Top 10 Insights Into Our 24 Marathon: Part III

Greetings, reader!

I’m writing this during one of many ’commercial breaks’, a.k.a. 3-minute pauses during the episodes, where (when watching from a streaming service) the clock jumps a few minutes ahead in a place where the original TV broadcast would’ve had a commercial break. For those who don’t know, it’s the third instalment of a larger-than-life television marathon me and my best friend have been doing for a while now.

You see, the series 24 has the most awesome premise: events occur in real time, so that each 24-episode season follows a 24-hour time period with every episode following one hour. Years ago, Atte and I had the idea: how cool would it be to binge-watch a season of 24 while keeping in that real timeline? We did this with the first season in July of 2020, in an epic 24-hour marathon. Then, we decided not to stop there, but to rather continue watching the entire series while keeping in real time. In the show’s timeline, there’s an 18-hour time jump between seasons 1 and 2, so we marathoned the second season in January of 2022. Between the second and third seasons, there’s a three-year time jump, which means that our marathon of the third season started at 13:00 P.M. yesterday, and will finish at 13:00 P.M. today. As is tradition, I’m using some of our 3-minute mid-episode pauses to write down some tired thoughts about this specific marathon and the project in general!

10. The third season was fun to re-watch from a post-Covid perspective

As fans of the show may recall, the main threat in the third season is a deadly virus. While there are countless differences between this fictional pandemic threat and the real-life Covid era, there are enough parallels to catch the viewer’s curiosity.

The quarantine tactics, preventative measures and levels of general alarm when not too much is known about the virus’ spread and contagiousness seen in season 3 of 24 are, at times, an ahead-of-it’s-time look at dangers similar to what we ended up seeing years after the show’s run.

9. The election cycle

As I’ve discussed in my previous posts about our 24 marathon (I say ’marathon’ and not ’marathons’, because technically this is one massive 22-year marathon and the two-or-three-year breaks between seasons are just long pauses amidst the ongoing project), there are countless little ways in which the real-time gimmick makes the viewing experience more real - the light of day in the show roughly matching that outside, getting tired at pretty much the same point of the night when the characters start to show signs of fatigue, et cetera. This time around, one neat addition was the realization of how the show’s political subplots play out.

We watched season 1 four and a half years ago, and as fans may remember, the first season takes place on the day of the Californian Presidential Primary. The show’s writers paid attention to canon when it comes to the United States’ four-year election cycles, because now that we’re watching a season that happens exactly four and a half years after the first one, we’re once again in the midst of a Presidential campaign (but half a year further into it - instead of primary season, this season kicks off with the Democratic Nominee getting ready to debate the Republican Nominee on live TV). The current fictional U.S. President plays a big part in every season of the series, so this real-time project will play out in a very satisfying manner in terms of realizing the four-year terms throughout the show’s timeline!

8. Thank you, Leirikesä

Now, I was no stranger to all-nighters when we marathoned the first season in 2020 - but I was no veteran either. Since then, I have spent two summers (as well as a few individual winter weeks) working as a night guard at a children’s camp, for which I’ve become an expert at changing my sleeping rhythm (for a month-long stretch at best). This has naturally made my rhythm more adaptable in general, giving me experience that is very helpful with this 24 marathon.

Sure, my years working for Leirikesä have also helped me in more meaningful ways, from improving my skills with children more than my teacher studies at the university have to filling in tons of gaps on my general knowledge and common sense, as well as really improving my thinking-on-one’s-feet factor and making me a lot more responsible in general. But, in addition to all of this actually important stuff, my summer job has most definitely made me better at staying up all night with full energy, which really comes into handy with this particular set of shenanigans.

7. A certain plot twist makes the re-watch more fun!

I’ll write this in spoiler-free language, so that no damage is done if this post were to inspire anyone to watch the show and/or its third season specifically. In the seventh episode of 24’s third season, there’s a massive plot twist in the end - one that puts the whole beginning act of the season, along with several storylines and character motivations, into a different context.

I remember being floored by the twist when watching for the first time, and now that I remembered it and saw it coming, the first seven episodes were an entirely different viewing experience, as the additional context puts everything into a different light. Fun!

6. Commitment to the bit

There’s a lot of little stuff that makes the real-time viewing experience even more immersive and real-feeling. For example: initially, I had figured I would really sleep in before the marathon, only waking up around noon or so, so I’d be as well-rested and ready as possible. But then I remembered: in the story, Jack Bauer and company don’t know what’s ahead of them, and that they’ll have to be up all night due to an unforeseen chain of action-packed events. Therefore, having just a normal night’s sleep before the marathon made it feel all the more authentic.

Of course, season 3 is the one where Jack is struggling to kick a heroin addiction that he acquired between the second and third seasons, so if we really would’ve wanted to emulate what the protagonist is going through, developing a drug habit would’ve been a part of that - but that would’ve just been silly.

5. 13 to 13 - easier or harder?

