Jerk/DoubleBitch » How I met your Mother

OMG HIMYM OOC!

Jerk — Wed, 19 May 2010 23:58:48 +0000

So I’ve been thinking about this week’s ep of How I Met Your Mother, in which Tony wrote a movie based on him losing and winning back Stella from Ted, with Ted cast as the bad guy. The logic being that from his perspective, Ted was the bad guy.

But this is the same Tony who when Ted was fired tried to get him another job. Sure, at first it was a job building a murder house for a creepy psycho, but afterward he got Ted the teaching spot he’s still got (does he? It hasn’t really come up in several months), really going out of his way to help Ted land on his feet. He was really kind to Ted at the end of last season, and that’s really not something that gels with guy who wrote the onscreen depiction of Ted in The Wedding Bride.

Now you could argue that Tony just used his personal experience for the backbone of the film, but all the little touches (like the red cowboy boots) and all the actual events from Ted and Stella’s relationship that, skewed though they may have been, did end up in the film… they all point to Tony seriously harbouring a grudge against Ted. Clearly, Late-Season-4 Tony and Late-Season-5 Tony are not the same guy.

-Jerk

The Evolution of HIMYM It’s strange to think that just a few months ago,...
December, and HIMYM Harder to come up with daily content when all the...
The Gospel According to Whedon Last week I read an amazing interview by the futon...

Random Question #11

Jerk — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:54:03 +0000

And now, a bit of a HIMYM rant disguised as a question! So as the weeks slip by without any mention whatsoever of the elusive Mother (for those keeping track, the last time that storyline got any exercise was in the 100th episode, which was currently 8 eps ago), I’ve been talking with several people about this. Some come down on the side that actually introducing her will be HIMYM’s final episode, others (myself included) think that there are years worth of stories that can take place after adding the Mother to the cast, and a more reasonable end point for the show would be Ted’s wedding.

It seems to me like there’s a lot that can happen between Ted meeting her and the wedding: they can date, then break up, then get back together. Hell, Marshall and Lily did that before getting married! I just wish the standard “This moment was key to me meeting your mother!” *nothing for 5 months* “Look the umbrella! Eh? Eh?!?!” *nothing for 5 months* would come to an end. We’re in the fifth season. Ted and Robin played out. Ted and Stella played out. Ted being whiny about being single is still annoying. Introducing the Mother (the actual Mother, not just her ankle and Unicorns CD) would be a good move to keep the show fresh, as well as progressing the overarching plot.

So, what do you think? Will HIMYM end with the introduction of the fabled Mother, or can it go on for years afterwards?

-Jerk

Please Stop Doing That While HIMYM has been hands-down the best sitcom of the...
Random Question #9 It’s been a while since wa had one of these...
The Evolution of HIMYM It’s strange to think that just a few months ago,...

Mommy Issues – Reality vs Fiction

DoubleBitch — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:40:16 +0000

As a fangirl I often delight in getting the nitty-gritty details of the behind the scenes action of my favorite shows. There are some shows I’ll never quite get enough of even when it comes to out of character facts and interaction. Hell, part of my job here is to know that stuff but when is it too much? When does all that information become more of a hindrance than enticement?

The short answer? Greys Anatomy.

For years now we have been overloaded with behind the scenes drama from the makers and actors. Today that addictive douche Ausiello leaked that Katherine Heigl has finally confirmed that she’s leaving the show. This comes after all that crap with Isaiah Washington, losing TR Knight and a recent report that Meridith’s character had been down played this season so she could be a mommy. This is also the reason Heigl gives for leaving.

I’m down with wanting a family and doing your thing but lets take a second and look at this. Ellen Pompeo recently had her first child and Heigl recently adopted. I’m very happy for both of them and think they deserve the time to focus on the family but lets not forget that last year, McDreamy’s wife had twins and Justin Chambers who plays Karev is a father of 5. I’m not saying that the roles between mothers and fathers, working in the entertainment industry or full time at all, for that matter, aren’t different but we haven’t seen a change in these characters because of their familial commitments.

This show takes the out of character drama and allows it to affect their characters too much. Take Gina Bellman on Leverage for example. The writers made it make sense that the character needed to take some time away from the show, they didn’t just call a reporter and go “oh well she had a baby so that’s why that happened”. Sure we knew Gina was expecting but it also made sense in the context of the show. Another direction to go could be like Lilly and Robin on How I Met Your Mother, who were able to use the comedy aspect of their show to make light of an out of character situation instead of fully hiding it or just making the characters pregnant on the show.

