Megan Stielstra's Blog

Here’s the thing: I’ve never watched much television. This is because I watch a LOT of movies, and why would one watch the TV when there is Netflix which has so much more violence and bad language than television? My job involves a great deal of reading, and the only way a girl can unwind at the end of a particularly long day involves lots of rockets, ninjas, torture and bombs (preferably on timers for that added adrenaline). So anyhow, over the holidays Christopher and I were house sitting for friends who happened to own the box set of season one of 24, and I’m like, PEOPLE. WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME? I sat, riveted, and watched ALL 24 EPSIODES back-to-back, ending up a drooling, stupid mess of textbook addiction (if you are not familiar with the show, imagine running really fast across the world for twenty-four hours without stopping while very bad Serbians are holding guns to your family’s heads and much torrid stuff is happening at multiple levels of government and you were maybe sleeping with a bad guy. FUN FUN FUN!).

Here’s the problem: apparently, while I’ve been living in a barn, FOUR MORE SEASONS have gone by without my knowledge! And while all those episodes are currently filling my Netflix queue (don’t tell Christopher. He won’t be able to deal with me. He’ll try to interrupt my 24 with very intelligent, well-researched, thoughtful documentaries that will educate me about the world and make me a better human being) there’s still the issue of SEASON SIX STARTING AND ME NOT KNOWING HOW WE GOT FROM THEN TO NOW!

Under normal circumstances, I am of the Must Watch in Order category. Alien: one after the other. Terminator: one after the other. Star Wars: one after the other (as best I could what with the first three really being the last three). When the third in the trilogy comes out (LOTR. X-men.), I always rent one and two (again!) and watch them in the afternoon IN ORDER before I see the newest version in the evening, so the intricacies of character development, etc. are always fresh in my mind (notable exceptions: Red, White and Blue; Bond; and, of course, Indiana Jones). Anyhow, last night, I bent that rule and watched episodes one and two of season six. It was amazing. I was enthralled. I was glued to my seat. I HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON BECAUSE I’VE MISSED FOUR SEASONS, but that was okay and let me tell you why: because Jack Bauer KILLED SOMEONE BY BITING THEM ON THE NECK.

Anyhow, it’s fun (if not infuriating) watching the story in reverse order like this. It’s an interesting experiment in structure: learning how I got from the Serbians to the biting off the neck thing while at the same time moving forward from that moment. I saw a play a while ago—Stop Kiss, by Diana Son—that packed that structure into two hours (comparing the structure of episodic television and a play is how I tell myself I’m really studying literature as I watch Keifer Sutherland run all around. Keifer SUTHERLAND! Come ON! I was a teenager in the early Nineties! Keifer Sutherland was like my school teacher: Stand by Me, Flatliners, Young Guns and—that pantheon to adolescent angst—Lost Boys [!!!]). Tonight, I will watch episodes three and four, and wonder where all the characters I loved from Season one went (is his daughter even alive anymore? She probably got killed in season two—no I’m NOT going to read the online summaries. Those are just so … so … CLIFF NOTES!), and watch more gruesome killings while the entire world order hangs in the balance. I’m just glad we’ve finally got an African-American president. It’s about TIME.