A Season Stretching It Out: How I Met Your Mother Season Six Lets Jason Segal Shine (But Little Else)!

The Good: Jason Segel’s acting, Moments of humor, Marshall’s character arc
The Bad: Ted’s arc is largely tired, Poor onscreen chemistry between Josh Radnor and Jennifer Morrison
The Basics: In its sixth season, How I Met Your Mother has its moments, but they are fewer and farther between, save a powerful arc for Marshall that allows Jason Segel to truly shine.


Concept television shows have it rough. Concept shows are television series’s where the concept is very simple and might initially seem unique, but the initial idea is largely all there is to the show. So, for example, House, M.D. could pretty much be reduced to the summary “acerbic but brilliant drug-abusing doctor solves medical mysteries while keeping his staff at an arm’s length” or Bones (season one reviewed here!) was initially sold as “an F.B.I. agent and a forensic scientist specializing in skeletal remains follow bone-related clues to solve crimes new and old.” Those types of shows quickly become repetitive or work hard to distance themselves from their original concept. How I Met Your Mother had it tough in that the longer the series progressed, the harder it was to stick to the concept and make viewers actually care. By the time the sixth season aired, the show was so far from its title and concept that the passing mentions of “the mother” illicit groans more than enthusiastic grins.

In the sixth season of How I Met Your Mother, Ted Mosby gets another girlfriend who is immediately evident as yet another in a long string of women Ted was with who was not, in fact, the mother of the children he is telling the story to. So, the entire relationship between Ted and Zoey is doomed to failure from the beginning and it becomes a far less pleasant waiting game than in prior seasons as the viewer waits for the inevitable implosion of their relationship. Worse than that, the producers and actors aren’t even trying to misdirect at this point; the casting of Jennifer Morrison as Zoey seems to have been done independently of her ability to play off Josh Radnor’s Ted Mosby: onscreen they have less chemistry than . . . well, any two people who have no on-screen chemistry.

The season opens with Robin seriously depressed following the fallout of her relationship with Don. While she is pretty much repugnant to Barney and Ted at that point, largely based on letting herself go (like chips in the hair lack of care for herself), Marshall and Lily begin working to have a child of their own. Marshall’s excitement about trying to have a child leads him to confide in his father, who sends along a crib and embarrasses Lily. As the season develops, so too does the relationship between Ted and the woman protesting his GNB Building, Zoey. As Ted and Zoey actually fall in love - which is hampered by Zoey being married to the eccentric Captain - Marshall's world is rocked by the death of his father. Barney starts dating Nora after dates with people like Zoey’s idiotic cousin.

But, as the fate of the Goliath National Bank Building is decided with Ted having to choose between his love of Zoey (and her love of the dilapidated Arcadian Hotel) and his desire to have an impact on New York City’s skyline, the relationship between Ted and Zoey takes the forefront. And while Marshall and Lily are forced to consider other options than pregnancy, they get a predictable surprise.

The sixth season of How I Met Your Mother includes concept episodes, like a parody of The Amazing Race. In the otherwise pointless episode, the quintet races around New York City trying to prove which mode of transportation and route is the fastest! In another, largely isolated, episode, Barney takes the bet that he can talk like a little boy to get a date. Perhaps the best concept episode involves a guest appearance from Jorge Garcia as a jinx and features a hilarious reference to his character from Lost (reviewed here!).

The characters in How I Met Your Mother are the same quintet that has been around since season one. In the sixth season, the major occurrences for each include:

Barney – He is hurt when, while moving his mother out of his boyhood home, he learns about his brother’s biological father and creates something of a scene when they go to meet him. In the process, he comes to learn just how hard his mother worked to protect and raise him. When Marshall’s father dies, he decides it is time to get in touch with his biological father. When he does that, he finds himself disappointed by a father who is anything but the party animal he remembers his father to be! This season, he is single free and clear until he begins to date Nora . . . though he still harbors some feelings for Robin,

Robin – Dates one of Marshall’s friends who happens to have a small penis. She is completely thrown when Ted reveals that she acts like she does not need her partner in a relationship, which is a characteristic Barney actually likes. Barney reunites her with her Canadian co-star from the children’s television show they starred on when she is concerned that Lily will abandon her when she has a child. She manages to be a good friend to Ted in this season without interfering with his relationship with Zoey,

Lily – She tries to get a girl after she is frustrated with how she and Marshall have had a hard time of conceiving. She goes a bit baby crazy (like working on figuring out baby names already!) and is heartbroken when she and Marshall fail to conceive. She gives Marshall the space he needs after his father dies and calls out Robin when Robin tries to keep secrets from the group,

Marshall – Works to get Lily pregnant with a boy when he starts thinking of how horrible all the guys treat women. His career remains solid until his father dies. When he loses his beloved father, he re-evaluates his life and starts looking into environmental law once again,

and Ted – Is wooed by Barney to act as the architect on the new Goliath National Bank building. Despite loving his teaching job, Ted succumbs to Barney’s pressure and is fine with the project, which will happen when the historic Arcadian Hotel is torn down, until a woman enters the picture. He begins an infatuation with a married woman after she (Zoey) fights to prevent his building from getting made. He briefly dates Robin’s infantile new co-anchor.

On the acting front, the story for the sixth season of How I Met Your Mother is all Jason Segel. Segel reveals a depth of dramatic ability that he ably presents when Marshall’s father dies. Segel plays serious and moody with a realism that is compelling and often heartbreaking to watch. This pushes Segel to present Marshall in a new light and he more than rises to the challenge. For one of the first times in the entire series, Marshall becomes the character to watch when Segel makes his lawyer character vulnerable and fascinating.

Without Segel’s performance and the devastating loss to Marshall’s character that becomes a compelling arc, the sixth season of How I Met Your Mother would largely be a wash. But it becomes a little better than an average sitcom because that arc and the performance ability shine brighter than one might have expected, making it worth watching, if not worth shelling out for the DVD set.

For other works with Jennifer Morrison, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Once Upon A Time - Season 1
Star Trek
House, M.D. - Season 4
House, M.D. - Season 3
House, M.D. - Season 2
House, M.D. - Season 1
Mr. And Mrs. Smith

5.5/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Saga Of Barney And Robin Is Encapsulated In How I Met Your Mother Season 5!

The Good: Moments of character, Moments of performance
The Bad: Plots and jokes are becoming ever-more familiar
The Basics: Despite what the title claims, Barney and Robin dominated the fifth season of How I Met Your Mother.


When a long-running television show has a winning formula, the writers and producers have a tough mandate to follow. They have to balance the balance the familiar and successful elements of a show against advancing a plot and the characters so that the show does not simply fall into a repetitive rut that bores the fan base. Friends (reviewed here!) did that fairly successfully by jerking viewers around with the on-again, off-again relationship between Ross and Rachel (only very seldom acknowledging how very infrequent the relationship was actually “on”) and Frasier (reviewed here!) very cleverly stretched out the demise of Niles’s marriage(s) to play out the long arc of his attraction to Daphne over many seasons. On How I Met Your Mother, Barney – played with consistent hilarity by Neil Patrick Harris – is one of the key winning elements and much of his appeal comes from the ridiculously uncomplicated way he pursues women for sex. But, to keep him from being disliked for the way he disposes of women whom he beds, the writers wrote a growing attraction for Barney. Barney has been somewhat hopelessly attracted to Robin by the time the fifth season begins. But at the climax of the fourth season (reviewed here!), Barney is outed as being in love with Robin and that forced the writers to actually figure out what direction the show would go in after that revelation.