Actors have lives. I’m cool with that. I even find it entertaining but I can’t help but feel like it’s the responsibility of a show to make me so involved in the story that I care enough about it to suspend my belief of reality and live in the show, at least for that one hour a week.

-DoubleBitch

Unimpressive Changes Rumours that George was leaving Grey’s started months ago, and...
Leverage Proposes Eliot VS Bear Last night we saw the Leverage season first season finale...
*Funk music plays* So we all made sure we saw Leverage last night...

Funny Ted is Funny

Jerk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:44:27 +0000

I felt the need to commemorate this week’s ep of HIMYM, because (as you probably figured out by the title) Ted was actually really funny in it! As much as I love the show, it’s kinda odd how the main character is the least funny one. He’s usually either emo or douchey instead of being funny, and the funny is mainly carried by Marshall and Barney (I could go on about how Lily and Robin drive the plot more then they bring the funny, but that’s a post of its own).

I think the reason for the lack of Funny Ted is that somebody has to be the straight guy, and out of the group that’s obviously Ted. But when you give Barney the job of driving the narrative/sitting in the corner in a scuba suit, it frees up Ted to join Marshall in mocking Robin, or shove things in his mouth. Another possibility for the lack of Funny Ted may be that the line between Funny Ted and Douchey Ted can very much be context-based. When you have the right situation, as happened this week, Ted can shine.

Personally, I’d say the Ted highlight from the ep was going for the pound with Marshall about being able to stuff even more in his mouth now.

Boy does that sound gay taken out of context, huh?

-Jerk

Bringing Teh Funny I’ve had faith in Whedon and Dollhouse all along, as...
The Evolution of HIMYM It’s strange to think that just a few months ago,...
Shows You're Not Watching: Little Mosque Little Mosque on the Prairie is a Canadian half hour show...

Jerk’s Show Return Spectacular!

Jerk — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:53:50 +0000

I found after watching a couple of the season premieres this season that I had a few words to say about them, but not enough that I thought they warranted a post of their own. But now that I’ve watched all of the premieres (well, almost. Season five sucked enough that I haven’t worked up the interest in settling down for a full 85 minutes of Grey’s yet) I can share my thoughts!

May as well start with the first show to come back for the season, Supernatural. It was good. Really good. But honestly at this point I have so much faith in Kripke this was a given. I have faith he’ll end the show well. I have faith if the show continues, it will only do so if they have a strong enough plot for the sixth season. Oh and, holy crap we’re like 1/7th of the way through the season already, crazy!

I already talked about BBT, so I’ll move on to the other CBS sitcom I watch, How I Met Your Mother. HIMYM was my favourite comedy last season, though I’ve found up until now the show’s been 3/3 for having returning season premieres that were disappointing. This year it broke that streak with a really solid ep, so it looks like the show may not have peaked yet, very impressive.

Sticking to Mondays, Castle was solid. This isn’t really about the premiere, but to me it really felt more like the return after a midseason break then the start of a whole new season. Because of how short the first season was, maybe?

Mondays also brought us Heroes, which was kinda meh, yet far better then last year’s premiere. I think DB said what was needed with her first foray into liveblogging, though I do want to comment on the very end of the episode via amusing picture.

Next up, Fringe. Wow. I mean that, this was my favourite season premiere out of the whole bunch. Even if the ending reveal was pretty obvious already, the entire episode was still fantastic, and with this ep a new phase of Fringe’s life begins, so it’s a perfect jumping-on point for anyone who didn’t catch the first season. It was like the best of Alias meets the best of the X-Files, I’m really, really impressed here.

Two semi-related shows can share a paragraph here, The Office and Parks & Recreation. I found the premiere of The Office to be a very meh ep, while P&R was far better, and a huge step up from the first season. Good enough that it may need to be added as a category for the blog, we’ll see.

On Fridays, Dollhouse kicked off it’s second season really well (I’d say I enjoyed the Dollhouse premeire as much as I did SPN), taking some of the characters (Paul and Doctor Fred) in verrrrry interesting directions. Whedon also started his string of awesome guest stars early, giving us Bamber and Alexis Denisof in the first ep!

