If anyone's thinking about watching eva, here's a quick viewer's guide:
1) Original series: 26 episodes.
2) End of Evangelion: Remakes of episodes 25 and 26. If you're short for time, I'd recommend them over the original 25 and 26.
3) Death and Rebirth: Short movies made of a mishmash of the series and End Of. Not recommended.
4) Rebuild 1.0-3.0: Movies with a lot of updated animation. 1.0's more or less a retelling of part of the original series, 2.0 deviates a bit and 3.0's a huge divergence. Pretty good. 4.0 has been in production for an annoyingly long time, no release date.

If I was showing the series to someone I was pretty sure would like it, I'd show them the stuff in that order, 1, 2, and 4. If I was trying to push it on someone I thought would be 50/50 about it, I'd start with the Rebuilds.