Unlike Frasier, which committed to the Niles/Daphne relationship and brought viewers along for all the complexities that arose from their changing relationship (and characters!), How I Met Your Mother went with returning the show to the tried and true formula as soon as possible. As such, it is little surprise to those who pick up the fifth season, that after all the build-up and legwork done in Season Four of the show, How I Met Your Mother buries the Barney/Robin relationship remarkably quickly (eight episodes into the twenty-four episode season). In an act of particularly blatant cowardice on the part of the writers and producers, the effect of the relationship and its failure impacts Robin (who was oblivious to Barney’s feelings!) more than it does Barney. This allows Barney to return to form faster and the writers and producers of How I Met Your Mother highlight that with episodes like “The Playbook,” “Girls Vs. Suits,” and “Perfect Week.” Given how well Neil Patrick Harris performed the angst of Barney being so close to the woman he loved so much, the lack of genuine emotional ramifications to having and losing the love of his life rings false in the fifth season.

That said, the fifth season of How I Met Your Mother is watchable and generally enjoyable. Picking up where season four left off, Lily puts pressure on Barney and Robin to define their new relationship. When they agree to date for Lily’s sake, they soon find that is more complicated than they expected. Barney turns to Ted to teach him all about Robin’s likes and dislikes, which annoy Robin (especially when it turns out Ted is largely right about her!) and Marshall and Lily try to use Barney and Robin as their new “couples friend,” with disastrous results. It does not take long before Robin is annoyed by everything Barney says and does and Barney lets himself go to the point he is morbidly obese and the two call the relationship off.

In the wake of the break-up, Barney returns to his old womanizing ways and Robin struggles to deal with the emotional ramifications of losing Barney. As Robin builds an unexpected relationship with her failure of a co-anchor at Wake Up New York!, Don, Ted commits to being a college professor and even starts to have fun with his students. Throughout the season, Marshall and Lily begin to move closer to being comfortable with having children of their own and Ted has his least remarkable year of dating everyone but the mother of his (eventual) children.

The fifth season of How I Met Your Mother might well be the season that seems to have abandoned its premise more than any of the others. Ted Mosby, despite narrating the show, is much more of a supporting character in this season and no major steps are taken to get Ted closer to meeting the woman who will eventually mother his two children. Instead, the stronger plotlines in the fifth season involve Robin and Barney – together and then apart – and Marshall and Lily working on their own relationship. Ted Mosby becomes more of an observer in their lives and the only way this is at all refreshing for the viewers is that this is not a season that commits Ted to yet another obvious dead-end relationship with a woman who will not be “the mother.”

That is not to say that Ted Mosby does not have a few good moments in season five. The penultimate episode of the season, which has Ted dealing with a movie based upon his relationship with Stella in which the Ted Mosby character is the villain, is funny and painfully awkward to watch, but advances Ted’s character well. “The Wedding Bride” is presented as such a stupid romantic comedy (with an absolutely perfect stupid title!) that it gives Ted one of the few moments of real catharsis in the season and frees him up to truly move on in the next.

More than in the prior seasons, How I Met Your Mother Season Five falls into the familiar traps television shows get into when they have been on for a while: it relies upon guest stars to bring in viewers. In the fifth season of How I Met Your Mother, notable and prominent guest stars include Jennifer Lopez, who takes on Barney as a self-help relationship guru who refuses to put out, Amanda Peet, who provides temptation for Marshall, and Judy Greer, who is dating Ted when “The Wedding Bride” is released in theaters.

The fifth season of How I Met Your Mother is more familiar than funny, but it makes up for the middling humor by doing some decent character work on the important supporting characters in the narrative of Ted Mosby’s romantic life. Despite mortgaging the complicated relationship Barney and Robin could have had for a return to form, there is enough in How I Met Your Mother Season Five to recommend.

For other works with the amazing Amanda Peet, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Identity Thief
2012
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
A Lot Like Love
The Whole Ten Yards
Something’s Gotta Give
Changing Lanes
The Whole Nine Yards

6/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Returning To Something Better Than I Remember: How I Met Your Mother Season Four!

The Good: Funny, Good character development, Decent performances and guest actors
The Bad: Some truly preposterous plots
The Basics: I return to How I Met Your Mother for its fourth season DVD set . . . to discover the show got quite a bit better!


It has been a long time since I watched and reviewed any of How I Met Your Mother. The reason for that is very simple: the premise of it got pretty tired for me by the third season (reviewed here!) and virtually every time I sat down to watch the show, an internet meme I saw once about how the show was actually “Chicks I Banged Before Your Mother” would constantly run through my head. So, it was only the fact that my wife wanted to watch the show (and restarted the series without me) that I began to watch the series again. As a pleasant surprise for me, the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother was a vast improvement on how I remembered the show and I found myself getting into the show again.

Initially, I was drawn to How I Met Your Mother because of Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segal, whose other works I had generally enjoyed. But, like most people who watch How I Met Your Mother, I found myself vastly more intrigued by Neil Patrick Harris as the promiscuous playboy Barney Stinson than either Lily and Marshall or the show’s narrator, Ted Mosby. Part of the success of the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother certainly has to be that it is a season that fleshes out Barney in a meaningful way. While he is still a catchphrase-spouting scene-stealer, in the fourth season, he develops into a character wrestling with some realistically powerful emotions.

The fourth season of How I Met Your Mother picks up where the third left off, with Ted proposing to his girlfriend, Stella (the single mother). Because fans already know that Stella is not the titled mother of the series, the question going into the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother was how the Ted and Stella relationship would fall apart (assuming she said “yes” to his proposal). Fortunately, the show does not keep the viewer waiting long at all: Stella leaves Ted at the altar for the father of her child and Ted is suitably heartbroken. He is not the only one heartbroken, though: when Robin’s overseas job comes to an abrupt end, she moves back in with Ted and when they discover that having straightforward sex ends most of their roommate fights, Barney is upset.

Barney’s uncharacteristic emotions are only really noticed by Lily, to whom Barney has confessed he is in love with Robin. While Barney wrestles with his unresolved feelings for Robin (who remains in the dark about his passion for her), Marshall struggles with working for Goliath National Bank (and Barney) as he and Lily begin their debate on whether or not it is time to start trying to have a child. Ted, following his failed wedding, designs a building for Goliath National Bank (which Barney and Marshall do not have the heart to tell him the company has already scrapped) and he starts his own architecture firm, with disastrous consequences.

