How I Met Your Mother

By Myles Cultural Observations I quite enjoyed the moment where Lily was pointing out to Shelly that all of Lorenzo Von Matterhorn’s accolades were lies, but then temporarily takes it back when she hears about the laser tag tournament…until Shelly notes that it was at the Vatican.The episode was...

By Myles If we go back to “Slapsgiving,” where we last saw this type of exaggeration for a long term story, it was a joke that was always present but never really important: it was a gag, something that could help contribute to the chaos of sorts surrounding Lily’s first Thanksgiving dinner. Here, ho...

By Myles The result is a solid episode of How I Met Your Mother from the perspective of someone who finds the jokes to be at Canada’s expense, and a kind of fantastic episode for those of us who “get” the Canadian side of the storyline in a way that others cannot. All in all, it’s an episode I had a lot of fun...

By Myles In the season premiere, we essentially got a confirmation that How I Met Your Mother would be dipping into the well of the double date: after struggling for a few seasons to integrate a drama-free Lily and Marshall into the show’s set of couples, they kind of gave up late last season with Han...

By Myles For now, thoughts on (deep breath) The Office, Community, Parks and Recreation, Glee, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Saturday Night Live, Modern Family, Cougar Town, The Middle and Greek (phew!). Community Cougar Town The Middle Glee How I Met Your Mother The Big Bang Theory

By Myles While we went most of the final episodes of last season without Lily and Marshall time thanks to Hannigan’s pregnancy, I was great to have them back in full force here. The discovery of Stripper Lily (which gets added, we learn, to Lesbian Robin and Moustache Marshall in the group’s collect...

By Myles So heading into its fifth season, more successful than one could have imagined two years ago, How I Met Your Mother finds itself closer than ever (we presume) to the identity of the Mother, and finally pulling the trigger on a long-gestating relationship (Barney and Robin). This means tha...

By Myles This is, of course, not to say that the actual winners of the Emmys didn’t have their problems this year. There’s no universe where I feel that Neil Patrick Harris and Rainn Wilson should have lost to Jon Cryer for his work on Two and a Half Men, a victory which provided some comedy for Harris bu...

By Myles 7:54pm: Enjoying Christine Baranski’s guest spot in a pre-Emmys airing of The Big Bang Theory – an omen for Jim Parsons? Baranski was always going to lose to Tina Fey, but she was damn good in this episode. 8:06pm: “Next year, the theme song for Two and a Half Men will just be “meh”" – win.

By Myles Kevin Dillon (Entourage)Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother)Rainn Wilson (The Office)Tracy Morgan (30 Rock)Jack McBrayer (30 Rock)Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) The absence of Jeremy Piven really makes this category a particularly difficult one to really “predict” in a tradit...

By Myles The Year of How I Met Your Mother I let out an extremely girlish “Yay,” nearly dropping my computer, when How I Met Your Mother was listed as one of the nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series (and I even predicted it!). I know it has no chance in the category, but its nomination is a vindication...

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By Myles Predictions for Supporting Actor in a Comedy Jon Cryer (”Two and a Half Men”)John Krasinski (”The Office”)Tracy Morgan (”30 Rock”)Neil Patrick Harris (”How I Met Your Mother”)Jeremy Piven (”Entourage”)Rainn Wilson (”The Office”) Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Predictions Ri...

By Myles But, in the end, I’ve really missed the little things that Lily brings to the show: her anger at the idea of Marshall thinking she was pregnant, her inability to keep a secret finally solved with the Barney/Robin secret only to be shattered when she feels bad and has to tell Barney the secret...

By Myles I just wish that it could have been a stronger episode overall: whereas last week was ostensibly about Ted but realistically more about Robin, Marshall and Barney, this week’s episode was primarily Ted and more Ted, and that’s problematic. I don’t mean to rag on poor Josh Radnor, who reall...

By Myles I liked the idea of the project getting scrapped as the first real sign of the economic downturn, although Ted was really the show’s only option: Barney’s upper management, Marshall is a lawyer with a huge mortgage and crippling debt, Lily also has crippling debt and needs a place of emplo...

