MAY 15, 2006

Okay, I am a TOTAL FREAK for having noticed this weird typographic pattern on 24. You have been warned. My discovery of this bizarre typographic anomaly took place in a few steps over the course of several episodes, so bear with me as I explain.

I loved the first season of 24, but I gave up on the show after the second season, because the pulled-out-of-thin-air plot twists, the hammy acting, and the fluid-as-water loyalties of the characters became increasingly maddening. “This show is ridiculous,” I eventually said to myself, perhaps when drunk, because I don’t usually talk to myself. “I refuse to watch it anymore.” But thanks to recommendations from a few enthusiastic friends, I returned to the show late in the fourth season, and now I’m totally hooked again. The fifth season has been fantastically entertaining. The producers have worked out most of the kinks in the format and now know exactly what they’re doing. The show is still ridiculous sometimes, but that’s part of the fun.

A few months ago I began to notice something unusual about the 24 clock—the timer that appears onscreen at regular intervals throughout each episode. It’s modeled on a standard LED clock, the kind you’ll see on the radio next to your bed or the microwave in your kitchen or inside a ticking rogue nuclear weapon once you’ve pulled off the face plate. You know—the standard workaday places. On a typical such clock, each number is rendered within a matrix of two vertical bars on either side and three horizontal bars in the middle. At first glance, the 24 clock appears to be based around exactly that sort of matrix. Here’s a screenshot from last Monday’s episode: