24 things wrong

I've just finished watching season eight of 24, and have realised I've been watching it wrong.

With a series like this, and with having it on DVD, the standard approach is throw in the DVDs and watch until you run out. For 24, it can be made more interesting by trying to watch it in 24 hours (well, 18 given the lack of ads). This is basically what I did.

The problem is, the series isn't written like that. It's written so you are supposed to have a week between episodes. Now, I don't think, if you have the DVDs, you should wait a week between episodes, but I would now recommend spacing the episodes out a bit.

There are two issues, the first is action fatigue. This is a high action series, every episode there is usually someone getting shot or something blown up, or... and basically you get sated by having the constant boom that you start not paying attention, and then why are you even watching?

The second issue is information replay. As it was written with a week between episodes, there are continual recaps of what happened last time. However, when you watch it back to back to back, you quickly realise that what happened last time isn't what they said did (they found out that information? no, they didn't!), and you also realise just how ridiculous some of the revelations are. Given this is 24, most people are going to turn out to be working for the enemy (even predictably so), but if you watch continuously, you have a much harder time buying their sudden turns as you can't picture the person you just saw getting smacked down by a "surprise ex!" is now an action specialist.

Some year from now, I'll probably rewatch 24. When I do, I hope I remember to break it up.

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