It's fascinating how the different seasons of 24 feature different starting (and thus ending) times for the 24-hour period they follow, and how they make for wildly different experiences when watching them in the form of a real-time marathon. Season 1, from midnight to midnight, was the hardest one to stay up through (you have to go through the day leading up to it, the entire night, and the entire following day until midnight), but then again, it was the easiest to bounce back from (you go right to sleep after it's over and wake up in the morning feeling relatively normal). Season 2 was from 8:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M., so it was much easier to get through (you watch throughout the day, continuing to the night, and then in the morning it's over), but for the price of it screwing up one's rhythm for the next few days (you'll naturally fall asleep once it's over in the morning, and then that's a whole thing).

With those opposite pluses and minuses in mind, I'm guessing that season 3's runtime from 1:00 P.M. to 1:00 P.M. will be the best (and worst) of both worlds, or from another point of view, somewhere in between. It has already felt easier to stay up than it did in the first marathon, but harder than the second, so I assume the recovery will also fall between the two previous experiences.

4. The drinking game dimension was a nice addition

Fans of the series will remember the existence of Sherry Palmer, a brilliantly written love-to-hate-her antagonist brought to life by Penny Johnson Jerald’s fantastically despicable performance. Having watched the series years and years ago, both Atte and I had a faint recollection that the character returns dramatically somewhere in the third season, but neither could quite remember when and how.

As fate would have it, we had a bottle of sherry lying around in our apartment (the purchase of which may or may not have been a romanticized attempt to conduct one’s life in the manner of Frasier and Niles Crane). Naturally, Atte and I readied the bottle and two glasses, in agreement that at the very moment the legendary character appears, we pour ourselves some of her namesake. There were many moments that seemed to lead up to a possible Sherry Palmer entrance, the two of us paying intense attention with the bottle at the ready, only for it to be a red (s)herring. When she finally did appear, the payoff felt insane. This inspired us to plan a more thorough drinking game elements to future instalments of the marathon - maybe some Jack Daniels for every time Jack says his signature ”Dammit”, et cetera.

3. Chloe O’Brian is the heart and soul of the series

This is a big one. When watching the show for a second time via these marathons, the first two seasons felt remarkably empty to a degree, because the show I knew and loved from my first viewing experience was missing a key component - the character Chloe O’Brian, played by the brilliant Mary Lynn Rajskub. From season 3 onwards, Chloe is the show’s most important and interesting character right after protagonist Jack Bauer, or arguably even above him. With her unique role performance, Rajskub creates a lovable and outstanding character who is the backbone of the show for the rest of its run.

When watching for the first time, it took me a while to warm up to such an initially oddball character, before realizing how her work ethic, morality and friendship with Jack make the protagonist and everything in the series better. Now, when seeing her introduction for a second time and knowing what adventures the character would go on, it felt like a warm hug and like the series was finally kicking off at full speed.

2. Second-by-second accuracy

At one point, my fiancée walked into the room (to study us as an anthropological experiment, I assume), looked at the paused timer on the screen, and asked: ”So, are you actually going for accuracy by the seconds?”. My initial reaction was to just say 'no' because we’ve always just gone with minute-accuracy, but that quickly turned into ”WE ARE NOW!”.

So, due to the brilliant (if totally unintentional) inspiration from Martta, we continued the marathon with the razor-sharp precision of looking at not just the minutes, but the seconds to determine when to pause and play. A whole new level of precision right there!

1. A look to what the future holds

Well, as I'm writing this, we're almost done. The next intensive period of the marathon will be our viewing of season 4, scheduled for July of 2026 as per the one-and-a-half-year time jump. However, it's not quite simple - when we decided to do the whole series like this, I took the assignment seriously and did my research. Wanting to watch everything that is canon in the 24 universe, we didn't stop at including the eight seasons, but rather added the TV movie 24: Redemption, the reboot season 24: Live Another Day, the spin-off season 24: Legacy - as well as a few individual scenes, done as extras for DVDs to hype up an upcoming season, as they too take place in a certain part of the timeline.

The first of these non-season pieces of media in 24 canon is the season 4 prequel, released on the season 3 DVD to build a bridge to the fourth season's events. It's comprised of three scenes, and thankfully there are title cards describing the exact time jumps between each one, so that they could be placed into our marathon schedule with accuracy. The first scene takes place three months after season 3, so we've scheduled two minutes of our busy lives to watch that in April this year. The second scene takes place a year after the first, so that's what we'll be watching in April 2026. The third one takes place just six hours before the beginning of season 4 - so, when the time comes in July 2026, we'll wake up in the middle of the night to watch those two minutes, before going back to sleep for six hours before the season 4 marathon begins.

After that, it'll go by like a breeze - the season 5 prequel in July of 2027, season 5 in January 2028, the season 6 prequel in August 2028, season 6 in September 2029, whatever the f**k "Day 6 Debrief" is divided into five parts in the few hours after the season 6 marathon has ended, then the 24: Redemption movie in May 2033, season 7 in July 2033, season 8 in January 2035, something called "Chloe's Arrest" on the morning after the season 8 marathon, 24: Live Another Day in January 2039, the short videos 24: Solitary and 24: The Raid in July 2041, and finally, 24: Legacy in January 2042. I swear to God if they end up making a new spin-off that takes place between earlier-made seasons so that we'll have to start this whole thing over...

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my ranking of 2024's greatest television shows.