Next up we have Smallville, which was… interesting. Not sure about the whole ‘Clark prophesied to destroy the world’ bit, though I did really like both Zod and Metallo. Chloe’s request seemed like a lame ‘drive a wedge between Clark and his old life’ bit, and I find I don’t care at all about Ollie. Overall I’d say pretty good, and I’m optimistic for the season. Oh, and I think Clark should get a shorter haircut to go with his new look, what he’s got going on now doesn’t seem to fit it.

And the final premiere I’ve caught recently, Californication. This was excellent. I hadn’t realized I’d missed the Californication verse of bon mots and infinite wit until I got to experience it again. The recap of the previous season at the start even had comedic timing! I also don’t think it’s possible to ever get tired of hearing David Duchovny swear. Dunno what it is exactly, but hearing him say motherfucker is one of the best things ever.

-Jerk

Jerk Rants About the Cancellation of a Show He Didn’t Watch (Though His Mom Said She Liked It). I’m going to talk about the cancellation of Southland now,...
Is it just me or did last week rock? Last week really stood out to me as one of...
Jerk's Fav Finales of the Year Now that it’s June, I figured I’d kick off the...

Please Stop Doing That

Jerk — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:59:27 +0000

While HIMYM has been hands-down the best sitcom of the current television season, but it has this annoying habit that it still hasn’t managed to shake. Every once in a while they’ll have an episode where Bob Saget’s voiceover will mention how this episode is a vital, nay essential step in the meeting of the fabled Your Mother. In early seasons, this was kinda fun. It was like throwing out little clues the audience could use to try and figure out who the mother would be.

However it’s now become obvious that there was no mother for all of these hints to point to, because other than the main cast there really haven’t been any lasting recurring characters who could possibly be the mother. Every time they introduce one, they’re around for a few episodes and then leave. This hasn’t stopped the show from still doing these ‘essential step’ episodes though.

Episode 4.22 was the worst for this yet. The entire episode was Ted replaying all of the events that brought him to a specific street corner at a specific time, and how if any of these events had occurred differently he wouldn’t have met the mother. Then we get to 4.23, the plotline involving who he met on the corner is resolved, and (shock!) no mother. Not only was there no mother, it didn’t even lead to the introduction of a new female character with mother possibilities.

I realize that bringing the mother into the show will limit the time the series has remaining (sure they can meet, date, break up, date again, etc but if they keep that going for season after season it’ll turn Friends-y), so I understand why we haven’t seen her yet. But the show is hilarious and awesome as it is, you don’t need to keep dangling that mother carrot in front of the viewers to keep them interested.

-Jerk

Random Question #11 And now, a bit of a HIMYM rant disguised as...
Bit of a Rant on True Blood and Episode Endings I’m quite enjoying the new season of True Blood, but...
Best. Episode. Ever. Because of the nature of the show, it’s really hard...

Poor Big Bang Theory

Jerk — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:28:28 +0000

I see in Big Bang Theory the potential for a really awesome sitcom, but I’ve found that very few episodes have lived up to that potential. It has been walking a weird line with it’s geekiness, often you’re amazed at how accurate they are, only to be stunned by a glaring, insanely obvious misstep. I try not to nitpick these things, but they’ve shown that they have the knowledge base for the subject matter, so clearly they knew it was wrong. I’ve found the same thing with the characters, they’ll make some good steps towards changing and developing the characters only to later revert them to their base pilot-era selves. But despite the flaws, I’m always hoping to get an episode that reaches those heights I know the show can.

This week’s episode was one of those eps, truly funny and just jam packed with geek, in this case comic books, my personal geekdom forte! And on the nitpick side, I can assert that everything they did with the comics was perfect, all the arguments, even the choice of a coveted issue for Sheldon and Wolowitz to fight over (a rare and awesome Neal Adams variant cover to All Star Batman& Robin #8). This was an episode of BBT the way it was meant to be!

Unfortunately, after BBT I watched this week’s HIMYM which completely and utterly blew it away. It’s no fault of BBT’s, season four of HIMYM has been absolutely amazing, hands-down the funniest sitcom this season and quite honestly I’d say the best we’ve seen from a US sitcom since Arrested Development wrapped, even if it had been merely an okay ep of HIMYM it would have given Big Bang a run for its money. The shows are just operating on completely different levels.

