Entertainment

Bad News for '24' Fans and Binge-Watchers

It's a crisis so dire that not even Jack Bauer himself could help us. As 24 fans eagerly awaited the brand new season, 24: Live Another Day, Netflix came along and suddenly dropped a bomb on their unsuspecting subscribers. On April 1, Netflix will no longer stream 24 . It will soon be impossible for fans of the show to revisit their favorite episodes on the site, and for everyone else to binge-watch the series in preparation for its return to Fox on May 5.

Before you rush to Netflix to start watching the full series, know that despite your determination, your efforts are futile. See, April 1 is just seven days and a few hours away. 24's whole gimmick is that it takes place in real time. Every season is made up of 24 episodes, each an hour long, with the whole season showing one very busy day in Bauer's life. 24 had eight seasons and the two-hour TV movie Redemption.

That means even if you started watching right now and didn't stop until April 1, well, you'd probably go insane from lack of sleep/sunlight/social interaction, but if you miraculously didn't, you still wouldn't finish in time. There is hope, however, for fans and anyone who put off catching up for the last minute. 24 will still be available on Amazon's Prime Instant Video after April 1, so anyone with Prime can watch the series there at a normal pace that allows for basic human existence.

Of course for everyone else there is the DVD route. You could buy or borrow all of the past seasons, or add them to your non-Instant Netflix queue if you still use it's mailing service. But that requires getting up every few episodes to change the disc, and who's really willing to do that these days?

Although, if Jack Bauer can fight terrorists and save the world once a year, I guess we can change discs every few hours for a couple days. That's the trade-off to catch up before 24: Live Another Day.