You Know What You Should Watch Tonight?

How I Met Your Mother (on CBS at 7:30 Central [the best timezone!]).


I alluded to my great love of this show during yesterday's post. I rented the first disc of the first season of it a month or two ago, on a whim, and Neal and I went a little crazy over it. (We bought the second season because Netflix would have taken too long and Blockbuster didn't have it.)

It's a very funny show (yes, even though it's on CBS), with focus on characters and continuous plot as opposed to one-off gags (although those can happen, too). But there are three things that really set HIMYM apart:

1. The characters are actually nice to each other.
When you think about it, it's the default for characters on sitcoms to be mean to each other. I don't notice it much until I see the characters on HIMYM treating each other like real people do. Sure, they tease each other sometimes, but generally they're inclined to help each other out because they're friends instead of having a "what's in it for me?" mentality. Also, the married couple (Lily and Marshall) are goofy sweet with each other, instead of hating each other with a blinding rage (see: Ray and Debra, Doug and Carrie, Ross and Rachel).

2. Solid continuity/in-jokes.
HIMYM has probably the second-most impressive dedication to continuity of any comedy I've seen. (It comes after Arrested Development, which is no slight on HIMYM, as AD's continuity was crazy amazing.) This means that HIMYM really rewards its viewers for paying attention and watching the episodes in order, as there will be callbacks to previous jokes.

Some are obvious: in Season 2, Barney and Marshall made a slap bet. Marshall was awarded five slaps that he could use on Barney at any time. He's doled out three so far, in three separate episodes, one of which was all about the impending slap. In the other it came out of nowhere, for Barney and for the audience. Some callbacks are more subtle: there's a running gag that Barney had a romantic liaison with Madeline Albright--Barney mentioned telling "Madeline" something about world affairs, just in passing, last week.

The upshot is that the makers of the show respect not just their own story, but the viewers as well. It's not like how in season 1 of Friends, it was a big deal that Ross had only been with his ex-wife, and then years later we were supposed to buy a joke that he had slept with a dorm cleaning lady in college.

And finally 3. Neil. Patrick. Harris.
Doogie Howser grew up into somebody totally hilarious. NPH's Barney is the most cartoonish character on the show, with his crazy womanizing, insistence on dressing in nothing but suits, mysterious evil corporate job, and dedication to his own awesomeness. But he absolutely pulls it off.

In fact, Barney is in the midst of a serious, for-reals storyline, and NPH is managing to juggle it with Barney's requisite goofiness beautifully.

I'm such a sucker for this storyline, too. See, he's realized he's in love with Robin, who used to date Ted. The real problem, though, is that he's against relationships and monogamy and all that boring stuff, preferring to remain awesome. So he's in love with her, but he can't see how she would go for him even if he could manage to tell her, because she knows all about his one-night-standing, lying, and womanizing. Basically, I will go for any "He's secretly in love with her!" story, especially if there's a healthy does of "He's not the type of man who falls in love!" on top of it.* And, like I said, NPH is doing an amazing job with it. Boy about broke my heart last week.

Anyway, I don't know exactly what tomorrow's episode is about--the commercials have something with Barney and Ted bartending, while the totally unhelpful CBS summary is "Three Days of Snow: Lily and Marshall retire another ritual, forcing them to reflect." (If they keep up their pattern, it will be a few episodes before they come back to the Barney/Robin thing. They want to keep me in suspense.)

In conclusion, give HIMYM a try tomorrow (or on the internet) if you haven't before.

Also, if you want something to watch at 7:00, The Big Bang Theory is pretty entertaining. It's no HIMYM, but that's a bit much to ask for.




*The best examples of this I can think of are: Joey falls in love with Rachel, season 8 of Friends (which pulled Friends back up from the hole of season 7, even if it couldn't sustain the goodness into season 9), August Falcon (in a reference that only my mom will get), and the Todd Rundgren song "I Saw the Light", which I was completely wild about for a couple years in high school. I'm sure there are more that I'm not remembering right now. Suggestions?