How I Met Your Mother: ‘Ring Up’

 I’m beginning to think that the good episodes of How I Met Your Mother, or what qualifies for “good” these days, are dependent on whether or not Marshall is getting enough screen time/getting quality jokes. For whatever reason he’s pretty much been on reserve this season(*) and has existed as a sounding board to Robin, Barney, and Ted’s love problems. A lot of this is because he and Lily have a newborn but the newborn related humor has been lacking to say the least until last night.

(*)The notable exception being the episodes where he fought Brad over the pond filled with toxic chemicals. But I do think those were two of the better episodes of the season.

Now ‘Ring Up’ wasn’t the most fantastic showing HIMYM has ever served up, but the risks they took were low, the jokes were good enough, and there wasn’t much to complain about in terms of character and story development. I really enjoyed Marshall’s dedication to swoon Lily by wearing the wrist band that he was highly allergic to, as well as his quick descent in personality to match his wristband. Not to mention how the wristband was introduced with Ted walking into the bar explaining how he miraculously saved an elderly woman’s life but all the gang cared about was making fun of how ridiculous it looked on him.

The main story though revolved around Ted’s new date who is both only 20 years old and Barney’s half-sister. After hanging out at places(**) and with people  that Ted would otherwise have no interest associating with, he’s all but ready to call things off, until of course Barney convinces him to hook-up with her as he’s going through “withdrawal.” This one kind of got out of hand as Barney tries to forcefully wed Ted and his sister, but at the end he comes to the conclusion that meaningless hook-ups are not what he’s about anymore and he simply makes Ted *wink wink* promise to never get with his sister again.

(**)Including a club in Chinatown that is somehow located under a manhole cover. I’m just about 100% sure Bill Hader’s Stefon knows exactly where that is.

Robin meanwhile is going through similar withdrawal as Barney since she loses her “get whatever she wants, whenever she wants” status once the engagement ring is on her finger. I’m glad this story didn’t much time devoted to it because it had a few good moments but it could have gotten annoying fast had it been the main focus of an episode. I will say though that I have hard time caring about the Robin and Barney moments of clarity when they realize how much they want to be with the other person for the rest of their lives seeing as how we already know they both get cold feet at their future wedding.

Other favorite moments:

• “Okay normally New York is the friendliest, most affordable city in the world. Now it’s a rude and expensive as San Francisco.” – Robin’s delusional interpretation based on her pre-ring observations.
• “Better the sore weep than I.” – Marshall’s sad justification that a giant hand is his best chance to have sex with his wife.
• Barney didn’t have a dog as his wingman.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Happy Endings: ‘The Ex Factor’

It’s starting to look like Happy Endings is taking the Community approach of going for broke at this point and making the characters somewhat self-aware that they are on a television sitcom. Much like Community did at the end of season one when the ratings were low, the fan passion was high, and the future bleak for renewal, they’ve thrown caution to the wind and let these stories be ridiculous and escape the bounds of conventional norms. And for that I’m very thankful they have because these moments have been outstanding.

The “meta” storyline of the week went to Penny(*) as she tries to comprehend the fact that her boyfriend Pete has friends of his own. In an attempt to explain how fun her friends are she tells him: “last week Max pretended to be a psychic and assisted the police to solve a murder case. And with his help they apprehended several innocent people.” Sorry Pete but how are these people not immediately your new best friends? Inevitably it’s a disaster whenever one of these people has to deal with people who act “normal” and don’t do “pile-ons” whenever someone does something stupid like spill a drink on themselves.

(*) Last week Max refused to go to the “gay sitcom characters” gay bar and the week before that a guy at a restaurant yelled at them for thinking they were the only people there trying to enjoy a meal.

Meanwhile Brad and Jane are confronted with a marriage issue as Jane’s ex Ryan is coming to town and they have a rule that they get one dinner with an ex. To Brad’s surprise/pure joy, Ryan turns out to be a girl. This conflict was pretty much an excuse for Damon Wayans Jr. to act super goofy and emotional, especially when he tries to bulk up by doing some “Shups for life!”

The third part of the episode circled around Max, Alex, and Dave meeting Max’s new roommate played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. It’s always fun when these characters get chaotic over nonsense resulting in a multitude of unnecessary stupid ideas. Also, it would appear that Max will indeed the rue the day he messed with Bayside’s Zach Morris.

