You watch it build itself so high that it's constantly on the verge of collapse. And you're wondering, waiting to see if it will. Sometimes it does, but that's okay. Because it makes the times it doesn't that much more special.

This is why I love television, man. It's one thing to watch a movie, to be transported to another world for some two-ish hours, and then come back. It's another to make that journey again and again, to watch something grow, change, and adapt before your eyes.

Is it some variation of Stockholm syndrome? Where the more time I spend with a long-form show like this one, the more I like it? I never considered Justified a show I "loved" until I got to the last season. Maybe it'll happen again. Or, maybe the reason doesn't matter, but the experience does.

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
P-Model – In a Model Room (1979)

It's truly surreal to actually be finished with the show. It's been haunting me for, like I keep saying, almost two years. It's never taken me that long to finish a show that I promised myself I'd actually see through to the end. (At least, not one I was watching on my own.)

Out of my own curiosity, here's a line chart of how many episodes I watched per month, since I started the show in January of last year. I find it funny that the only times I ever watched an odd amount of episodes in a given month were when I watched exactly one.

Chojin Sentai Jetman (1991-92)

In all likelihood, the next toku I watch will probably be Garo. Not that I can't enjoy shows for kids, but a lot of Sentai's ideas feel dumbed down in this regard. I'll be back on KR, eventually.

I used to have a very strong desire to watch every season of KR and Sentai that interested me. Obviously, I don't feel that way anymore. Sentai, specifically, is something I'm not very interested in anymore. KR is much more special to me, and I still want to watch more of that, just not as much.

Because of my arbitrary "one toku at a time, not counting currently airing shows" rule, I didn't finish any toku seasons in '24. (And I haven't been watching any currently airing ones, either.) Spending that much time away from the genre has given me a different perspective on it.