Amid the strongly serialized elements of the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother, the show does some of its best episodic works as well. Preposterous one-shot concept episodes like “The Naked Man” – which has Robin dating a guy who undresses when she is out of the room on the chance that when she comes back into the room she’ll sleep with him even though there is no relationship potential and then the guys in the group try the move – and one where Marshall has the gang going all around New York searching for the best burger he had years ago (as did Regis Philbin!) work exceptionally well. Concept episodes like “The Fight” and “Three Days Of Snow” work as one-shots, but also enhance the essential characters (especially the latter where Marshall and Lily realize how important their traditions are to their relationship). Some of the bottle episodes, though, are unfortunately derivative. “Little Minnesota” bears a striking resemblance to an episode of Frasier where Daphne and Frasier compete over the same English pub which hardly seems coincidental in that Pamela Fryman, who directed the episode also worked on Frasier!

In the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother the show makes good use of its characters. The primary characters this season include:

Ted Mosby – The man telling the story in flashback of how he did not meet the mother of this two children this season. Instead, this year is a winding narrative about how he almost married a completely different woman and had a near-miss with fame as an architect and also ended up sleeping with the kids’ Aunt Robin quite a bit! This year has Ted getting into a fight and having one night as a bartender at the downstairs bar, McClaren’s. He has a falling out with Lily when he learns that she has sabotaged all of his past relationships, including with his college girlfriend (who is, admittedly, a pretentious snob in both flashbacks and when she resurfaces in this season), and with Robin,

Robin Scherbatsky – Ted’s on-again, off-again girlfriend (including this season), who is now his roommate given that Marshall and Lily have moved into their (not quite) dream apartment. She is out of work most of the season following quitting her job and leaving an overseas job to return to New York. She reveals that she did an obscure sex act with an equally obscure Canadian celebrity, as well as hitting on Ted’s personal assistant when he uses their apartment as a home office. She gets a new television job (thanks to Barney’s help), though it is on in the middle of the night, so none of her friends watch it,

Marshall Eriksen – Disturbed over working for Goliath National Bank, he becomes obsessed with finding his perfect hamburger again. He and Lily remain happily married for the season and he and Barney bond over, alternatively, tormenting and helping Ted. He makes an ass of himself when coaching Lily’s basketball team and he comes to miss his family in Minnesota, which gives him and Robin something to bond over,

Lily Aldrin – Is told Barney’s secret right away and comes to have a soft spot for him as a result. She and Marshall have a very successful marriage for the season. She is relegated to a supporting role this season, though she discovers Robin has some unfortunate character traits she dislikes (“Whooo!”), she and Marhsall struggle to continue their tradition of meeting at the airport when she returns from travel (her with a locally-bought beer from the place she was at). She also reveals that she has intervened in Ted’s relationships based on her own vision of how she wants to have porch friends when she and Marshall are older,

And Barney Stinson – He confesses his love for Robin to Lily, is outed as having a fake family to try to make his mother happy, and works as a general corporate tool for Goliath National Bank. He accepts challenges like impersonating an 80 year-old man to pick up a younger woman and eagerly embraces the challenge of The Naked Man. Ted works hard to keep him from hooking up with Ted’s younger sister when she visits New York and he actually tries to do something nice for Ted by hiring actors to play along with the idea that Ted’s building is still being built. He almost makes it through Ted’s Murtaugh list, though it puts him in serious pain and he learns that Robin is the only one who does not know how he feels about her.

The fourth season of How I Met Your Mother has all of the primary performers playing at the top of their ability. Neil Patrick Harris and Josh Radnor are both able to play their characters of Barney and Ted with more emotional depth and complications than in prior seasons. Harris’s Barney Stinson becomes a realized emotional character as he wrestles with having the love of his life so close, but unable and unwilling to act upon his feelings. Radnor actually makes Ted tormented by the loss of being left at the altar and that plays well to the giant character leaps the character makes in the fourth season. In the fourth season, these two men show more complications and depth for their characters than the other actors.

Ultimately, the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother is funnier, better-performed and feels fresher than some of the prior seasons, which makes it a great place to pick up the series.

For other works with Lyndsy Fonesca, please visit my reviews of:
Hot Tub Time Machine
Kick-Ass
Heroes - Season 2

8/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Concept That Has Already Been Done, How I Met Your Mother Season 3 Flops!

The Good: Moments of humor, Neil Patrick Harris's acting
The Bad: Predictable plots, Largely not funny, Light on DVD bonus features and episodes
The Basics: Disappointingly blase, season three of How I Met Your Mother offers little that is truly new to the series.


Even I have some boxed sets that cross my desk and I sit watching them and asking myself "Why am I continuing with this series?!" After all, there are so many hours of life left to live and our time on Earth is supposed to be precious. So, why should I waste time watching programs I have not enjoyed earlier seasons of? At best, the earlier seasons of How I Met Your Mother were mediocre or average. I watched the first season (reviewed here!) because I was a fan of Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segel's earlier works, but Neil Patrick Harris pretty much ruled the second season (reviewed here!). So, why did I sit down and watch How I Met Your Mother - Season 3 when the best it seemed to offer was an appearance by singer Britney Spears?

I suppose I am just that thorough. Or crazy. Or some safe combination of both. Regardless, it does seem like when the third season discs began spinning, I was far less interested in the program than I ever had been before. While one hopes that characters even in sitcoms might evolve, largely it is just the plot that progresses in the third season of How I Met Your Mother. Now less a love story in reverse, the show picks up where the second season left off, with Ted and Robin having broken up, which forces Ted into the dating world again.

Having broken up with Robin, Ted slowly begins to date again, though his friends keep his ex-girlfriend in their lives, forcing them to have contact fairly consistently. Robin, unlike Ted, has moved on from being dumped and when she returns with her boyfriend, Ted is nudged into action. Throughout the rest of the season, Ted tries to date other women, though he and Robin hook up from time to time.

Beyond that, Marshall and Lily continue to face more adult, couple challenges, like trying to buy a house and pay off debts. While they do that, Ted and Barney find themselves in conflict when Barney realizes he has feelings for Robin and Ted and Barney find that problematic. As Marshall and Lily move to a new apartment, Barney wrestles with his feelings and he and Robin hook up, causing a rift between the guys.

As with the early episodes, in the third season, How I Met Your Mother wanders well away from the title. Over the course of the nineteen episodes in this boxed set, Ted - who is telling the story to his children - continues to distract from the stated purpose of the show. Indeed, all of the relationship issues between Barney and Robin serve less to set up any meeting between Ted and his future wife than it does to flesh out those two characters and progress a long-running subplot (i.e. the concept that in the future, the kids refer to Robin as "Aunt Robin"). Moreover, episodes like "Dowisetrepla" which focus almost exclusively on Marshall and Lily have nothing to do with the story of how Ted meets his future wife.

In other words, in the third season, this is rapidly becoming just a standard sitcom, where the characters are largely flat and the plots and jokes are predictable. Episodes like "The Bracket" are filled with quick jokes that are often telegraphed as Barney tries to figure out which woman in his past he wronged the worst (quite a task for the womanizer). And "The Chain Of Screaming" wherein Marshall cries in front of his boss has little or nothing to do with anything else ever seen on the show. As Ted goes through one woman after another in his quest to meet the mother of his eventual children, the viewer begins to feel more and more like this is something they have seen before in the past. And it is; situations in this boxed set are hardly original or presented in any new or truly humorous way.