Other favorite moments:

• “You save me from a well once and I have to hear about it the rest of my life.” – Max on constantly being reminded of this by Dave.
• “Someone’s scoring our life!” – Dave. Another “meta” moment when the group mistakes Chase’s ringtone as indication that they’re in peril.
• “Oh I get it. You’re the Dave of the group, always talking about things no one cares about.” - Penny

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: ‘A Father’s Love’

‘A Father’s Love’ turned out to be a fairly fun episode, but one that fell short of bringing it all together the way we’ve started to get accustomed to from New Girl. The one-liners were flying at a high volume, so the laughs were consistently there.

But I just feel like we’ve all seen the storyline way too often where one of the characters Dad’s is a bit of a degenerate that stops by in their lives whenever it’s convenient for them. Denis Farina was cast perfectly for that role however, and I’m glad we got to see the interactions between him and Nick as it explains a good deal as to why Nick has turned out the way he has.

The ‘B’ story seemed very throw away though as Schmidt and Robby both attempt to spy on Cece as part of each of their respective attempts to win her back. Is anyone else buying how persistent Cece is being about finding an Indian suitor of her parents choosing? Has no one told her to at least try online dating or something to have some more options? Something tells me she’d have some takers. There were some fun Schmidt/Robby dialogue moments that made some of it salvageable but all in all it was too silly to really be memorable.

Other favorite moments:

• Feely Cup. Love the random, crazy games this group comes up with. Not so sure I’d be interested in playing this one though.
• Nick “angry fixing” the sink.
• “He looks like Hilary Swank mixed with a sad, wet dog.” – Jess describing Nick.
• “This is pretty much your basic broken hearted spy thing.” – Robby running into Schmidt.
• “No my name is not Jemile!” – Nick showing how gullible Jess is.
• “The Best Erotic Maribone Hotel.” – Schmidt describing Cece’s “orgy.”
• “I haven’t done laundry in 5 months.” – Nick.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

How I Met Your Mother: ‘Band or DJ?’

I have to say that ‘Band or DJ’ fell in the better half of season 8 episodes thus far; although the qualifications for that title sit at finding at least 1.5 humorous moments. A lot of the credit for that humor goes to Ray Wise playing Mr. Scherbatsky. I’d be very interested in a spin-off show where Ray Wise just discusses the internet: “You familiar with memes?”… “I can haz cheeseburger?” The rest of that story kind of faltered though as HIMYM continues to tell us that we know Barney and Robin are meant for each other as opposed to actually showing us why this is the case.

The actual bad or dj storyline also fell in the average range, but it never made any sense to me from the beginning as this seemed like a “we don’t have anything else for the other three characters this week so let’s let them make this decision as opposed to the actual bride and groom to be.” The culmination of the story was really well done though as Lily and Ted force themselves to deal with the real problems that are their mind, albeit ones that are extremely uncomfortable to admit giving the selfish nature of them.

Also, it looks like HIMYM has really pinned themselves into a corner now by proclaiming that Robin and Barney’s wedding will be in four months, which will in all likelihood be the season finale. Seeing as the season 9 pick-up is almost a certainty right now it looks like they won’t have a choice but to add “the mother” to the cast next year. Unless of course they do something very HIMYMy and come up with some excuse as to why we won’t be meeting her just quite yet. Ugh.

Other favorite moments:

• Maclarens has chili? Looked pretty out of place when Ted was eating it at the beginning of the episode.
• “Dude’s a stone cold Slytherin.”
• “Barney has cameras in our bathroom?” … “Well, I mean, don’t you think?”
• Barney didn’t have a dog as his wingman.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Parenthood: ‘Small Victories’

Over the past couple of weeks I had a chance to catch up on Parenthood from the beginning of its run and I’m really glad I did. It’s different than so many other shows on television as it truly allows for characters and scenes to breathe in a way that feels organic and not shoved together like you would expect anything filmed by cameras to be. Jason Katims deserves a world of credit for being able to do that, much like he did on Friday Night Lights, and managing to not just give us a window into the lives of the Bravermans but to make us feel like a part of the family.

