Sunday, I said that I didn’t think that 24 has a well defined three act structure. On further reflection, I’m not sure I was correct. I’m used to seeing these three act structure within a single episode and I don’t think most episodes of 24 follow that model. However, if you look at the season as a whole, it follows the three act structure pretty closely

[Note - as with Sunday, there some first season spoilers here - but again I'm avoiding the big ones. I also talk about the current season a bit at the end]

Typically, the three act structure divides the story into three parts – Setup, Confrontaion and Resolution. Each of these parts is deliniated with a plot point – some type of major reversal in the story. In a story as long as a season of 24, these reversals take a much more screen time than I’m used to. To take Star Wars as an example, the first reversal is when Luke discovers his parents have been murdered and he decides to go with Obi-Wan. That’s one scene – takes up a couple of minutes of screen time at most. But in 24, the first reversal is the last 20 minutes of Episode 6: Jack is comproised by the bad guys who have his daughter, it’s revealed that his wife is with one of the bad guys, the guy that kidnapped Jack’s daughter realizes what a bad situation he’s in and Palmer decides to tell the world about the death of his daughter’s rapist at the hands of his son that been covered up for seven years.

The second act is typically a series of cycles – alternating between story exposition and action. For example, the first cycle of the second act builds towards the attempt on Palmer’s life at the morning press conference. This goes on typically for half of the overall length of the story and ends in another reversal. To use Star Wars as an example again, the second act ends with our heroes returning to the rebel base with the Death Star’s plans while being tracked by the Empire. In 24, while the end of the first act ends is very clear and occurs exactly at the one quarter mark, act two runs a little long and has a muddier ending. Personally, I’d say it ends in the middle of episode 19, with Jack in the underground prison, realizing who the prisoner being kept there is while Palmer is realizing that he can’t trust his wife anymore.

Of course, the third act is where everything is resolved – typically running the final quarter of screen time. You can really see here the major difference between a format like 24 and a two hour movie. I don’t think you could reveal a twist as big as the one at the end of the next to last episode of 24′s first season in the last five minutes of a 2 hours movie and make it work. But that’s the time ratio – every minute of a two hours movie equals 12 minutes of a season of 24.

If you apply this same structure to the current season of 24, you realize that the we’re in the middle of act two right now.  The kidnapping and trial of the secretary of defense was act one – and again act one ends right at the end of episode 6. Jack and CTU realizes the “real” target is melting down nuclear power plant via the override device, Behrooz kills the man his father sent to kill him, Jack’s girlfriend’s estranged husband shows up and we realize there’s a mole inside CTU (I get the feeling this is a running plot point – the CTU spy. I’m guessing that if they’ve used that every season it’s gotta be pretty old by now). I put “real” in quotes because assuming this season follows the same pattern as season one, there will need to be some new “real” target in act three.

Tanya pointed out the other day that having a DVR causes you to watch a lot more TV. Case in point: 24. I missed the first three seasons. I never knew when it was on and once you miss a single episode, you’re kinda done. Now that I have a DVR, I’ve haven’t missed any of season four. Furthermore, the first three seasons are available on DVD, so not only am I watching more TV from this season, I’m catching up on previous seasons. We just finished season one tonight.

[Note - there are some first season spoilers here - not big ones, but some nonetheless]

First off, there is alot of filler – at least in season one. There are long sequences (the girls escaping from the kidnappers leaps to mind) where there’s all this action and suspense, but everything ends up back where they started. Secondly, by the end I thought it was over the top on the amount of resources the bad guys had. I mean, they kidnap his daughter again? Maybe it bothered me more because I watched the whole season over a couple of weeks, instead of several months. Finally, the story flow really feels off – but that’s the nature of the real-time format. In a more typical series, there’s a slow build towards a final confrontation with a collection of connected yet distinct stories. But 24 is like a single 24 hour long movie, except that it doesn’t have a clearly defined 3 act structure. It kust puts the pedal to the metal at around episode four and doesn’t let up. That’s not as exciting as it sounds – stuff just happens…and keeps happening. There’s no time for reflection or anticipation which makes it much more difficult to enjoy the story.

I realize part of the show’s gimick is that it’s a full 24 hours. But really, I think the story – at least season one’s story – would have been better told in 14-18 hours. Of course, that won’t stop me from watching the current season or starting in on season two.

…And I’m laughing so hard that I can barely type.

Read This.

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to see David Allen present his Getting Things Done methodology. It really struck a chord with me, in many ways because it’s seems like such a basic point. I would describe GTD as a way of dealing with the fact that our brains haven’t evolved to deal with the details of modern day life. Face it, our brains evolved in a time when our big concerns of the day were finding food and not getting eaten.  It’s just not designed to keep the millions of picky little details that make up life today in order.

I’ve only just started reading the book, but I’ve been trying to apply what I’ve learned. I haven’t reached “Mind Like Water” yet, but I have knocked my inbox down from 400+ emails to 20. I’ve been taking it slowly – cleaning out all the new stuff plus 10-20 of the backlog every day. I’m doing it on my own – there’s a GTD addin for Outlook, but I just hated it. One of the principles of GTD is to get the stuff out of your head and into a system that you trust. Frankly, when the GTD addin started hiding my email, I couldn’t trust it anymore. So instead, I do my own thing with Outlook – heavy on the task list of course. And so far so good.

Note to self, check out Jeff’sGTD wiki…

“[H]ow many [people] can actually stand up and shout to the world that they let a BILLION DOLLARS in cash disappear into thin air?

I couldnt  name one off the top of my head that has lost cash money of 1 billion dollars or more, until today.

Congratulations Bob Goodenow, President of the NHL Players Association. You turned down 30 teams paying what would probably average out to 35mm dollars in salary per team for this year. Thats more than $ 1,000,000,000.00 in cash that would have been paid to NHL players this year.”

[Blog Maverick – How to Lose 1 Billion Dollars]

I guess it’s not surprising that the owner of the Dallas Mavericks sides with the owners. But he brings up an interesting point – the players are giving up money that they will never get back. And it’s more than a billion – the final league proposal was for each team to pay a maximum of $44.7 Million. Times 30 teams equals ONE AND A THIRD BILLION DOLLARS.

Even the league’s Feb 2nd proposal, which the players dismissed out of hand, guaranteed the players would receive a minimum of 53% of league reveues. Assuming $2.1 billion in revenue – which obviously the league won’t get back to for a long time – means the players would have received over $1.1 billion dollars.

The players have short careers (I think the average is four years) and are losing much more by not playing than the owners are. Even if you don’t believe the owners are losing less by not playing, I can’t imagine anyone believes the owners were making money hand over fist – i.e. the way the players are. How much common sense does it take for the players to realize the gravy train is over and forcing the owners to lock them out isn’t going to change that fact?