My dad lives on top of a remote hill in Dripping Springs, Texas, somewhere near Sam Beam (Iron and Wine) and about an hour from downtown Austin. I spent a couple of weeks at his house last Summer, and my options for entertainment included playing with his three Labrador puppies (and two grown Labs) and watching complete seasons of Keifer Sutherland's 24 show on DVD.
I had never watched 24 before, given that my exposure to television up to that point, over the past few years, had pretty much exclusively consisted of football games and the occasional episode of House. Soon enough, though, I became addicted to my dad's collection of 24 DVDs, tearing through complete seasons within 24 hours and begging for more. Sure, I recognized it was a terribly manipulative show with plotlines so logically flawed they would struggle to earn a passing grade in a high-school creative writing course. But it was something to do.
When the new season of 24 began this year, I started watching it with regularity. It wasn't as cool having to watch it an hour at a time, without being able to immediately click over to the next episode, but at least it gave me something to talk about with my dad--and what else am I gonna do on a Monday night? Go bar hopping?
Unfortunately, I'm discovering major problems with being addicted to a show that doesn't pay any regard to logic. See, a couple of weeks ago, Jack Bauer (the main character, anti-terrorist badass) gained possession of a tape that proved that the President was involved in a conspiracy and was responsible for the death of the former President. This was supposed to be a turning point in the show. As luck would have it, Jack is in love with this blonde lady named Audrey who happens to be the daughter of the Secretary of Defense. So, Jack and Audrey met up with the Secretary at a remote airport hangar and handed him the tape, figuring he'd be responsible with it, given that he's like in charge of the Department of Defense and everything. Makes sense, right? Sadly, after receiving the tape, the Secretary randomly PUNCHED Jack in the Adam's Apple (Jack = hardcore military dude, Secretary = old pasty dude, but somehow he pulls it off), and tied up HIS OWN DAUGHTER along with Jack and left them bound to a pole for no apparent reason, then gave the tape to one of his nameless security men, left everyone at the airport, somehow acquired a car (they had arrived by jet) and drove to see the President by himself, without even bringing the evidence.
This horribly illogical string of events will ruin a month of my TV-viewing life, because the next few episodes will involve all of the characters doing stupid things to try to make up for this travesty of writing. Jack was of course able to recover the tape after freeing himself and beating up everyone in sight, but then the bad guys showed up and killed everyone except the main characters and then held the daughter hostage and made Jack give them the tape. As a result, the next few shows will involve Jack chasing down the tape, which is ridiculous given that so much of this year's plot was already spent on Jack acquiring the tape in the first place and that the way he lost the tape made absolutely no sense.
Thankfully, the writers of the show managed to get rid of the Secretary of Defense in the next episode by having him drive off a cliff under a similarly absurd thread of logic.
So, that's the difference between watching 24 on DVD and watching it on TV during the season. The DVD option is quick, and a couple of bad shows only cost you a little bit of time. But when you follow the show during the season, it takes like a month to wash away the ill effects of one horribly conceived plot turn. AND you have to suffer through commercials.
On a side note, about half the season has passed, and I just now figured out that one of the main characters (the President's wife) is played by the same actress who portrayed the gravedigger's mom in Garden State.
"By the way, it says BALLS on your forehead."
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