Besides episode one of this season, ‘Small Victories” is the first episode to not have cancer be mentioned even once(*), so in typical Parenthood fashion they have to drop an anchor on our hearts somehow and this week’s culprits are Drew and Amy after the revelation that Amy is pregnant and chooses to get an abortion. And it turns out abortions are not fun. If this season didn’t have to come to an end in three more episodes I think we would have seen this play out over at least two weeks, to make it even more heartbreaking when Amy decides to abort. But still it was very emotionally hitting and all the actors involved did a terrific job.

(*) With the exception being that Monica Potter still looks completely ridiculous with that bald cap. For whatever reason I didn’t notice how bad it was last week until I saw people pointing it out on the internet and now all I can see her as is a Conehead what that horrendous thing on. They have to have her at least keep a scarf or something over it for the remainder of the season.

Joel and Julia are also on the harder side of problems this week as Victor continues to be a problem. The Joel/Julia side of Parenthood has been my least favorite of the four siblings families and it’s because of stories like this. How many times is Joel going to be way more awesome than his wife before he realizes he needs a divorce? If that’s been the plan all along then bravo Parenthood because that would be such a devastating story. However, I think Joel’s going to stick it out with this family where his adopted son is a total jerk and his wife is lacking even the more basic of parenting skills. Obviously Julia and Victor are going to reconcile their differences by the end of the season and he’ll probably call her “mom” to make us all cry but I’m just not into this whole thing at all.

Adam and Christina finally got a lighter story as Max’s unwillingness to shower leads them to explain to him about his “ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.” Approaching how to have “talks” like these with your kids can be difficult enough, mix in the fact that the child has Aspergers? It certainly throws a monkey wrench into the equation. But there was lots of humor mixed in here as well like when Grandpa and Grandma arrive for dinner and Max exclaims to them: “I have pubic hair!” And of course Grandpa Zeek replies: “there you go!”

Some other thoughts:

• Crosby, as usual, gets the most trivial of the problems as he deals with his mother-in-law living with them. But it did allow for Adam to tell him “you’re going to pee with impunity” once Crosby gets news that Renee has a job offer.
• Can someone please teach Drew and Mark how spit words out? Them talking to a normal person is a slow enough conversation, them conversing with each other took up 20 minutes to get across two lines of substantial dialogue.
• “No matter what’s going to happen, it will all be fine.” – Sarah explains this to Drew not knowing what his real problem was but it was applicable all the same.
• Speaking of Sarah I’m not especially looking forward to the inevitable resolution of the Sarah/Mark/Hank love triangle but at least it should have an ending soon.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Cougar Town: “Blue Sunday”

New network, same old cul-de-sac crew.

Cougar Town has been off the air for quite a while now (*) and, with the exclusion of the opening gag about how it feels like they’ve been gone for so long, things seem to be just how we left them. Jules is still neurotic about, well, everything. Grayson’s still going to get annoyed by the others doing things like changing the meaning of “junk in the trunk." Bobby and Andy are still going to solve problems as little kids would, like literally running away from a problem. And Tom is still going to be lurking in the window, desperately looking to be accepted into the gang.

(*) I’m most concerned about what Abed has been doing to fill his time with both Community on lockdown and his beloved Cougar Town left off the fall schedule. Maybe he’s started an internet campaign to bring back Cougarton Abbey?

So it looks like we’re going to be getting more of the same of what we love. Travis asks Jules: “Are you alcoholics? Are you all in AA?” And Jules, in the most Cougar Towny way, declares: “that’s two different questions.” I’m guessing we’ll be getting a lot of new stories revolving around Jules and Grayson being newlyweds like how the first week sets a precedent for the rest of marriage. It also appears that we may be headed to Travis and Laurie actually embarking into a relationship instead of the hinting and flirtatious stuff they did for the last three seasons.

I know last season had a good amount of Bobby stories with him “growing up” a little bit and having a relationship with Travis’ art teacher Angie but I’d like to see him take a few more steps towards living a more fulfilling life. Don’t get me wrong, I still want him to be pretty oblivious to normal human behavior and be a goofy kid trapped in a grown man’s body; but am I the only one who gets sad when he says things like “look what happened when I didn’t try to change for Jules, I ended up living by myself on a boat in a parking lot?”

All in all it’s great having the show with a terrible title back on the airwaves, and, as the title card for this episode pointed out, we have TBS to thank for saving the show.

