"Sarah Clarke absolutely knocked me out this season. Her look was great, her level of intesity was amazing, and when you think back to the kind of nice office girl she was in the first season to where she is now, it's amazing and she made them both incredibly believeable." - Joel Surnow on Sarah's return on season 3 of '24'
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NINA MYERS: Why do I feel like you're not telling me the truth? - "24"
Press
"Wondering about Nina" Salon.com (3/8/2002)
Is anyone else besides me watching the sexiest thing on
television?
by David Thomson
For all the promos that run on the Fox channel about
"24," I still wonder whether I may be the only person
watching it. The show has been bumped and pushed around, and it's
not hard to believe that it's too complicated (or flat-out
impossible) for a lot of viewers. Of course, it's part of the
delicious, creeping paranoia that "24" induces that you
are likely to feel alone. Sometimes I wonder if the show is
pulling unfair tricks with the plotline -- but there's no one to
complain to, because I'm the only one watching.
That's why I have this thing about Nina (Sarah Clarke). Because
she seems to be desperately watching the whole thing unfold in
just the mood I'm feeling.
Nina (for the rest of the world) is chief assistant to Jack Bauer
(Kiefer Sutherland) in some kind of high-level security operation
in which Jack is trying to prevent an assassination plot against
a presidential candidate. Don't ask me to explain the plot any
more fully because I can't. All I know is that I can't miss the
show, and that Nina is the sexiest thing on television.
In the back story to "24," Nina has had an affair with
Jack, but it's over now (I think), which has enabled Jack to be
driven all over greater L.A. and halfway out of his mind to
rescue his wife and his teenage daughter, who were kidnapped as
part of the assassination plot. This has left Nina, back at
headquarters, always in some kind of magical telephone hookup
with Jack, trying to help, trying to hold the show together --
and, in an odd way, seeming like a kind of surrogate
writer-director trying to puzzle it out.
Last night, with the wife and daughter rescued (for the moment at
least, though there is something wrong with the wife that is
probably more than her having been raped during the ordeal), a
lot of characters were saying what a brick Nina had been, how
much she had done to save everything and so on and so forth. All
true.
Plus, because "24" is what it says it is -- continuous
action, 24 hours in the life of these people -- Nina hasn't had a
break, a catnap or time for a shower or a change of clothes.
She's been in the same drab black outfit all along, and her
makeup has gone very faint. It doesn't matter; Nina is a knockout
still, and so beautiful and so intelligent-looking that you sort
of know that she and Jack haven't gotten over that affair (no
matter his fresh vows of duty to his family). And given the
complete uncertainty that envelops "24," you can't
abandon the thought that Nina could yet prove more than she
seems.
And that's a big part of why I wonder about her.
You see, in last Tuesday night's episode, as Jack went into deep
interrogation over his episodes on the lam, he asked Nina to take
off and visit the hospital where his wife and daughter were being
checked out. Not the kindest assignment, you might think, in view
of the inevitable wariness between Nina and the wife. And Nina
had a close-up where the thought bubble said, "Jesus!"
but she went along with it all -- because she seems devoted to
making the series work, because she does as she's told, because
she can't say no to Jack or because she is more than she seems.
Take your pick.
And, of course, when she gets to the hospital, Nina not only
handles the awkwardness with the wife, but she is so brilliant an
investigator (or so extreme a paranoid) that she picks up on
another little line of sinisterness that seems to be developing.
With the result that she takes command and orders the wife and
the daughter out of the hospital -- to a safer place.
We are more than halfway through "24," and it's only
natural that one begins to wonder where the whole show is going.
Well, for what it's worth, it's really only Nina I care about.
The presidential candidate leaves me cold. Kiefer Sutherland has
won his Golden Globe already. But I have such a need to see Nina
week after week that I'm getting very anxious, worrying that the
show may let her down.
However, what do I want? What would I do if I were writing the
show? Is the wife dying? If so, does that leave legitimate room
for Nina and Jack? Or is Nina going to be the last death, giving
herself for Jack in the final crisis? Those could work for me,
but I'm not sure that I don't want to see a final scene where
Nina -- showered, and brilliant in aqua and mauve -- is revealed
as the brains behind the whole thing.
That's why I'm saying to myself -- 24? It seems so arbitrary, so
artificial. Why not 48, 96? Why not Nina forever?
