How I Met Your Mother - Season 6

I'm a little conflicted about this season. On one hand, it was funnier and more clever than last year, when the show was still pretty good but didn't quite have the creative spark it did earlier. The gimmicks came back in a big way, and while relying on tricks to get by can seem tacky and often result in stuff that just doesn't play well, this show makes it work. It's part of its charm - the jokes aren't usually as sharp as some better comedies, but the cast is a lot of fun and they're always trying new things, messing around with time and hidden clues. I think this season did well with that stuff, and it was generally funny too.

On the other hand, the amount of progress we're making towards the show's promised end game is pretty pathetic. I know it's silly to complain about the overarching plot in a sitcom, but the show is called How I Met Your Mother, and every single episode features Bob Saget using narration to frame the story within the context of his long journey towards maturation and finally meeting the woman of his dreams. All we really learned this year is that Ted won't meet her until he's at someone else's wedding, and now we have to wait for that character to get married before he can really get anywhere. I believe the show has been renewed for two more seasons, and if that marks the show's end and he doesn't meet her until the finale - well, eight years is a heck of a lot of background to give your kids before you get to the point of the story.

Again, it's a sitcom - the point of the show is to entertain the viewer with jokes and likable personalities. But the writers of this show have always obviously put more effort into the story that you have to in these cases, and I just want it to pay off. We don't really know if the show will end when they meet or if it will keep going to show how they get together, though the former seems more likely as each season passes by without them meeting, and the hints and gotchas are starting to become a strain on the series, and a satisfying ending seems like a difficult proposition. Not that they can't do it, but I'll be impressed if they do.

The whole issue is affecting the week by week course of the show, too. It's gotten to the point where I can no longer give a crap about any of Ted's relationships anymore, because I know that these women aren't going to end up mattering. This entire season found him balancing a woman with a professional conflict she caused, and it was frustrating because I knew, and the writers knew, and everyone knew that it was a dead end. The show has had success here in the past, but it's starting to not work anymore. Luckily Marshall and Lily were really strong this year, particularly Jason Segel's Marshall, who had probably the best single season of development and growth of anyone yet in the series. Their family changed and and moved forward while Ted and to a similar extent Robin and Barney basically spun their wheels. I'm going to keep watching the show because it's still fun and I still have hope for the long term elements, but I'm definitely less confident than I was before.

How I Met Your Mother - Season 5

So can Ted meet his kids' mother now? I can't say I'm not a little tired of them dancing around the topic. Are they deathly afraid to actually introduce her or something? It's been five years. I think people like the characters enough that they'll stick around to see how things continue to develop. This year they even went so far as to have Ted be in the same classroom as her and even be standing in her apartment. Come on. Your kids don't need this much background information.

Oh well. I still enjoy the show despite the increasing feeling that they're just messing with me. The Barney/Robin throwdown turned out to be a waste of time, but otherwise it was pretty fun. Lots of good callbacks, like the continuation of the slap bet, revealing Barney's actual playbook, and another of the gang's doppelgangers showing up. They finished up the umbrella storyline, though without actually doing much with it. I realize none of this makes sense to people who don't watch the show, but HIMYM is that rare thing, a traditional sitcom that actually rewards frequent viewing and develops its characters rather than just throwing bad relationship jokes at the wall for twenty minutes before everyone learns a lesson. I can't honestly say it's as funny as it's ever been, but there's still lots of great bits like Barney's musical ode to suits and showing people's emotional problems as actual baggage. I still really like watching it, I just hope they actually go somewhere with the supposed premise soon.

How I Met Your Mother - Season 4

So now I'm caught up. While the show has always been funny, only now does it seem to actually be getting somewhere with the actual supposed point of the whole thing, the story of the title. I'm curious how much planning has actually gone into this, because they started dropping hints about future events in the previous season, and really did it in earnest this time, but all of it seemed to culminate around the finale with very little that I can think of as far as suggestions for what's next, other that Bob Saget basically saying "No seriously, I'm getting to the point now". The whole season is basically life kicking the crap out of Ted in order to apparently get him to make a decision that will lead to him meeting his wife, though I can already see how they're going to continue pussy-footing around the issue with teases and fake outs.

