Sunday, January 19th, 2003

24

Okay.

I have watched more television this weekend than I usually do in a fortnight. My eyes are a little, uh, messed up. I think. But I’m done.

Yeah.

Thoughts? Well the fact that I watched an entire season of television in less than 48 hours is evidence I was pretty into it. As a caveat, I should point out that it doesn’t take much to get me hooked into a show or storyline. Hell, I ended up watching two and a half seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 in university for no reason besides I watched it last week and felt obliged to watch it this week. And so on. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

The first five or six hours of 24 were riveting stuff. Beyond the real-time storytelling device, the multiple seemingly unrelated plot threads were all engaging. Anticipation really is the best part. By hour nine or ten, when what was essentially the first act was wrapping up, my main thoughts were “what the hell are they going to do for the next fourteen hours?”. Obviously, my answer as “escalation”. From hour fifteen or so on, I was still very much addicted but the “oh give me a break” mentality was beginning to creep around the edges. The amount of misfortunes that constantly piled up on Jack Bauer and kin was getting unbelievable. Granted, this probably wouldn’t have seemed quite so evident if taken in weekly episodic form – Instead of seeing Kim kidnapped for the fourth time in five hours, it would have over the course of, oh, a month and a half? Easier to digest.

That minor quibble aside, I was along for the ride all the way. While I had never seen an episode before, I had made the mistake of reading some press, particularly around the time of the season finale. So unfortunately I knew about special guest baddie Dennis Hopper (though Lou Diamond Philips was a pleasant surprise… “CHAVEZ!!!!” heh.), about turncoat Nina and about dead Teri. But what’re you gonna do, right? I was particularly satisfied with the resolution of the David Palmer and his wife thread. Seems silly to root for a fictional politician to do the right thing, but I was.

So I guess that brings us to season two. Not sure if I want to borrow the season to this point from Kyle or Five Seventeen, or wait till the summer and watch them all at once. I also don’t know if I want to watch this much television in one sitting again anytime soon. Good television, to be certain, maybe some of the best in a long time, but gawd. My eyes.

I have hardly left the apartment this weekend. But at least I’ve bathed.

Other non-television related news. I announced my intention to get my own place to the relations yesterday, and am going to start working out specifically what I want, what it’s going to cost me and what I can afford. I want to live solo, though I’m not dead set against the roommate sitch. Not going to move into an existing situation though… For lack of a better way to put it, I don’t like the power structure that would result from moving in somewhere that someone else has already peed on and left their mark on. A place of my own would probably run me around a grand a month, plus stuff like cable internet, phone, etc etc. Then there’s the start-up costs like some furniture, household implements, kitchen stuff, blah blah blah. It’s exciting and daunting at the same time. I’m honestly not sure how to go about this – I figure it’s too early to go look at places because I don’t think I’ll be ready to move till at least late summer. Need to pad the bank account a little longer. But I guess I do need to get a feel for what’s out there.

Phoo. I think I need to NOT stare at a CRT for a little while.

np – Sleater-Kinney / One Beat

By : Frank Yang at 8:12 pm
Category: Uncategorized
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