The third season continues an unfortunate trend in the series in terms of a lack of focus; Ted's relationship with Robin being over puts him in the path of multiple women, none of whom seem to be the titled mother. The result is a sense of, "Why is this guy telling this story?!" For a sitcom, it makes sense to have all of these random relationships that might eventually yield the woman of Ted's dreams, but from the storytelling aspect of "This is how I met your mother . . ." telling the story of all the women he was with before that just doesn't cut it. Half the episodes, I find myself saying "Get on with it!" And several of the third season episodes do not even involve Ted in a meaningful way, which is good because most of the characters are far more interesting than he is.

Chief among these is the womanizing rich guy, Barney. Barney is very much a "type," the single, smarmy, womanizing friend who acts as a foil to the Lily/Marshall relationship. He is largely self-centered, highly successful in a financial sense and brutally honest about his desire not to commit or be in a long-term relationship. Still, in this season Barney is given a bit more depth in that he finds himself genuinely attracted to Robin and with Ted dating again, Barney takes him under his wing to help him navigate the treacherous shoals of the dating world.

But for the most part, this situation comedy becomes the average sitcom with episodic bits that generally follow chronologically, but do not appear to be building up to anything bigger. As well, there is a startling lack of genuine character development this season. Still, it is worthwhile to know who the characters are and in the third season of How I Met Your Mother, the main characters are:

Ted Mosby - Once again single, he is on the prowl for a serious, long-term relationship. To that end, he begins hitting on whatever woman might have him, often out with Barney. He dabbles with a threesome, a somewhat crazy young woman, and a doctor and her receptionist. He has a tattoo removed and hooks up with Robin even after their breakup. He and Barney have a falling out, though, when Barney and Robin sleep together. He also deals with a porn star who is using his name,

Robin - Broken up with Ted, she tries to move on, though she finds herself getting continually hurt. She lets an old boyfriend hurt her and dabbles with Ted, while maintaining her strong friendship with Lily (and Marshall). And when she is at her most vulnerable, she and Barney give it a spin, with serious consequences for her and Ted,

Barry Stinson - He is a womanizer and a jerk, his slapbet with Marshall is finally resolved and he continues to go through women without regard to them. This leads someone to come after him and he works to figure out which woman would do that. Barry also finds that after all their time hanging out, he might actually love Robin and this leads to a fracture between him and Ted,

Lily - Deep in debt from her use of credit cards, Lily is forced to talk with her husband Marshall about that. She is happily married and this season is largely stuck in a supporting role, outside her pursuit of a new home,

and Marshall - Lily's husband and best friend of Ted, he is now involved in corporate law. Unfortunately, he finds himself having ethical dilemmas like deciding whether or not to defend polluters and accidentally being driven to tears by his boss. He and Ted drift a bit as his relationship with Lily takes more of his time.

Neil Patrick Harris continued to be the highlight of the show as Barney. His performance is downright smarmy and unlike anything else . . . save the prior two seasons of the show. Still, it is a worthwhile and wrongly wonderful job for Harris and his presence and performance alone prevents every episode from being an abject failure. Harris has a wonderful sense of comic timing to him and he plays that in every scene he is in.

As for the other four actors, they have settled into their ruts quite consistently. Segel and Hannigan seem to be working mostly on autopilot at this point and any chemistry on-screen they had in earlier seasons is long since spent. As well, Josh Radnor and Cobie Smulders (Ted and Robin) seem to similarly be plodding through their roles, never infusing any real energy into their performances to make watching their characters intriguing at all. Outside Harris, the show continues to suffer because all of the performers are playing types who fall within the safe niche of the casting. They are not stretched as actors, they simply fill the slot that was originally carved out for each of them.

On DVD, the series adds very little to what was originally presented on television. The boxed set has commentary tracks on several episodes and the third disc includes a very standard gag reel, though this one is uncensored. As well, there is a little video of Lily and Marshall's honeymoon, music videos, and a few additional scenes. There is a behind-the-scenes featurette as well, but none of these additional features make the source material more palatable.

And the third season continues to suffer because it is not actually growing in a compelling way and after two previous years of wandering, it is about time. Even fans of the actors involved will find little reason to add this to their permanent collections.

For other works with Alyson Hannigan, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Date Movie
Farce Of The Penguins
Veronica Mars - Season Two
Buffy The Vampire Slayer

4/10

For other film and television reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Mildly Better Mother Quest With The Second Season Of How I Met Your Mother!

The Good: Funny, Decent performances, Better plots, Sense of going somewhere, Fine DVD bonus features
The Bad: Still largely predictable and formulaic, Most of the characters still don't pop
The Basics: The mediocre series returns in a second boxed set that has more a sense of going somewhere, despite treading where virtually every sitcom has gone before.


I've been watching a lot of mediocre stuff lately. After suffering through the first season DVD set for 'Til Death, I tried to clean my palate with something I thought would be a dramatic improvement, namely the first season of How I Met Your Mother (reviewed here!). Alas, I was a bit wrong. When I say "a bit," I mean, "wow, that show was nowhere near as good as I expected it." Don't try to stick that back in where "a bit" was used, it doesn't work grammatically. I’m still not sure why I suffered through the second season boxed set of How I Met Your Mother. But I did.

Hopefully, this may keep you from making a similar mistake.

Despite being the story of Ted, who is telling his children in the future the story of how he met the woman who would become their mother, the season opens with the thrust being that Marshall and Lily being broken up. Lily has run off to San Francisco, abandoning Marshall and it's up to his friends Ted, Barney and Robin to cheer him up. Lily soon returns, fences are slowly mended and Ted begins to focus once again on Robin, who seems to have warmed up some to Ted.

As the season progresses, though, the show soon slips into its familiar patterns. In other words, despite the narrative technique of supposedly being a love story in reverse, How I Met Your Mother becomes a fairly standard and often bland sitcom. This season, the plotlines that have been done to death include: a bachelor party, the reminiscing about a car that is now gone, missing a flight and causing a fight, woman getting jealous when ex-boyfriend goes out on a real date, and trying to teach the mean boss a lesson. I write these plots in the most generic terms because that is often the way they feel in this show, like the writer's room is simply checking off a list of previously done concepts in the history of sitcoms and trying to get bingo.

The only episode that follows these pretty hackneyed plots that nevertheless works is the Barney episode "Single Stamina." In this admittedly fun episode, Barney's brother - who is virtually identical to Barney save that he is black and gay - shows up and accompanies the gang on a night of heavy partying until he reveals to Barney that he and his partner are planning on getting married. This leads Barney to rail against, not only gay marriage but all marriage. This rift becomes a real and traumatic problem for the brothers and makes for an entertaining episode.

For those keeping score, that's one out of twenty-two, not good odds for buying a boxed set of DVDs! How I Met Your Mother seems to hinge on the idea that the audience will be so impressed by either the narrative technique - all of the episodes are flashback stories being told by a much older Ted in the future - or the cast. But in truth, the narrative technique of setting the episodes as flashbacks barely amuses and does not cover the fact that even with the weird chronological jumps within each story, the show is basically a very simple and typical sitcom.

