Um… Big Brother?
Not sure that letting James have access to my blog was a good idea.
Anyway: my gosh, I can’t believe I watched Big Brother tonight (I blame James – truly) and I can’t believe that it was so bad. Fascinating as the idea of reality TV is, urgh. It was the first nominations night (so?!), and there were these people both nominating people to leave da House and trying to justify that they don’t dislike the person, it’s just that… blah blah. What a joke.
While on Channel 7, watching Las Vegas, we had to desperately avoid the ads for the third season of 24. Must not watch. Although we have already seen the face of Nina, we expected this anyway. And I just had to change the channel very quickly because it was about to start. However, that’s ok, because it’s now Enough Rope time; I like Denton, and tonight he is interviewing Hugh Jackman. =]
24
We borrowed the DVDs of the first series of 24 from a friend… We saw the ads for it, when the series first started here, and thought it looked like a great series. Not having a TV, though, we decided to try and ignore it so that we wouldn’t feel too left out. We mostly succeeded, although occasionally seeing ads would spark the typical “we really need a TV” comment from one or both of us. When we saw them on DVD, we agreed that sometime we should borrow them out… And then this friend came through, totally out of the blue! Terribly convenient, really.
Anyway, we’re both tired at the moment because the show is totally addictive. I’m glad that episodes aren’t actually 60 min long (also glad that I don’t live in the US, since their ad breaks are clearly much longer than ours), since that would mean staying up an extra 15-20 min per episode. We started on Sunday night and, this being Wednesday, we’re up to 11am. We don’t actually have anything planned tonight (the other three nights we’ve watched after having someone over for dinner, or after church), so we hope to watch quite a few episodes. I’m very glad that James is just as enthralled as me, else there could be issues…
It really is very well done. Visually, the split-screen effect is highly effective, and drives home the point that it’s all happening at the same time. The plot is pretty standard – it’s the sort of novel I’d read or movie/TV show I’d watch – but setting it all in one day really adds an element of panic, frenetic activity, and stress over a dead-line. So much has to happen in each episode that it would be easy to make it over-complicated, but it doesn’t seem to have done that so far. We were wondering how they’d sustain the plot over 24 episodes since they do have to keep the pace at break-neck speed, but they do it well – switching between situations, implicating one person then clearing them, and just now they’re starting to bring in new villains, and phase out the earlier ones, which will allow for the pace to be sustained: it also doesn’t allow the audience to get bored with a baddie, or predict their movements too easily.
I’m totally hooked, and I hope someone I know buys the second series on DVD…
Randomly Yours, Alex 