By Myles There is something very reminiscent of How I Met Your Mother in “The Bubble,” where we say goodbye to Jon Hamm in a way that makes you wish that he had been around a little bit longer. He and Salma Hayek were really the polar opposites: while she was made too central to the key storylines and fell...

By Myles Cultural Observations Of Barney’s nightgown jokes, I enjoyed “Something about Scrooge!” the most, just because it wasn’t even a joke at all.I’m fairly certain that most viewers awake at 4am would still choose Kim Jong Il riding a horse over Robin’s show, fire or no fire.Interesting to see...

By Myles The best Barney episodes are those that leave Barney just as he is, at least on the outside, but with a new appreciation for something or someone: either his past (his time on the Price is Right), his friends (his changed view of Lily after she briefly moves into his apartment), or in this ins...

By Myles “The Possimpible” doesn’t try to be overly sentimental, or even overly ambitious: it just looks back on its past, makes a reel of the various ways the show has been charming in the past (most related to Barney) and then crafting an episode around them. It’s something that doesn’t always wor...

By Myles For those of you who don’t know, I am from Canada. So is Cobie Smulders, who plays Robin Cherbotsky, who is also from Canada. This has made us the butt of many jokes in the span of How I Met Your Mother’s four seasons. The show has never really strived for accuracy, of course, but its skewering has b...

By Myles Speaking of Barney and Ted, the former got a lot more time than the latter this week. While seeing Ted as the lame Dad (so true) was funny enough, Barney was the one who was playing out the tropes. We haven’t seen much original material for Barney so far this season, to be honest: we’ve seen a very...

By Myles After reading Alan Sepinwall’s impressions of Scrubs’ upcoming season on ABC (which are very positive, and might convince me to give the show another shot), I remembered something: I had once hoped, wished even, that Sarah Chalke could abandon that comedy for this one, a show where her c...

By Myles Flashbacks? Check. HIMYM-specific terminology? Check. Self-created Lore? Check. If you're looking for an episode of How I Met Your Mother that represents the show's charms in a single half hour, this is perhaps one of the most pure examples. While it sidelines Barney, perhaps the show's be...

By Myles Now, sure, we've seen this sensitive and conflicted sign of Barney in the past, but I just find him far more interesting as a character in these moments. Neil Patrick Harris brings such life to this kind of episode, one where the inner Barney is so clearly juxtaposed with the outer, obnoxiou...

By Myles For quite a few series, there isn't much to go on as far as judging the show's return post-strike - can we really fairly judge the quality of a series by only four or five episodes designed to either tie up loose ends or pump out content for their network before May Sweeps ends? However, in the c...

By Myles Rebound Bro" After last week's breakup of Barney and Ted, it's not easy being Barney...or Ted. Or Stella, the delightful girlfriend we've seen too little of since only now was Sarah Chalke able to make her return. And really, it's a spiral for all of them, as they struggle with various hangups.

By Myles The Goat" It's even more delightful that Robin is (on the surface) far less affected by it, as Barney is a nervous wreck by comparison; actually, you don't even need the comparison to know that Barney is destroying himself inside and out. This takes the form, most directly, Barney scrambli...

By Myles This one, of course, is somewhat strange: Barney is the ultimate womanizer, and while I think there's a lot of comic and dramatic potential here I don't know where (long term) Robin can go after this point. It seems like a hail mary to justify the character, but at a certain point I'd rather se...

By Myles And perhaps here we need to lay blame on Alicia Silverstone and Britney Spears, as the latter's arrival on the scene two episodes ago scared away the former from a three-episode guest stint, replaced by a quick one-off from the referenced, but unseen, Sarah Chalke in the role as Stella. Lon...

By Myles It ended up with the slot behind Two and a Half Men to end the season, so it looks like another holding period for the David Spade-starring comedy to see which comedy will fail enough for it to be parachuted in once 2009 rolls around. How I Met Your Mother - Mondays at 8:30

By Myles Medium, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Law & Order are the big returning series that are waiting it out until midseason. Medium and Law & Order have Sunday timeslots on NBC post-football, but Old Christine has no timeslot in place at the moment. That will depend on the succe...