This is made somewhat more insulting by the fact that in the second season (until the final episode's last shots) the series is not truly about the story of how Ted met the mother of his children as Robin is repeatedly declared not the kid's mother - she is referred to as "Aunt Robin" in the future. So while this season has a slightly better sense that the show might be going somewhere, it's still not there yet.

As a result of the plots being largely standard, it's up to the characters to impress and they don't often do that here. The main characters in the second season are:

Ted Mosby - This is supposedly his story, though much of the action in this season revolves around Lily and Marshall, his two friends who are (at various points) married, broken up and engaged. He is fixated on Robin, a news anchor, who he is dating and working through all sorts of dating problems with, including their first fights and figuring out what to do with things left over from previous relationships,

Robin - Now dating Ted, she balances her life between the news station and time with him and their mutual friends. In many ways, she is simply an accessory to Ted and the series,

Barry Stinson - An undefined businessman who is incredibly successful at what he does. Almost always wearing a suit, he exudes an aura of professionalism and class, until he opens his mouth. He is a womanizer and a bit of a jerk. However, he proves himself to not be the traditional television jerk by openly embracing his brother and having a heart for his friends,

Lily - A kindergarten teacher who has gone rogue as an artist. Returning somewhat defeated from San Francisco to try to put her life and relationship with Marshall back together, she finds herself frustrated to discover that she may have damaged things beyond repair. While broken up from Marshall, she exhibits quite a bit of jealousy and she pours her heart into acting, painting and other art. She works to win Marshall back,

and Marshall - Lily's husband (eventually) and best friend of Ted, he's a moody law student who is very tall. Marshall clearly loves Lily and is damaged by her leaving and is not too quick to take her back.

This leads to the question of why does Marshall take Lily back, why do they reconcile? The problem with How I Met Your Mother - Season 2 is it does not satisfactorily address that. Instead, they come back together through a sense of inertia; we know they end up with one another, so they do. It's, sadly, pretty much that simply.

How I Met Your Mother initially drew me in with its cast and it was all that sold me on picking up the second season and sitting down and watching it. I had been a fan of Jason Segal from prior roles I had seen him in and Alysson Hannigan had truly impressed me with her portrayal of Willow on Buffy The Vampire Slayer (reviewed here!). But this series does not so stretch either of those actors, instead using them in very safe ways that fit what we know of their abilities already.

It is Neil Patrick Harris as Barney who makes the show anything above simply bearable. Unlike his wholesome characters from Doogie Howser, M.D. and Stark Raving Mad, here he plays a character who is smarmy and unlike anything else I had seen Harris in. He is able to convincingly and consistently play callous and sell it perfectly. Moreover, when he has to, he makes it completely believable that his character can be motivated by compassion, yet he keep's within Barney's character at those moments. It's a diverse performance for him and it works perfectly.

On DVD, the series adds very little to what was originally presented on television. The boxed set has commentary tracks on several episodes and they are good. They are both informative and some are very funny. Some are even better than the standard episode because they are not typical. There is a pretty typical gag reel and a few behind-the-scenes featurettes. They add enough that an obsessed fan will find enjoyment from them but the typical (and yes, bored) viewer will not likely find it enough to shell out money for this set.

While there's the sense that the series is getting better, it's still too safe, too typical and just not funny or original enough. There are enough shows like that. It would be nice to see some of the talent in this show freed from it in order to pursue something better.

For other works with Jason Segel, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Friends With Benefits
Bad Teacher
Despicable Me
I Love You, Man
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Freaks And Geeks

6/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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How I Met Your Mother Season 1: An Old Idea Told A New Way, Mostly.

The Good: Moments of humor, Interesting concept, Generally decent performances
The Bad: Characters are pretty much sitcom standards, Loss of aspect ratio, Mediocre DVD bonuses
The Basics: A strikingly average comedy is made into an equally average DVD presentation that robs the viewer of part of the visual experience of the show while adding little else.


Every now and then, I find myself watching something that is truly unspectacular and I know it from the beginning. In the case of How I Met Your Mother, I found myself surprised that I picked up the DVD boxed set when being thoroughly underwhelmed while watching it on television. The show is not bad, but it's not as new and clever as it tries to sell itself as and it has some significant structural flaws that begin to come out even in the first season.

Billed as a love story in reverse, the first season of How I Met Your Mother on DVD comes with one immediate and inexplicable drawback; the show on the discs is not in widescreen format. Originally shot and aired with a more theatrical aspect ratio, the DVD makes the change to standard television proportions and this causes some loss of the scale of the show. Shots where characters are at extreme ends of the screen thus suffer from pan and scan cuts and it does have an effect on the show, which is surprising because as a comedy one might not think it made that much of a difference.

Beginning in 2030, Ted Mosby sits his young son and daughter down to tell them the story of how he met the woman who would become their mother. Recounting, then, life in 2005, with Ted living with his two friends from college, Marshall and Lily, Ted sees their engagement as an impetus to find his own true love and he does searching for her. He meets Robin, falls in love with her, though they do not quite get together, and the two couples, accompanied by their perpetually single, womanizing friend Barney, begin to hang out as a group and plan for the future.

Ted and Robin have much more of an on-again/off-again relationship in the first season, despite Ted being hung up on her. But the difficult aspect of watching the first season on DVD is that by the end of the first episode, the rest of the season is pointless. The title of the series, How I Met Your Mother, is a misnomer. This is not a show about how Ted met the mother of his two future children, this is the story of how he killed time before meeting their mother. By the end of the "Pilot," Ted admits to his children that Robin is not their mother. So the whole "love story in reverse" isn't so much that as a building up to something that could take years.

The problem here is that it's hard to care. In many ways, How I Met Your Mother is just a typical sitcom featuring a young couple (Marshall and Lily) and three single friends. Ted is obsessing for a whole season on the woman who becomes "Aunt Robin" and this becomes problematic for those who want the story to go ahead and get on with it. I'm all for building things up, I have a love for long movies where not much happens until the final moment when three hours of characters being miserable is washed away by one woman's smile, but How I Met Your Mother soon becomes an experiment in pointlessness. Indeed, virtually every character on the show is more interesting than either Ted or Robin.

But the first season definitely suffers from a lack of focus; Ted's on-again, off-again relationship with Robin puts him in the path of multiple women, none of whom seem to be the titled mother. The result is a sense of, "Why is this guy telling this story?!" For a sitcom, it makes sense to have all of these random relationships that might eventually yield the woman of Ted's dreams, but from the storytelling aspect of "This is how I met your mother . . ." telling the story of all the women he was with before that just doesn't cut it. Half the episodes, I find myself saying "Get on with it!"

Or I simply surrender and allow myself to be amused by the upscale neanderthal, Barney. Barney is very much a "type," the single, smarmy, womanizing friend who acts as a foil to the Lily/Marshall relationship. He is largely self-centered, highly successful in a financial sense and brutally honest about his desire not to commit or be in a long-term relationship. He's a cruiser and his advice to Ted is often counter of that of Lily and Marshall, despite Ted's desire to have what they have.

