It took 18 months, but I have managed to work my way through the first six seasons of the hit TV show 24. It all started in December of 2006 when Stacy and I started watching Season 1 at my parent's house over Christmas vacation. I think we pounded out the entire thing in 5 days. From there, I was hooked.

The show has been good filler for me during the times when Stacy is on her crazy rotations. If she was on a month where she was working 80+ hours per week with numerous overnight shifts, I had a lot of time to kill by myself at the house. Since Elli is an early-to-bed kid, that gave me plenty of time to experience with wonderment all of Jack Bauer's exploits.

There are a lot of hardcore 24 fans I know who feel like the show is getting weaker over time. Most of these folk have been watching the show on FOX every week, and make a big deal out of it. With all due respect to the "real" fans who have been watching the show for six years (as opposed to my 18 months), I beg to differ.

I think what happened was that after the 2nd or 3rd season, the writers started to realize that people were purchasing the show on DVD. What I noticed in the first couple of seasons was that there were some recurring themes that got somewhat redundant after a while. I mean, honestly. How dumb can Kim Bauer be sometimes. Girl has no street smarts. Wandering down dark alleys, into strange stores and cavorting with shady dudes.

But as the series progressed, I feel like they were paced better for continuous DVD watching in a short period of time. That being the case, the plots got more complicated and there were more details up in the air.

I'm going to make an effort to watch the show on FOX this fall, but I wonder if I'll like it as much. It's possible that not being able to string episodes together will confuse me and make the show less enjoyable. It will be an interesting experiment.

I guess if I hate it after 4 weeks, I can always let the episodes pile up on the Tivo until the season's over.

Fair Dinkum