One of the secretly most interesting things of watching this time was noticing all the ways they tried to hide the fact that both female leads were pregnant for at least part of the filming. Some worked, like when Lily wins an eating contest and has a resultant bulge, others not so much, like loose shirts and bags or boxes doing a fairly poor job of obscuring it. They even wrote Alyson Hannigan out for a few episodes when I guess it was especially bad. There's not a whole lot to say about the actual comedy, it's a nice mix of clever wordplay, snappy dialogue, and humorously over-elaborate rules, diagrams, and theories about dating. Just a couple days from when I'm writing about this until season five begins, and I couldn't have timed it better.

How I Met Your Mother - Season 3

Hmm, what should I talk about this time? Instead of a bittersweet finale, this season ends with a couple cliffhangers. I'm not sure I actually truly care what happens to these characters yet, but they're doing a solid job of developing them without taking the focus off the humor. With Marshall and Lily married, their conflicts are more financial in nature than human. Honestly, I'm not finding that aspect terribly compelling. And Robin just sort of seemed like she was treading water this season. They're really trying to humanize Barney, which I'm not sure isn't a mistake. Ted plays the field a bit but eventually gets into another serious relationship, this time with Sarah Chalke from Scrubs, playing basically the same character.

As always there are several good and clever bits, like the Bro Code being an actual legal text, the episode where Ted the narrator can't remember a girl's name so the characters refer to her as Blahblah and he replaces references to marijuana with sandwiches, and Marshall using Thanksgiving to completely torture Barney with the promise of an incoming slap (Oh yeah, after a bet he earned five slaps on him and to date has only used three, one of my favorite running gags ever in a show). The two minute date is also one of the cutest and nicest things I've seen in a while. I'm starting to wonder how long the show is going to end up lasting, but I'm still enjoying watching it.

How I Met Your Mother - Season 2

Are you worried I won't catch up in time for the season five premiere? Joke's on you, man. I'm writing this almost a week before it will show up. Now that I'm halfway through this show I can admit it's far better than I expected, although still outside of the top five best current comedies. This season felt a bit different than the first, since the main character Ted spends most of the time in a relationship instead of looking for the perfect one. It's a little more mature, without changing the style of humor that makes it enjoyable. I'd still prefer it if it was single camera, but I actually decided I prefer the laugh track over a live audience, at least for this show. The reason is that they do a lot of quick cutaways and playing around with the timeline that wouldn't really work if they were beholden to an audience watching them make it, and besides, most live reactions are touched up with a laugh track anyway.

A trend that I've noticed with this show is bittersweet season finales. Both times, they've ended with things going really right for some people and really wrong for others. I've gotten over my desire to see Ted get his ass kicked, although I imagine it might rear up again at some point. Barney's still the best character which isn't too surprising, and even mild attempts to sympathize his character can't prevent him from staying great. At least not yet. Marshall and Lily are still an entertaining pair, and right now I'm just rehashing because I don't have much else new to say. It's a funny show worth checking out. Whee.

How I Met Your Mother - Season 1

I haven't seriously followed a multi-camera sitcom in years, let alone one with a laugh track, so it took some convincing for me to check this one out. That convincing came in the form of everyone I know who's watched it calling it one of the funniest shows on TV, and the hard to deny the fact that it stars two Whedonverse alums and an Apatowcolyte. Those three stars are genuinely enjoyable as always, and the other two are a cute enough will-they-won't-they (which the narrator has said they ultimately don't) that it was easy enough to keep watching. The basic premise is that the show is actually in the future where the protagonist tells his kids the story of how their parents met, which takes place in the past, which happens to be our present. He takes the role of narrator (voiced by Bob Saget, which is odd because the character is 27 when the show starts and the actor already has his big boy voice), and begins the confusingly long-winded story.

Ted is an architect who is spurred to step up his attempts to find a mate for life after his friends Marshall and Lily, played by Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan, get engaged. He meets and quickly falls for Robin, although things don't quite work out and he spends a lot of time bouncing between trying to land her again and going after other girls and generally making a big ass of himself. I'm actually surprised I liked him at all considering the amazingly moronic things he does in the name of love. Some of it isn't just idiotic, it's downright awful and hurtful to other people, and I'm still waiting for him to really get nailed at some point. I really can't dislike a show with Neil Patrick Harris in this form though, and he could probably carry it all by himself even without his other recognizable costars. He plays Barney, extreme womanizer and corporate dick, and is actually probably a worse person than Ted, but you can't not like him. Definitely the reason to stick with the show. I have three more seasons to work through before the fifth premiers on my birthday, so I'm gonna get to it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 7

Buffy's final season had a similar dark tone to the last couple, though thankfully it had a strong storyline to keep it afloat like the fifth as opposed to just being sort of aimlessly depressing like the sixth. I really liked it, though still not as much as or for quite the same reasons as the show's first few years. It's not that the show doesn't have a strong mix of humor in with the horror and action; it's still quite funny in places. It's just that earlier on there was a sense of fun to the whole proceedings, as Buffy and her friends could still be kids growing up in between apocalyptic fights to save the world. Once Buffy had to stop attending classes that feeling was replaced with another of dread and constant duty that weighed a little too heavily on everybody. It doesn't mean the show was inherently worse, just different.