And in many ways, this situation comedy becomes the average sitcom with episodic bits that do not follow chronologically and do not quite add up to anything bigger. There's the episode where Ted and Marshall fight over who gets the apartment (the difference from the standard sitcom is there's an actual swordfight for it!), there's Ted's attempts to get to know Robin better through convoluted means like throwing parties that she can come to, and Lily meeting Marshall's family . . . with hilarious results. Yes, the plots become remarkably straightforward and common, despite the narrative technique.

But it's worthwhile to understand who the characters in the first season are. The principles include:

Ted Mosby - Single guy, this is his story. He is mostly fixated on Robin and he lives with his two friends from college, who are now engaged, Lily and Marshall. While he has affection for Robin, he finds himself attracted to other women and desperate to discover who his true soulmate might be. He is an architect who puts a lot of thought into every decision he makes, until he allows his friends to supersede his judgment time and again,

Robin - Interested Ted as a friend, his immediate pursuit of her freaks her out and she withdraws some. She works at a local television news station and is just getting to know Ted and his weird friends, though she seems to bond quickly enough with Lily,

Barney Stinson - An undefined businessman who is incredibly successful at what he does. Almost always wearing a suit, he exudes an aura of professionalism and class, until he opens his mouth. He is a womanizer and a bit of a jerk,

Lily - A kindergarten teacher who is engaged and later married to Marshall. She is concerned about having freakishly large children and works at being an artist. When opportunities arise, she is not one to not take them,

and Marshall - Lily's husband and best friend of Ted, he's a moody law student who is very tall. Marshall clearly loves Lily and is trying to figure out how to balance time between Lily and his best friend.

How I Met Your Mother drew me in with its cast. Neil Patrick Harris plays Barney and he's the highlight of the show. His performance is downright smarmy and unlike anything else I had seen Harris in. He's come a long way since Doogie Howser, M.D. and that is refreshing. He is funny and his performance truly is a different performance for him.

But it was Jason Segal and Alyson Hannigan who drew me in. Segal was amazingly awkward and sometimes creepy in his role on the short-lived but wonderful Freaks And Geeks (reviewed here!). I've been waiting for him to get another role that was decent and while his portrayal of Marshall is sometimes derivative of how he played Nick, it's usually different enough to justify my faith in him as an actor and he continues to develop a pretty wonderful comedic sense.

But it was Hannigan who sealed the deal and got me to pick this boxed set up. After coming into her own in the sixth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (reviewed here!), Hannigan returns to her comedic sensibilities in a way that is more worthy of her than some of her endeavors. Yes, her performance in this is better than her stint in Date Movie (panned here!), but it seems she is often typecast or used in the same way to evoke humor. Once you've seen Hannigan bug out her eyes to get a laugh, as she does when she sees the giant turkey in the Thanksgiving episode, you've seen it. What else?

The problem is, this series does not seem to have the answer to that question. Outside Harris, the show suffers because all of the performers who are playing types fall within the safe niche of the casting. They are not stretched as actors, they simply fill the slot that was originally carved out for each of them.

On DVD, the series adds very little to what was originally presented on television and with the aspect ratio change, it does take something away. The boxed set has commentary tracks on several episodes and the third disc includes a very standard gag reel. As well, there is a yearbook featurette, but it's not terribly exciting. The truth is, the DVD bonus features do not add enough value to this boxed set to make it a worthwhile investment for those who have simply been watching the series as it airs. This is not the indispensable comedy of our time and it's not even terribly shocking.

And the first season suffers because it does not build to anything real. Unless the series finally ends with the punchline, "That wasn't the story of how you met mom, that's how Uncle Barney and Aunt Robin got together!" these twenty-two episodes do not take the viewer anywhere particularly new in terms of humor. And even if that does become the eventual series finale's joke, I'm fairly sure it won't be worth it. Either way, this boxed set isn't.

For other works with Cobie Smulders, check out my reviews of:
The Avengers
Captain America: The First Avenger
The L Word - Season Two

5/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Films Not Worth Reviewing, Vol. 2 - Date Movie

The Good: It has Alyson Hannigan in it . . . (That's a stretch)
The Bad: Terrible acting, No character development, Dumb plot, NOT FUNNY!
The Basics: Alyson Hannigan cannot save this terrible film that references more than parodies. I didn't laugh once. Not once.


Today is the first of (hopefully) two days where I review two movies that are rather close together in terms of plot and concept, but are dramatically far apart as far as quality. Both are parodies of films oriented toward teen audiences and are spoofs of romantic comedies. The first of the two movies is Date Movie, a flick brought to market by the success of Scary Movie. It was written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (the latter directed it as well) and they are plugged as "two of the six writers of Scary Movie." Based on my experience with Scary Movie 4 (reviewed here!), I watched Date Movie in spite of this. My logic going in with an open mind to this flick was that in order to get the subsequent Scary Movie movies made, the first one must have been fairly original and funny, so by logical extension, if the franchise was splitting off into "Date Movies," the first one might offer the best chance for humor.

Well, when I'm wrong, I'm terribly wrong.

Julia Jones, an overweight single woman who works in a restaurant with a multicultural family, falls in love at first sight with the wealthy blonde Grant Funkyerdoder. After surviving a reality television show to begin dating him, Julia and Grant fall in love. Sadly for Julia, Grant's ex-fiance, Andy, returns in advance of the wedding to attempt to break them up. Along the way, Julia and Grant visit a wedding planner, the soon-to-be-in-laws, and a cat that uses the toilet . . . poorly.

This is stupid. I mean, there's no way to put it other than that. This is a stupid movie and there's nothing even remotely funny about it. I mean, I sat through it, I watched it, I waited to laugh. It's not funny. Moreover, I'm sure I don't understand what makes it "Unrated." I understand that the original version was PG-13 and despite the stupid, supposedly crude humor of Date Movie, whatever was added back into the movie that was kept out of the theatrical version did not make the movie feel "R" to me and it certainly did not feel unrated (when I think unrated, I think movies like Bound, reviewed here, which appeared in art theaters as an unrated movie rather than risk whatever the MPAA was going to hit it with).

Sadly, I think it would take a thirteen year-old mentality to actually enjoy this movie. It opens with a stupid dance number wherein Alyson Hannigan (Julia Jones) dances around in a fat suit to Kalis's song "Milkshakes" while virtually everyone on screen runs from her. The thing is, this sets up the level of humor that is not so much base as it is stupid for the rest of the movie. There is the obligatory slight against homosexuals, a construction worker puts a nail into his head rather than watch the obese woman dance, and other such inane moments that are not funny and are disturbing for the message they send the target audience of this flick.

Those who follow my reviews know that romantic comedies have an awful time passing my bar; they are so often formulaic and obvious, they seldom surprise and they hold up poorly upon rewatching. Date Movie is so much less a parody of romantic comedies than it is a series of references to romantic comedies jumbled up with the intent to amuse. The flick references My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Meet The Parents, Pimp My Ride, The Bachelor, Hitch, The Wedding Planner, and My Best Friend's Wedding, among others.

The problem with Date Movie is that is simply rehashes moments of each of those movies with little twists, like Julia's father spraying everyone with humus (as the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding did with Windex). It's not insightful, it's not funny, and it's more an homage to these conceits from other films than a commentary on them. Instead, Date Movie is simply a place for writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer to put their usual jokes about farting, fat people and gays in another context. They are no funnier here than they were in a horror movie context and the result is the same disappointed feeling that made me wonder why I was even completing the film.