Other favorite moments:

• “I once hooked up with a guy because he was named Marvin Gardens.” – Laurie explaining her love of Monopoly.
• “I’m only taking this torch because I love mime.” – Grayson taking the metaphorical torch of keeping Jules happy for the group’s sake from Ellie.
• “Most of my feelings about fatherhood come from The Road by Cormac McCarthy.” – Travis on the bleakness he perceives advice from Bobby to be.
• The song playing at the end of the episode was “Crystal Fighter” by Champion Sound.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: “Cabin”

You’ve got to love the charm. New Girl is so locked into a groove right now of being able to balance ridiculous situations and silly behavior while also making us care about the relationships that Jess, Nick, Schmidt, and Winston try and form not just with their love interests but, maybe more importantly, with each other.

By establishing the bonds so well that these people truly care for one another then, at the end of the day, it’s really fun to just watch Winston mess with Schmidt for his “white guilt.” And even when a resolution is more somber, like Nick getting dumped by a girl he really liked, Jess is there to let him know it was the right thing for him and we all know things will eventually be okay.

The writing was on the wall from the beginning that this wasn’t going to end well for Nick, but unlike how in some shows it doesn’t make any sense for a person to be with someone clearly wrong for them, you can totally understand why Nick would be accepting of someone like Angie at this point in his life. If you ever describe your relationship as “pure anarchy in like a sexy, cool way” or it gets described to you as: “she’s cool, it’s kind of like riding a poorly maintained carnival ride,” then it’s probably not going to work out. But the ride was fun while it lasted and Olivia Munn did a great job playing an eccentric.

Schmidt trying to make Winston feel “more at home” with his black roots was spectacularly fun to watch. It’s great that we’ve just come to expect that Schmidt will go 100% behind any idea he has and follow it through no matter what the stakes. Even if that means helping Winston get his fix of crack cocaine. Nick and Cece got a brief second for this story and Jake Johnsons facial expressions win again as disgust is written so well over his face when he’s forced to listen to Schmidt talk about Winston being black. Great stand-alone story and it’s nice to see the show keeping continuity of Winston struggling with either going to little or going too far with a prank.

Other favorite moments:

• “You were so light and charming. You were like Pixar Winston.” - Schmidt in response to seeing Winston with other black people.
• “Schmidt I could really go for some crack.” - a deadpan Winston.
• “Word games. Word games, word games, word games.” - Jess on absinthe.
• “Dr. Sam, if you were a hat you’d be a top hat.” - Nick on absinthe.
• New Girl has established a very high track record for drunk adventures now with this absinthe incident and True American from its past.
• Only Schmidt could tick someone off by ordering a vanilla-chocolate swirl.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Happy Endings: “Fowl Play/Date”

The first of the Sunday night burn off episodes of Happy Endings premiered tonight on ABC and while this wasn’t the greatest episode in Happy history, I’m glad we’ll be getting two episodes a week for the next few weeks as ABC desperately tries to get them off of their schedule. (*)

(*) The decision to end their season like this certainly doesn’t bode well for a season 4 renewal so we might as well enjoy these last few episodes like they might be the last.

The problem with “Fowl Play/Date” was that they went to the “hey everyone knows this sitcom story so well that it makes it funny if we do it with our gang” well not only once but twice in the same episode. Penny and Brad being forced to replace an item/pet without the owner of said item/pet knowing is a classic sitcom trope, right up there with two characters each trying to set up another one with a date that ends up being similar to them. I don’t think I would have minded either of these two stories if they had been in episodes with some more original problems, but the combo of them together was just too much.

That being said there was still plenty to like. Max continues to be one of the great television characters currently on television; storing leftover pizza under the covers is an amazing idea right? Also, the opener was really fantastic as the group started shouting other potential “cons” after learning that Alex was attending the “Rom Com Con.” And it was hilarious to see the show be meta by having a random guy tell the group to shut up after they had gotten lost in one of their fast talking, one-upper, joke offs.

Other favorite moments:

• “On behalf of all Navajo Cubs fans, I am offended.” – Dave.
• “Tuckered out from all that racism?” – Brad.
• “We have all the same interests. Love Ryan Reynolds, hate Ryan Reynolds movies.” – Max.
• “I’m not one to usually talk about my sex dreams but it was me, Jeff Van Gundy, and Stan van Gundy.” – Max.
• “Harsh barley bro.” – Dave’s pick to be Max’s date.
• Tyler Kerkovich lived from 1928 to 2013.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.