There's really a shift in the paradigm that leads into what I know about the comics that continue the story, as the time of the Watchers comes to an end and the potential future slayers are introduced. Buffy has to take more of a leadership role, and you can see how things are affecting her life and the others more than they should be for someone in their early twenties. I'm not sure about the villains this time. Nathan Fillion was quite excellent and actually pretty scary in his big role near the end, but the main bad guy didn't have the presence they probably should have, literally and figuratively. It's kind of hard to effectively convey the destruction of the first evil entity when they don't have a form to be destroyed. Still, the conclusion was a suitably climactic and exciting finale for a long running show like this. One more season of Angel and then it's on to reading the comics.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 6

Buffy's penultimate season was also its weakest so far. The series took a darker turn the previous year, and this one continued the trend, although without the sense of direction that kept season five from seeming worse than it did. The show grabbed me originally because it had a great sense of fun despite the morbid things that often happened, and it was always funny and enjoyable even if not every single joke landed. Season five was forgivable for being more serious because the main plot was pretty darn strong, whereas season six is less so because the main plot isn't. The primary villains were mostly entertaining as they were pretty much the only thing that wasn't constantly depressing, although by the end one was just pissing me off more than should be necessary and they were just a diversion from the actual final conflict, which really turned out pretty strong.

There were some good traditional Buffy episodes scattered around, but in general there was just sort of a directionless, sour malaise about the whole thing that made it a lot less fun to watch. None of the characters were unjustified in their lashing out and depression, it just didn't make for exciting viewing. I've heard that Whedon's attentions were focused more on developing Firefly while this season was being schemed up and his absence led to the drop in quality, which is as good a reason as any. I didn't hate watching it, I was just a little bummed by the experience. The musical episode was a little blunt in how it just spelled out all the crap that's weighing the different characters down, but it was still a really cool thing to do once in a long running series, and an episode where Buffy's not sure which world she's seeing is real was one of the more chilling and interesting in the whole series, but these highlights were just a bit too few and far between. I really hope the final season can recover and deliver a nice ending, even though thanks to the comic, it's not really an ending at all.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 5

To be honest, I wasn't sure about this season at first, and at times it got fairly cringe-worthy. It's not really as funny as it was before, and almost all of the real-life aspects were taken over by the almost pervasive sadness that bubbles out of the main plot. Still, the quality of that main plot and how it culminates makes this one of the strongest seasons in the show's run. If you only like the show for the cheesy action and laughs it might not be your bag, but it definitely shows a lot of growth in a few years of airing.

It starts out strangely, with Buffy taking on Dracula himself for an episode. That's just a diversion before the story thread that causes everything afterward is thrown to the viewer pretty exquisitely, the mysterious appearance of a character everyone seems to know but the audience is clueless about. They've pulled this sort of thing before when Johnathan went from forgotten recurring background character to adored center of the universe, but it wasn't quite like this. It's a strange tangent at first, but it evolves into the core of the season and becomes the source of a lot of drama and emotionally charged moments. Buffy's mom sees a resurgence in the size of her part after almost disappearing in the fourth season, providing another source of dreary storytelling. There's also some new directions for Spike's character that I didn't really care for too, and for a while I wasn't sold on much of what was happening. But it really came together in the last third or so in possibly the show's best buildup and conclusion. I know that some of the ramifications aren't lasting, but it was still very well-done serial storytelling that had the desired effect.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 4

The fourth season of Buffy had some stand-alone episodes among the very best the show's had so far, though it didn't feel quite as strong overall as it did previously. I'm still interested in the characters for the most part, though some of their problems weren't as good and the main story arc was... I don't want to say silly, because the show's always had a sense of humor about what it is. I guess it was just hokey in comparison to the last couple seasons. One character who did improve was Spike, who's always more entertaining when he's not antagonizing the heroes, and he couldn't for the bulk of the duration here. Someone who I definitely thought took a step back was Giles, who is still and will forever be awesome, but he's just slightly less awesome when the show goes out of it's way to let you know he's awesome.