A good parody plays off the conceits of what is being parodied in order to reveal the recurring faults within a genre, series or work of art. Date Movie ineptly combines elements from markedly better films in order to try to make a comedy that the writers already attempted in another context (and failed at).

More than that, the movie brings down decent actors with it. Eddie Griffin is stiflingly unfunny in his role as Julia's father (I think were supposed to think it's funny that Julia has a black father, an Indian mother and a Japanese sister while she appears fairly white). Instead, it's just more that falls flat.

The real disappointment here is poor Alyson Hannigan. Hannigan had a pretty amazing run on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, where she was able to truly spread her acting wings. In Date Movie, she is plugged into a role where she is playing a type, not a character and she does not do that very well. Instead, she wanders through the flick as pointless as the script moves her and she does it listlessly without any sense of comic timing or ability that she revealed as Willow.

If you saw the preview to Date Movie and thought it would be funny, I'd wonder why, but I would also say that after sitting through the DVD, it's not. This is eighty-five minutes of my life I cannot get back. Fortunately, you need not make the same mistake!

For other works with Tom Lenk, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Transformers
Six Feet Under - Season Four
Buffy The Vampire Slayer

0/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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The End Of An Unexpected Empire: Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Seven!

The Good: Excellent character development, Solid acting, Interesting plot
The Bad: Sad reuse of old plot devices
The Basics: The heroes who surround Buffy unite to stop the Origin of evil or go out with a bang trying in a very successful conclusion to the series.


It is a rare thing that a television show, no matter how popular, can raise itself from being a show on television to being a phenomenon that people want to spend their weekends pursuing. By that, I mean it's rare for a show to be so successful with a core of people that they will travel the country on the weekends to go to conventions and events where they can meet the stars from the show, meet others who share their passion and/or hang out with other devotees watching the show. That's why there are Star Trek and Star Wars conventions, but not NYPD Blue conventions (though I'd go for that!). Buffy The Vampire Slayer is, astonishingly, one of the few franchises with a fan base that eagerly approaches the show outside the television viewing. The seventh season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, now out on DVD, brings the saga of the Slayer to its conclusion.

Having survived the near apocalyptic events of the sixth season, Buffy takes Dawn to her first day of high school at the new Sunnydale High. Xander, involved in building it, provides support in understanding why there are already problems at the school. And Giles and Willow work together to control her magical ability. Willow's return to Sunnydale heralds talk of the return of the greatest villain the Earth has ever known, the First. The First is the source of all evil, originally referenced in the third season of the show. Now, the First is coming back to Earth to bring chaos and death to all and it has found the perfect tool; the newly ensouled Spike.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer had six successful seasons on the air and when the seventh came, it was unclear as to whether it would continue or not. It was a fairly last minute decision, prompted by Sarah Michelle Gellar's desire to not return for an eighth season, but the seventh season was determined to be the end of the series. Unfortunately, as the season comes to its climax, there is a lot that is done to indicate that the producers were hedging their bets, looking for a way to continue the series into a eighth season without the title character. As it is, though, the seventh season is a nice, complete story that brings the focus of the narrative back to Buffy.

The season largely deals with the coming of the First and the hopelessness of the potential fight that would come with its arrival. The First can take the appearance of anyone who is dead and that makes for some very unnerving scenes in the seventh season. But hope arrives in the form of Potentials; Slayers who would be activated if Buffy were to be killed. The latter half of the season focuses on the training of the Potentials and the way Buffy becomes a bona fide leader.

As with the previous seasons, the seventh season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer focuses most on character development and the memorable characters make it understandable that the show would grow into a phenomenon. Here is how the seventh season finds them:

Buffy - Recovering from the betrayal of her best friend in season six, Buffy takes on a more parental role for Dawn. She becomes a guidance counselor and starts to connect with people for the first time. With the return of Spike and Willow and the threat of the First, Buffy finds herself coming into the role of leader and facing the fact that her fate may well be sealed,

Xander - High on saving the world, Xander comes back down to Earth as he must face the consequences of Anya's return to evil and the return of Spike, who he has no fondness for. Xander's position in the growing army against the First is compromised when evil incarnate realizes that he has unique abilities of his own,

Willow - Returning to Sunnydale alone, Willow begins to move on as a single woman without magic and without the woman she loves. Her love for Tara is challenged by one of the Potentials who makes it known she finds Willow attractive,

Anya - A vengeance demon once again, Anya reigns chaos around Sunnydale punishing the men who have wronged women. This leads to a showdown between Anya and Buffy and the result condemns Anya to a familiar punishment,

Dawn - Growing up and trying to contribute to her sister's army, Dawn finds herself in the company of misfits and the target of all sorts of evil. The lone attempt at a Dawn episode in this season yields the worst reuse of the "love spell" plot,

and Spike - Now plagued with a soul, Spike returns to Sunnydale wounded by Buffy's lack of love for him. He finds himself used as a pawn by the First and a liability to the Slayer and her forces. His soul torments him and his weakness to the First leads him to meet his destiny.

Giles appears occasionally in the season as the Watcher Council is destroyed and he attempts to learn the vulnerabilities of the First. He is not given a huge part, but his recurring presence works well as Buffy makes the transition from student to leader. Also returning is the villainous nerd Andrew, who reforms from his evil ways and Faith, who returns to Sunnydale as a heroine, not a villain.

The subtext of this season is the struggle we make as individuals to live up to our adult responsibilities and become actualized adults. Buffy makes the transition and it is rocky, but enjoyable to watch. The serialized nature of the show, where the menace of a single true villain mirrors the rising actions of the successful third and fifth seasons. The First is a compelling villain and the resolution to the conflict with this enemy promises to keep the franchise going.

Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters give truly great, empathy-laced performances in this season and it's impressive to watch them work, especially when they are together.

This set looks good on DVD and the commentaries are interesting and worth the price of the set alone for fans. If you haven't gotten into Buffy The Vampire Slayer yet, this is an inappropriate place to start. I recommend going back to at least the fifth season to get into the show and working your way up to this episode. The weak link is "Him" which revisits the same type of "love spell" idea that has been done already in the show. The episodes building up to the end are wonderful and "Lies My Parents Told Me" is one of the best episodes the series ever did.

It's a shame that Buffy The Vampire Slayer ended, but that's what television shows do. At least there was still Angel . . .

For other final seasons of science fiction or fantasy shows, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Heroes - Season Four
Millennium - The Complete Third Season
Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Seven

8/10

For other television show reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Sacrificing Double Entendre For Cold, Hard, Reality: Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Six Becomes Something Incredible!

The Good: Good themes, Interesting effects, Decent character work, Daring nonstandard television
The Bad: Some acting, Sacrificing some allegory
The Basics: Possibly the peak of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, season six finds Buffy alive, disenchanted and lonely until tragedy strikes one of her friends and she is forced to accept her place.