Speaking of segues, they’ve done a pretty damn good job of hiding the fact that 2/5’s of the main cast of How I Met Your Mother got pregnant (and 100% of their wommens), that’s been far less distracting/obvious than I thought it would be. I actually thought they were going to write Aly’s pregnancy into the series (there was a hint of future babyness for Lily early on in the season), but I guess they’re holding off on that for next year. How they gave Aly some time off to have her baby was brilliant and hilarious. Srsly, if you haven’t been watching, you should really go find the episodes. To tide you over/just because it’s awesome, here’s the latest show-related website to be put up, complete with Random Alan Thicke and Crash Test Dummies references! More good news (if Wiki can be trusted) is that this season will be 24 eps instead of 22, making up the two lost due to the strike last year!

Oh, and for anyone interested, the punchline is “You can’t peanut butter your dick up someone’s ass.”

-Jerk

Big Bang Theory defies age As some of you may know, It’s Canadian Thanksgiving this...
Please Stop Doing That While HIMYM has been hands-down the best sitcom of the...
More Wang Than I Was Expecting So we’re now five episodes into Party Down now, I...

I want to go to there.

Jerk — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:56:52 +0000

I think this week’s 30 Rock was a perfect example of how the show works best: Take a standard sitcom setup (take an office full of zany characters, throw in the conflict-causing plot du jour), then pump it full of manic energy and film it all through an extra thick lens of surreality. When it comes to comedy, I always like it better if the jokes are coming so fast that the audience will miss some of them on the first viewing, which is one of the many reasons that Arrested Development was so great. Rewatchability is never a bad thing for your show.

Most sitcoms like to have the comedy come from the plot/situation (hence the name), which I find limits the potential for both (storytelling potential is truncated and the LPS (LOLs per minute) is lowered). This is why a show like Big Bang Theory is always just on the edge of being truly awesome, but when the episode is over you’re left feeling that a) it could have been funnier, and b) the plot didn’t advance as much as it could have, because the show tried to shoehorn both into 21 minutes.

How I Met Your Mother (which for my money is the best sitcom this season, with 30 Rock in second place) goes about things differently from your standard sitcom, having certain episodes which are clearly more focused on advancing the show’s plot than bringing teh funny, which frees up the majority of the episodes to be stuffed with as much comedy as possible. This is a solid method that’s working really well for them, but it’s still somewhat of a normal approach.

30 Rock takes on the plot/funny problem in a very unique way: If you make your show absurd enough, then the plot itself is comedy (and the comedy is also comedy, resulting in 100% comedic encasement). This has the added bonus of making it hard to tell what exactly is the zany episodic plotline, and what is the actual developing plot thread for the show, making it almost impossible to figure out where the show is going or what’s going to happen next (I honestly didn’t expect Salma Hayek to be around for multiple episodes). Granted, that doesn’t really matter all that much as 30 Rock is very much a show that sweeps you up and drags you through a series of crazy scenes and bon mots at breakneck speed, not leaving you a lot of time to contemplate future plotlines.

-Jerk

Jerking Comedies This was a good week for comedies. Big Bang Theory...
SPN Then and Now Since the show began, Supernatural has had certain molds that...
Poor Big Bang Theory I see in Big Bang Theory the potential for a...

Is it just me or did last week rock?

Jerk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:15:33 +0000

Last week really stood out to me as one of the best single weeks of TV that I’ve ever experienced. If you go by Sunday as the start of the week (I normally start with Mondays), then it’s even better as it included the awesome Superbowl episode of The Office. But for this post, let’s say the week started on Monday.

Monday gave us what was quite possibly the best episode of Big Bang Theory to date, and one of the few times I’ve felt that it’s been as good as HIMYM (which was also really good, and I posted about it before), though I am starting to suspect that they’ve decided to forget about Leonard’s girlfriend. Then we had a really amazing episode of 24 that wrapped up the first arc of the season (and not in the way I expected), and began to interweave all the various plots together more. We also got the return of Heroes which did have some good bits, but quite honestly was the low point of the week.

Tuesday featured another really solid ep of Fringe (last week was also excellent), they’ve been doing good since returning. It seems like they got the studio note “more X-Filesy” and followed it to great success. Melting brains and were-porcupines are much better than homing pigeons, it turns out. There was an episode of Leverage too, which is always good, and which DoubleBitch already did postness on.

