack Bauer comes into the picture, and she has an opportunity to make things right and maybe prove herself, she jumps at it, and then turns into someone who’s hunting him in a way. It’s dark.”

Strahovski will say she’s become buddies with her “24” co-star Gbenga Akinnagbe, who plays CIA field operative Erik Ritter, another new character. “He’s a great guy, like a kid on set,” she says.

As for the star of “24,” Sutherland, she says he “knows the show inside and out. He lives and breathes his character. Between him and Jon Cassar, the in-house director and producer, they really know it very well.”

Cassar says of Strahovski: “Yvonne has been a great addition to the new ‘24.’ Not only is she very comfortable with the physical demands of her character but she moves through those scenes with a gravitas that makes you believe she’s been a CIA agent all her life. And if that isn’t enough, she does it all with a great attitude under very difficult shooting circumstances.”

Source New York Post

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This quote about her portrayal of the character was interesting:

“Strahovski, 31, says she plays her super-agent character, Kate Morgan, with a purposeful coldness and detachment. ”

It will be interesting to see if Kate softens as the season progresses. Yvonne is really good at playing both tough and vulnerable sides of the character, so I hope we see some of the latter during the season.

The Grantland review is *fascinating*. The fact that Jack’s motivations aren’t readily identifiable seems to me to be an extension of the growing disconnect between the audience and Jack Bauer which started in Season 8.

“Dark” eh? Isn’t everyone? *stretches and yawns*

Reviews are now being posted on Metacritic. They didn’t including the most positive review from Forbes.

http://www.metacritic.com/tv/24-live-another-day/season-9

Entertainment Weekly gives the premiere a C+
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20812199,00.html

This article was vague in regards to why it deserved a C…

“For nearly half of the first hour, Jack says jack. ”

I don’t understand why the article portrays this as a negative thing. Do they think Jack supposed to chat it up with the CIA agents when his goal is to break Chloe out?

“Instead of being drawn into the story, we keep waiting for it to start.”

Unlike most shows, I’d say 24 is very fast paced, which definitely helps it, (not that pacing really matters if a show is well written.) Most shows don’t have action in at least the first few episodes, and if it only takes half an hour to have action in the new season, I still don’t see anything wrong with it.

“When it does, 24 gets rolling with an explosive (if ridiculously easy) jailbreak.”

Okay…I understand what they mean there…

Have I seen LAD yet? No…but I feel like this article isn’t elaborating on why it deserves a C+. If the only problem with LAD is that it follows the 24 “formula,” then it’s all fine with me…

Yeah, this review did seem a bit vague. It seems like almost all of the critics are judging the merits of LAD on how it stacks up against the original series. The positive reviews say this is a major improvement on the later seasons, while the negative reviews have said LAD is too similar to previous seasons (following the 24 “formula as you said). So I think most of the reviews for LAD are as much about the previous seasons as they are about LAD.

Every season of ’24’ – or any series for that matter – should be judged entirely on it’s own merits; is it good, is it entertaining, does it work in and of itself, etc? The whole shell-game of comparing past ’24’ seasons to the latest one is a disservice to the writers, who have by all accounts gotten an extraordinary amount of service out of what initially appeared to be (and certainly I myself thought so at the time) at most a one or two season concept, and have largely maintained an unusually high and largely consistent quality threshold over thirteen years. ‘Live Another Day’ should be judged entirely on it’s own merits, and that’s how I’ll be doing so…

And what I predicted would surely happen has indeed done so; that some would criticize the new (limited) series for largely sticking with the tried-and-true ’24’ formula rather than re-invent the proverbial wheel. Other than the fact that they HAVE sort of reinvented ’24’ just by virtue of the fact this is a 12-episode run that will jump time as and when needed by the plot (a first for the show), I’m not sure how some expect the formula to be changed to their liking, or indeed any good reason why the writers should eschew the central conceit or visual language of the series at this late stage… although it’s interesting to note that both of which would likely have been significantly altered or dumped altogether had the proposed feature film – especially had it been directed by Antoine Fuqua (a deliciously exciting prospect it has to be said) – been put into production as originally planned a couple of years back.

Either way, the movie wasn’t meant to be and ‘Live Another Day’ was, I’m just glad Jack is back and so should we all… more so if the new series turns out like gangbusters!

I agree, Gerry, which is why I find it so difficult to rank the eight seasons. Initially, I think, I was hoping for something fresh and innovative with Live Another Day, but now that we’re looking down the barrel of the proverbial gun, I find myself content with the fact that this ‘event series’ can provide interesting little subtleties and deviations within the long-running ’24’ formula in much the same way Season 8 did (which I maintain is one of the show’s strongest years).

Totally agree Gerry that each season of 24 should be judged on its own merits. On the issues of 24 having a formula, doesn’t nearly every series have one? Every single crime procedural on television uses the same format for every single episode: body is found, cops investigate, arrest an innocent person, interview more witnesses, discover surprising evidence through forensics, which leads to finding the murderer who either confesses or is killed in the end. Yet you don’t hear critics or fans of these dozens of crime shows complaining about the repetition.

If shows like NCIS, Castle, or CSI suddenly changed their shows and reinvented the wheel, I think their fanbases would be outraged. Not sure why 24 should be expected to do the same. I’ve seen shows that made major changes and were trashed as a result. Lots of Chuck fans were disappointed with later seasons, even though the show was never guilty of rehashing. Roseanne changed their show completely in the final season and it was trashed by fans and critics.