Anyway, the main thing that's going on is Buffy and Willow arrive at their college, and before long realize that there's a secret government facility beneath it that's the base for a military project called The Initiative, and some people they've met and grown to like happen to be part of it. There's a bit of conflict as we're not sure what everyone's true motivations are and eventually the main villain presents itself, an interesting if goofy experiment gone wrong. It's hard to say what exactly made it weaker than earlier stories, other than it simply was. Still though, the season is worth watching for those standout episodes. Both of the early holiday-themed ones, the dream-sequence heavy finale and especially "Hush" are all fantastic hours of television. We're reaching the point where maybe Whedon's being stretched a little thin thanks to Angel and eventually Firefly, but Buffy's still a very watchable series.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 3

The third season is an important one, as it's end marks the split where some of the cast continues on in Sunnydale, and some move to Los Angeles for the Angel spin-off. It's pivotal for most of the characters too, as it's the last year of high school before everyone can move on, and they have to make decisions about their future. Buffy's desires are at odds with her destiny and blah blah blah she keeps fighting monsters. Willow is transforming from genius bookworm into genius bookworm that can do some magic, Xander's still occassionally funny but irritating whenever stuff's actually happening, and Giles cements himself as possibly my favorite character, although I suspect his role will be diminishing soon if not immediately.

The story this time is about the town's mayor, who has been hinted in the past as being more aware of the town's supernatural troubles than he led on, but to this point has been unseen. He's fairly friendly and non-serious for a major villain, and although that isn't exactly a unique idea, it's executed well enough. There's also Faith, a new slayer in town who appeared after the death of the other slayer at the end of the second season, who was summoned because of a glitch in the logic at the end of the first season. She has some problems. Besides the main story, there are a few other pretty entertaining tangents like an alternate universe where the sidekicks are bad guys. There's also an especially good one surprisingly focusing on Xander, where a pretty dramatic event requiring all the other main characters' attentions happens mostly offscreen while he gets into some trouble before anonymously saving the day. I've decided to watch Angel's first season next, so I can alternate between the shows until I finally finish.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 2

It's hard to say how exactly it happened, but the second season ended up seeming noticeably better than the first. The characters just grow on you and you end up caring about what happens more than before. It helps that it was ten episodes longer than the first run, giving them more opportunity to set up a strong story arc and pull it off. My favorite episodes are still the ones where the whole status quo is flipped on its head for a while, because it's always fun to see how the cast changes for a bit, but the main story worked better this time and actually made the one-offs seem a bit more out of place. The show still has a strong emphasis on humor, but the plot is more dramatic instead of campy.

The focus is on the relationship between Buffy and Angel, and it what appears to be typical Whedon fashion things go less that favorably in that area leading to the true threat after the mildly interesting vampires Spike and Drusilla antagonize the good guys for the first half. Buffy's not the only one who gets close to somebody with pretty much every main cast member hooking up with someone. Some of it doesn't seem totally realistic, but the huge expansion of that aspect really pushes the characters forward and helps the series grow. Even Xander's more likable, even if his constant wisecracks still wear on you pretty often. I'm already almost halfway through the next season, and I'm sure I'll be watching pretty heavily until I'm done with the series. It's pretty good!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 1

Dollhouse's thus far very mediocre run on FOX has left me wanting something a little more fun from Joss Whedon, and the first three seasons of his first show being available on Hulu seemed like a good way to get that. The key to enjoying Buffy is to not take it too seriously, because it's often goofy as hell. It's clearly intentionally humorous, although I'm not sure if the special effects are part of that. They're a bit rough at times, although it's hard to say if they were actually good for 1997. Some of Buffy's stunt work has to be intentionally silly though, because otherwise, yeesh.

The first season's pretty short, and has a pretty good balance between (often silly) one-off episodes and a more central story arc involving an ancient vampire and his attempts to return to the earth's surface and unleash the fury of hell and all that. It does a nice job of setting up the world of Buffy and Angel and introducing the characters, although I ended up liking some more than others. For example, Giles is a really likable mentor-type while Xander is tolerable but more annoying than funny and can easily be summed up with a single, non-flattering facial expression. Buffy herself is played well enough by Sarah Michelle Gellar, although I can't say I find her delivery of sarcastic witticisms during tense moments to come close to, I don't know, Nathan Fillion's in Firefly. In general, the first season was a solid enough mix of humor, action and horror (mostly humor) to justify my continued watching of further episodes.