Wednesday brought Life on Mars, which was a damn fine episode hinting at some of the big picture stuff, which has slowly grown on me (though I still like the ’70s cops bits better). They also pulled a really cool trick to stick a lighter episode between this one and the midseason finale, which fixed my problem with the previous episode (that being ‘why is there no mention of what happened in the midseason finale?’ for those wondering). We also had an awesome Lost ep, which featured a pretty crazy character revelation that I didn’t see coming in the least. Not quite as good as 5.03, but close. Four eps in, and it looks like we’re on course to finally get a season that can surpass the first one.

Thursday is always a big night for TV, and this time we got a really funny ep of The Office (not as good as the Superbowl ep, but then it was half the length, so it might win were you to figure out the funny-to-minutes ratio. 30 Rock was even better, and currently tied with Gavin Volure for my favourite episode of season three. Smallville was amazing (not Geoff Johns good, but standard Smallville awesome episode good), and went a long way to making up for the previous episodes’ crappy Lananess (though I am a bit miffed that they decided to go with the ‘Clark and Lana forced to be apart’ thing, though I was pretty sure they were going that direction before. It just helps to cement the whole Smallville fallacy of Clark and Lana as star-crossed soulmates, which is just wrong, dammit), and continues the season eight trend of bringing in comic book characters and making it really work. Supernatural has been covered quite a bit by DoubleBitch already, so I’ll just say it was solid and I thought the Disney refs were kinda creepy and awesome, and move on. Grey’s was really good (I was worried a bit that Bailey was being lame again, but she fixed herself nicely), and was one of the rare times I was really digging the Derek/Mer stuff. It was still criminally lacking in George though. Hopefully they’ll deal with this gay relationship better than the last. The ending kicks off the Grey’s/Private Practice crossover, which I’m not all that psyched for because I don’t watch PP. I did break down and download the ep though, but I haven’t watched it yet.

Friday gave us Battlestar to finish of the week (nothing airs on Saturdays except Cops and SNL, and somewhere along the line everyone except Cartoon Network forgot that Sunday is actually a really good night to put shows on), which I already sorta talked about and was really frakin’ good.

So, out of the fourteen episodes I watched (which will be going up with the return of SSC and the premiere of Dollhouse next week, sigh), I’d say that with the exception of Heroes (goddammit Kring), the worst of those episodes would rate as slightly above average for the show, and the best was a possible series high. I can’t think of another week where I’ve been so impressed by what I’ve watched. Good work, television people!

-Jerk

Jerk’s Show Return Spectacular! I found after watching a couple of the season premieres...
Resolutions! We here at J/DB love themes, so this seemed like...
Dis-Appointment Television Remember way back, say 4 – 5 months ago? Back...

eContent FTW!

Jerk — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:34:32 +0000

A bit of Jerk info: Whenever a website is mentioned on a show, I immediately pause the ep and run off to see if it exists. See, one time Conan O’Brien randomly said ‘hornymanatee.com’ on Late Night, which meant NBC had to buy the URL (and Conan decided to do something with it). It turns out this is a legal issue, so someone can’t buy the URL mentioned in a show and stick up anything the Network wouldn’t like to be connected to. Now, sometimes the sites will be lame, either just a static image placeholder, or even worse merely a redirect to the Network’s homepage. Sometimes though, this is used as a chance to put up some awesome extra content for the fans.

Arrested Development was known for building the sites, and then actually featuring the webpages on the show, such as imoscar.com, imnoscar.com, and tonywonder.com Unfortunately the sites are long gone by this point.

As far as current shows go, easily the best show-related websites are being done by the How I Met Your Mother crew. Here’s Barney’s online video resume from last night’s episode. The HIMYM sites are great because they’re more than just a single page, they actually build sites and stick up some really cool content, often managing to link together various bits that they’ve done. My favourite is the Ted Mosby is a Jerk site, which features such great easter eggs for fans as the covers for some of the other Ted Mosby’s porn films, and a drawing of Barney being raped by a dragon.

I think that making good use of these sites is indicative of both the level of connection the creators have with their fans, and of their creativity. It’s categorically different from something such as the web content produced for Lost, which while really in-depth and cool, really has very little connection to the show itself while these sites are directly connected to the series in a very significant way. Something about these sites tweaks my geek in just the right way, I love this stuff and I wish more shows would use these sites as an opportunity to really push their work into metafiction territory (I’m a huge meta fan).

-Jerk

CoCo Christopher's New Show So we’re two eps into Conan’s run as the Tonight...
NBC Late-Night Fail Update I thought it was bad a few days ago when...
Leverage Proposes Eliot VS Bear Last night we saw the Leverage season first season finale...