Archive for the ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Category

On This Day: March 18th

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

March 18th is one of those days that I remember for a having a rather unremarkable collection of highly related events that occurred (or were said to have occurred) on it. On this day:

And in 1998 I knew all of this without having to vaguely look up things up on the net to remember why it’s one of those days.

Update: While researching the links for this post, I learned, or relearned, that Danica is in two episodes of How I Met Your Mother as Trudy. The episodes are The Pineapple Incident and Third Wheel. Clearly both of those were worth a re-watch. Apparently she’s also in The West Wing. There’s a vote for that show. I still haven’t decided what show from my list, I should start. Luckily I’ve been to busy for a show recently.

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Monday, May 12th, 2008

I finally saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall this weekend! I have been wanting to see it very much since it opened a week before ROFLCon, and I finally convinced a co-worker to go see it with me (actually he was just out of town for a while he wanted to see it of his own accord). I must say that is was supremely well written, and hilarious. Its like a Will Farrel movie if it was well written and didn’t rely on being idiotically stupid for laughs.

It was written by Jason Segel, who plays Marshall on easily one of my top 2 tv shows, How I Met Your Mother. (The other one being Lost). Every time I see the title I can’t help but think that he chose for the title to include the name of his HIMYM character on purpose to exploit the obvious synergies. There were a lot of great lines in the movie, similar to the kind of amazing lines that Ted delivers on HIMYM. It made me think that Jason Segel must also have a writing credit on the tv show, but (I just checked and) according to IMDB he does not. Maybe they do a lot of ad libbing on the show, or he stole a lot of ideas from the writers on the show, cause they seemed similar.

The movie also features Mila Kunis, of That ’70s Show fame, who was excellent, as all the reviewers said she would be. It’s good to see her acting again and not, as the voice of Meg on Family Guy, getting marginalized. That show, by the way, is so bad now. It has been on a steady decline since episode 2, and now its on episode 110! The real surprise to me was that Kenneth from 30 Rock (Jack McBrayer) essentially reprised his tv show roll in the movie. It’s such a good character that it never hurts to see more of him.

I have some praise for the plot as well. At one point, I was unable to decide which of two directions the movie would go. I was also unable to decide which direction I wanted it to go. This is a common problem with romantic comedies. It becomes easy to pick sides, and then the movie will either do what you want or not. If it does what you want you call it predictable, and if it doesn’t then you call it bad — a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation. Forgetting Sarah Marshall avoids that completely by creating two, round (in the literary sense) and compelling choices. If you’re looking for something less exciting and more funny than Iron Man, go see this one!

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How I Met Your Mother

Friday, February 15th, 2008

I finished watching all that exists of CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother this week. It is yet another in the long line of shows that I saw once on an airplane and thought, “maybe this is a good show, but eh, not really worth it,” and then a few months later, Paul, who flies a whole lot less often than I do suggests that I should watch. For the record the only other show currently on this list is Scrubs, but I think that the list will continue to grow. It’s a good, fun show about young people in an apartment in New York. But it is a story of the past told in agonizing detail by a grown man to his teenage children. Obviously the story is of how he met their mother. There is a movie out now, Definitely Maybe, which has the same premise. And I would be seeing it tonight instead of blogging about it if I knew anyone who would go see it with me.

In the show, he started his story many, many years before he met his children’s mother. This seems like an excuse to tell all these self important stories about all the girls who might have been their mother and all of his other super cool youth antics. I’m not saying I’m planning to subject my kids to this kind of story. I was never subjected to this kind of story. But it is a good way to tell all of these stories that stay for the most part locked away by social norms. Telling the story is what appeals to me. In 10th grade religion class we had to write sort of an autobiographical spiritual analysis of out whole lives, and then read it in front of the class. This was scary, but people seemed to take it not as lightly as other religion class assignments, and though embarrassing details were in almost everyone’s papers, to my knowledge, none of them left the room. Anyways, this made me hit upon the idea that it’d be fun to, at some point, find someone else and do pretty much the same thing, going back and forth in parts. Vearing on side tracks often, but always coming back to the core story. This is exactly what the show does. Oh, and the show is hilarious, and the girls on it are hot; that all helps.

The good news is that How I Met Your Mother will return from the strike this season with 9 more episodes (for a total of 20, only 2 short of a normal season for them). The new episode will air on March 17th, so only a month or so to go!

Posted in How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs | 1 Comment »