Lost Weekend

Something strange happens when you sit down to watch an old season of 24 on Saturday:  Suddenly, it's Sunday.  Evening.  Late. 

It was Season 4.  On Friday, I started to watch Season 3, then realized how awful Kim Bauer is.  Just awful.  In Season 1, she's the "Helpless Female", a character cliche I loathe.  In Season 2, there's a nuclear bomb that's about to go off in LA, and Jack tells her to leave the city.  He tells her not to tell ANYONE about the bomb.  She then proceeds to tell  EVERYONE she meets, everyone from her boyfriend to the cop to the nutjob who lives in the woods in a cabin with a bomb-shelter basement.

But Season 3 was the worst.  She works at CTU, and alternates between "I am Smart and Capable!" to "Helpless Female" to "Woman in Love with a CTU Field Agent, but Toughly Able to Handle It" to "OMG!  My BF got a scratch!".  Personally, as able and willing as I typically am to suspend my disbelief, I simply cannot accept that CTU would even employ her to clean the restrooms.

And while we're on the subject of 24, what exactly do they do in that office, anyway?  I swear they only had one cue card for the actress portraying Audrey Raines:  "We're going over DOD protocols".  Everybody is constantly going over protocols, uploading protocols, crossloading protocols, or managing protocols.  Every once in awhile, someone moves a satellite so they can follow some car. 

And I say all of this, even though I'm a huge fan.  Jack Bauer is awesome, and fun to watch.  It's a lot like James Bond, right down to the fact that important characters are evidently immune to machine gun fire.  I also like the realtime format of the show, even though that sometimes works against them.

The trouble is, sometimes I sit down to be entertained for awhile, and suddenly it's Sunday.  Evening.  Late.