The first three to five seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the show has a tendency to be watchable on two levels. One is the literal level, where Buffy and her often-absurd friends run around Sunnydale fighting often absurd demons in a strange twist on the classic good versus evil thing. At the same time, one may look at the episodes as an allegory for growing up. So, for instance, in the second season episode wherein Buffy makes love to Angel and he turns into his evil, soulless alter-ego, one may watch the episode(s) that follow as a story about the fears a young woman might have about how sex will change their relationship and the person they love. Season six ends that tradition. In the twenty-two episodes that comprise the sixth season, almost all of the allegory is gone. There's a distinct change in tone here as Buffy's world becomes almost entirely what it is as opposed to being a symbol for something more.

Following the death of Buffy at the climax of season five (why are you even reading this if you haven't seen season 5?!), the gang finds themselves slowly losing the war against evil in Sunnydale. Thus, using Willow's magic, they resurrect Buffy to find that she's not grateful for being brought back. Buffy finds herself disenchanted with life, pitted against a lame trio of nerds who are bent on taking over the world (or at least Sunnydale) and without any real hope. As the season progresses, Buffy finds herself in a relationship with Spike (the not-so-evil-anymore vampire) and neglecting her friends, which allows Willow to fall into some bad patterns and threaten the world.

The shift in the tone of Buffy The Vampire Slayer makes a great deal of sense. After all, what more can you fight when you've taken on a Goddess? The change from an external villain to one of the group turning makes perfect sense and is enough to keep us watching. However, this is not the most accessible season for those who have not watched prior seasons (i.e. if you watch seasons one and two, skipping ahead to season six would leave the viewer mighty confused). Conversely, this is an excellent place for people who did not like the early seasons to step in. Allow me to explain: Seasons 1 - 5 work best when they are viewed as an allegory for the problems we experience(d) growing up. Buffy runs for homecoming queen against Cordelia (a symbol of beauty) while being preyed upon by killer demons in a chase scenario (fear of rape). So the episode explores the simple Cordelia/Buffy competition while revealing the woman's fear of exposing her beauty to predators. The thing is, if you're older (than a teen) and been through all of that and survived it, the allegory isn't so relevant. And there's only so many times you can watch coming of age shows for the nostalgia. So, when season six of Buffy The Vampire Slayer enters the more adult world of bills and abusive relationships, it becomes more accessible to an older audience and more enduring.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, like all good serialized television, revolves around intriguing characters and here we see those characters all growing and expanding in ways that make this a season worth watching over and over again. Here is how the characters grow in season six:

Buffy - Feeling lost, alone and like her sacrifice was made in vain, she drifts through the motions of protecting Sunnydale until she falls into a relationship with Spike, wherein she attempts to feel again,

Willow - Magic becomes an addiction for her, opening her up to new levels of power by exposure to the darkest forces. This puts a strain on her love for Tara and when tragedy strikes, she is pushed further than anyone would have guessed,

Spike - Completely in love with Buffy, he finds his dreams fulfilled by her, then dashed when she rejects their unhealthy, violent, relationship. This leads him to his most horrible act and to his attempt to seek clarity,

Xander - Moves towards his wedding day with Anya, while not expressing his insecurities about the future. Xander's fear overcomes him and he leaves town,

Anya - Looks forward to her marriage with Xander and becomes furious when he rejects her,

Dawn - Evolves - throughout the season - from the Key into a young woman who wants to fight the good fight, with a little stint as a shoplifter thrown in for good measure,

Tara - Becomes the guardian of Willow's humanity, especially when she sees that Willow is becoming too involved with magic and the wrong kinds of magic,

The Trio - Jonathan, Warren and Andrew attempt to thwart the slayer and find themselves on the run from something even more powerful,

Giles - Leaves Sunnydale when he comes to realize that Buffy no longer needs him.

Buffy's character takes a turn for the intriguingly real as she is forced to deal with issues like paying bills and making ends meet, while at the same time trying to live up to the responsibilities of parenting Dawn. Her relationship with Spike then, violent as it is, seems very real. With her daily life becoming increasingly unfulfilling and having no earthshaking enemies to fight, Spike forces her to actually feel and sometimes, feeling pain is better than feeling nothing at all.

This is a season where the characters suffer, but rather than suffering in melodrama or having their conflicts be clouded by allegory, here the characters are easily accessible and quite real. Buffy's sense of loss is quite clear and easy to relate to. Xander's insecurities are quite compelling and Spike's desire to be loved and his sense of loss comes across in a way that makes him more than just a monolithic vampire. Similarly, Willow's sense of confusion over her new levels of power comes across as a compelling internal conflict that was foreshadowed in the fifth season. She wants to do right, but her magic and her love come into conflict.

Indeed, perhaps the most wrenchingly human moments of the entire series comes at the end of the episode "Tabula Rasa." Willow's magic caused everyone to lose their memories and when their identities are restored, the montage (set to Michelle Branch's "Good-bye To You") is shockingly emotive.

What's more, this series does more than simply torment its characters week after week. It takes chances with the television medium. If anyone were to loathe the musical episode ("Once More With Feeling"), it would be me; I've seen and heard it played at least a hundred times at conventions. But it fits quite well with the series and on the DVD, it's nice to see and hear and the commentary is intriguing.

The acting in season six is a bit of a mixed bag. Michelle Trachtenberg isn't given a chance to expand beyond being whiny and annoying for the bulk of the season and Emma Caulfield's Anya isn't given any range, save in "Once More With Feeling," until the very end of the season. Sarah Michelle Gellar, especially around midseason, seems bored with the role of Buffy.

The winners, in terms of acting, in this season are James Marsters, as Spike and Nicholas Brendon, as Xander. Marsters infuses a depth of emotion into Spike that was only hinted at in previous seasons, especially season five. Here, Marsters is given the chance to be loving, forlorn, caring and delusionally creepy. He takes his chance to shine and explodes into the role. Similarly, Nicholas Brendon has a chance to be more than the bearer of sarcasm and he rises to the role. Emotive, insecure and loving, Brendon gets the opportunity to explore Xander with more depth and his range is finally realized and illustrated in this season.

The real winner on the acting front is Alyson Hannigan. After five years of playing Willow as withdrawn, nerdy, and shy, Hannigan is given a chance to open the character up. Hannigan explores love, jealousy, loss, anger, fury and indifference with such amazing body language and tone control that the evolution of Willow into a villainous figure seems incredibly natural. Moreover, Hannigan plays the worst aspects of Willow without any trace of the performance of her third season evil doppelganger (a real feat considering one of her lines is actually taken from that character). Hannigan illustrates why her acting may be viewed as a force.

Far from a perfect season of television, the sixth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, is a worthy addition to any fan of real drama, especially as it pertains to young adults. The DVD set is geared towards fans of the series with six commentaries. They are good commentaries and the panel discussion from the Academy is interesting as are some of the behind-the-scenes featurettes. The music videos are "eh." The real gem here is in the programming itself and it continues the Buffy story while fleshing out all of the supporting characters. An intriguing story of a woman who feels lost who drifts into finding herself at the expense of her attention to her friends.

For other worthwhile penultimate seasons, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season Six
Friends - Season Nine
Heroes - Season Three

8.5/10

For other television series reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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