Endless Eight and How to Watch It

For those of you who have never seen The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, I recommend that you go watch it and come back to this post when the "time is right." I would hate to enter spoiler territory to someone who is not at all familiar with the show.
For those of you who have seen the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and have gotten to a part in the second season that feels strange, then . . . *deep exhale* . . . you have entered Endless Eight.
Endless Eight is a story arc in the second season of TMoHS. The first episode is a fairly cute episode about the gang enjoying their summer vacation and doing typical SOS club things. The next episode is a fairly cute episode about the gang enjoying their summer vacation and doing typical SOS club things. The third episode is a fairly cute episode about the gang enjoying their summer vacation and doing typical SOS club things. The fourth episode is a fairly cute episode about the gang enjoying their summer vacation and doing typical SOS club things.

Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at.

There are many ways you can go about watching Endless Eight, and luckily for you, I have them all laid out here.

Watching Endless Eight as a Whole

   A. "Lose your sanity" version: One option you have is to marathon Endless Eight. You sit down to watch the first episode, and you see it through the very end, to the final episode. This is a rather boring way to go about it, and I cannot guarantee that you will be mentally and emotionally stable by the end of it.

  B. "Slowly lose your sanity" version: You can watch all of Endless Eight, but put space between the time you watch them, like if you were watching them as they were being aired on TV (one week apart). You can watch an episode every day, one once a week, every hour, etcetera. This way, you can say that you have finished Endless Eight, but you will probably not want to bang your head against a wall for six hours after completing it. I would, from a medical standpoint, recommend you do this if you plan on watching the whole of Endless Eight.

Watching Endless Eight like a Wimp

   A. "Be both shunned and envied by all anime watchers" version: Watch the first two episodes of Endless Eight, and then the last two. This cuts Endless Eight in half, but you're still able to understand it.

   B. "Be mainly shunned by all anime watchers" version: Watch the first episode of Endless Eight, and the last episode. You may not understand it as much, you will lose your credibility as an anime watcher, and I do not recommend this, but you can do it.

Being a Disgusting Human Being

   A. "Devalue yourself as a human" version: Just watch a random episode of Endless Eight and look up the main points of what happened on Haruhi wiki. I know people who did this, and while you are still getting all of the information, this completely destroys the point of watching any medium of entertainment whatsoever. Theoretically, you can go on the wikipedia page for any story and look up the main points, but that would mean that we, as a human race, have literally become too lazy to enjoy things. Watching movies and reading books is supposed to be about escaping and enjoying and sometimes even learning, and when you go on wikipedia to do the same thing, it ruins the entire point. So yes, you can do this. But I only wrote about it to point out how terrible of an option it is.

All in all, I would recommend for you to watch Endless Eight in its entirety, because if you plan on watching The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya--one of my favorite anime movies of all time--you will understand the motives of some of the characters and the general plot better.

Haruhi is a unique anime experience, and it's one I think everyone should get around to seeing at some point. Because even with an eight episode loop, it still manages to be entertaining and interesting.