24 Years

Okay, so I'm a "fan" of 24. And when I say "fan," I mean I watch it. But I don't necessarily like it. I did--the first four seasons were great, and then it turned to crap. Season five was lame. Season six was some of the worst television I've ever seen. And that's saying something--there's a lot of crap on TV. If I had as many dollars as season six had of plot lines...well, I could probably bail out the country.

So last night I'm watching, and I'm thinking, "What is the objective, anyway? What is Jack trying to stop this time?" And then I realized that the only thing driving the plot at this point is the president's husband (please don't try to tell me that any of the 3,456,976 lame subplots count). And then I thought, "Who the heck cares about him? He's a big weenie, and no one will be sad if he gets killed."

And then I thought again about something that has tip-toed across my mind in the last seven years: time. And not the whole 24 hours thing. But if you think about it, every season has a new president. And without doing any actual research or work to get specific, if I do some simple estimating, that means that the current season is at least 24 years past the first season. And Jack was no spring chicken in the first season. He had a really annoying idiot daughter who was at least 20 or something. Which puts Jack (again, I'm not going to do any actual real work here), at roughly 70 years old right now.

I know, I know; since when has 24 ever been believable. But seriously...this is ridiculous.