[Oy vey. So much TV, so little time. This will be part one of a two-part series at this point, so we’ll start the comedies and move onto the dramas tomorrow (I’ll be covering Gossip Girl and Pushing Daisies this evening, barring unforeseen circumstances).]
How I Met Your Mother – “Little Boys”
There were some funny moments, sure, but the show’s focus is falling apart. The end of last season was a fantastic series of episodes because it was focused on Marshall and Lily’s wedding with Ted and Robin’s relationship taking a backseat. What happened at the end of last season was that Marshall and Lily became that “married couple” who no longer had any real comic potential…and Ted and Robin became the focus.
Ted has had some decent episodes (“Lucky Penny” was an example), but there is something about Ted that just doesn’t make for good comedy. The show has tried various perspectives: We went into Ted’s office for a span, and the result was mediocre comedy. Right now, Ted and Robin are both single and dating, and it just…isn’t entertaining. There’s some great jokes, and the structure of this week’s episode was interesting, but it just isn’t memorable.
I’m almost expecting them to throw Robin into the workplace any day now.
Samantha Who? – “Pilot”
The final new comedy of the fall season, Samantha Who? debuted to some solid numbers last night…and I’ll admit that I enjoyed it quite a lot. There are some fantastic elements to Samantha Who? that keep things interesting: a fantastic cast is first and foremost, with pretty well every performer nailing their respective character.
The comedy itself isn’t all that interesting, but the structure of the pilot had a lot of potential. There was some nice reveals of her “fake” best friend and her boy issues, and the mysterious hit and run driver is certainly of concern. As a pilot, it was well constructed to introduce us to these characters, as an Amnesiac makes a great tabula rosa upon which to write.
The concern, obviously, is that they’ve played out their amnesia jokes and that the rest of the series won’t be able to live up to this pilot structure. I enjoy the characters, from Jean Smart’s fantastic mother to Barry Watson’s awkward and short-haired boyfriend, but she can only learn so many things about herself each week before this gets extremely old. Will she get amnesia again? Will another character get amnesia? Where can this go, exactly?
Chuck – “Chuck vs. The Wookiee”
I will concur with the general sentiment on this episode: it just wasn’t as good as last week. It was still engaging, but it had some issues with balancing comedy and drama. In other words, it wasn’t quite funny enough, and the drama didn’t quite play as well as it could.
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Cultural Learnings 