The blogger who writes Watching 24 has devised an episode-by-episode "Character Countdown," where he ranks characters based on whether he thinks they acted in accordance with their characters, or whether he simply approves or disapproves of their actions.

The character with the most points (the higher the better), is . . . shocker of all shockers . . . Jack Bauer. He's got 378 points thus far. He was awarded two points last week for thanking Chloe O'Brian for her help, but lost points eight for believing his evil father, Papa Bauer.

Chloe, meanwhile, got an 8-point bump for smacking her ex, less than an hour after he'd been tortured with a drill, while chief of staff Tom Lennox lost 10 points for acting sneaky.

Interesting bit of news from the Watching 24 blog, if it's true...

FOX is thinking very seriously about marketing a DVD that contains the first four episodes of the upcoming season of 24. The rumor is the DVD is scheduled to come out on Tuesday, January 16, which the day after the two-day, four-hour season premiere airs on FOX. The price will be $14.95.

Like the Watching 24 folks, I think this is an intriguing marketing experiment, but am not sure why FOX is doing this. Do they think the DVD will stem the tide of downloading via BitTorrent and other services? Why would fans pay half the price of a full season just to see four episodes? And won't fans of the show just wait until the entire season comes out on DVD and buy it then? If FOX succeeds in selling a lot of copies of this disc, I wonder if other networks are going to follow suit?