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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Fun Apocalypse Theater Continues With This Is The End!

The Good: Largely funny, Decent direction, Good enough acting and character development, Surprisingly good special effects.
The Bad: Some of the humor does not land, Mortgages some of the real acting talent for cheap jokes.
The Basics: A surprisingly smarter comedy than one might expect going in, This Is The End satirizes the Apocalypse as a buddy comedy with some of today’s most talented young comedy actors.


When it comes to movies, more often than not it seems these days that you get what you pay for. If you’re going to see the latest Transformers movie and you expect Casablanca, you will be disappointed. So, when This Is The End made its debut during Summer Blockbuster Season, it was hard to go into it expecting greatness. And, given that the cast was made up of stoner movie staple actors like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Jonah Hill, it was hard to imagine that This Is The End would be substantive or more than just mildly amusing. Fortunately, This Is The End is more than just a series of dick and fart jokes which one might expect from this type movie. For sure, there are a number of cum and weed jokes, but This Is The End gets away from that with remarkable speed to become something somewhat more clever and one of the better independent comedies of the summer.

In fact, there is a lot to celebrate in This Is The End, which is very much a “guy’s movie” packed with guys as they rather stupidly try to survive the apocalypse in James Franco’s house. This is basically a buddy comedy with Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel surrounded by their contemporaries. And while it is very much not appropriate for impressionable children who can’t take jokes about just how much coke Michael Cera could do (we’re talking well beyond lethal levels here!), it makes some decent jokes and points on how the younger generation acts. It is smart enough to be satirical in places and dumb enough to be blandly entertaining to the young audience that will shell out for a summer popcorn flick. And for a movie that is a summer comedy, This Is The End has surprisingly good special effects, making it worth seeing at least once on the big screen.

Jay Baruchel returns to Los Angeles to hang out with Seth Rogen. The two have drifted apart over the years, so Jay is giving their friendship one last chance. Arriving at Seth’s apartment, the two smoke a lot of weed and Jay reluctantly accompanies Seth to James Franco’s housewarming party. There, Jay feels uncomfortable seeing a ton of celebrities, including peers who are not his favorite Hollywood people, most notably Jonah Hill. When Jay tires of the party, he convinces Seth to come with him to the local gas station to get some cigarettes. While there, there is an earthquake and Jay watches in horror as some people nearby are caught in blue beams of light and pulled up into the sky. Running back to the party, Seth denies seeing the people pulled skyward, but soon it is clear that there is something more going on other than a simple earthquake.

When a fiery sinkhole opens up in front of James Franco’s house, the party guests flee (most are killed outright, including Michael Cera who dies pretty horrifically and hilariously at the hands of a light post) leaving only Baruchel, Franco, Hill, Rogen, and Craig Robinson alive in Franco’s house. Waking up the next morning, the guys discover that Danny McBride (who crashed the party the night before) is also alive in the house and has cooked up at least half the house’s food. What follows are a series of short excursions out of and incursions into the house broken up by ridiculous postulating on what exactly is happening in the world at large. Jay asserts that it is the Revalations-style rapture and apocalypse while others guess it might be zombies. Broken up by hilarious moments like Emma Watson making it back to the house and leaving on her own volition, the group pushing Danny out and Jonah Hill getting violated by a demon and possessed, Jan and Seth try to repair their friendship and survive long enough to get raptured themselves.

This Is The End has its moments and once one accepts that everyone in the film is playing fictionalized versions of themselves (unless Michael Cera’s good kid acting career is covering a legendary coke addiction) and buys the premise of the film, it is actually quite enjoyable. This Is The End is funny, though most of the humor is over-the-top gross-out humor. For example, Danny McBride going on at length about all the places in the house he has masturbated and left his semen is initially quite vile. However, the joke is taken to such a length and is such obvious hyperbole that it becomes incredibly funny.

There is nothing funny about rape. Period. There is no “but” after that sentence; rape jokes are universally in bad taste and, as an example, have contributed with constant incest jokes to the destruction of the once cutting-edge and hilarious Family Guy. To its credit, This Is The End avoids making any rape jokes (even the rape of Jonah Hill by a demon is treated with the appropriate horror and obvious distress). Upending the expectations when the film seems to be nearing the bad taste of rape humor, it takes a turn for the clever. When Emma Watson arrives in the house, Jay tries to raise the issue of how the guys will keep themselves in check (in terms of libido), which Watson overhears and misinterprets as a conversation of who will be allowed to rape her first. Never making a rape joke, This Is The End turns to a miscommunication joke about someone protecting a woman from the potential of rape being accused of plotting the very same. It’s very funny and well-delivered by all involved.

On the character front, This Is The End actually has a significant and decent character thread. Jay Baruchel is a friend estranged from one of his oldest friends and Seth Rogen is experiencing the familiar push-pull between his old friends and his new ones (James Franco’s prized artwork in the film is the Seth Rogen hanging in his living room). Amid all of the external conflicts from demons, cannibals, hunger and firepits, This Is The End plays beats that are easy to empathize with by grounding the scenes in Jay and Seth working on their relationship.

On the acting front, This Is The End is good but utterly unchallenging for the performers. All of the celebrities are playing fictionalized versions of themselves and they seem entirely comfortable with that. What stood out was that directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg made This Is The End look fabulous. For such a low-budget film, This Is The End never feels low-budget or even remotely cheap.

Entertaining and worthwhile, This Is The End is worth watching for anyone who enjoys humor, even when it pushes the envelope and pokes at the pretenses of the Evangelical Christians.

For other apocalypse films, please check out my reviews of:
Rapture-Palooza
2012
Left Behind: The Movie

6/10

For more film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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With This Is 40, Judd Apatow Returns To Smart Dramedy!

The Good: Funny, Decent character conflicts, Entertaining story
The Bad: Somewhat formulaic in its resolution, No performances that truly “wowed” me
The Basics: Smartly capturing the angst of adult life, This Is 40 is a rare instance where the sequel is vastly superior to the original work!


For a few days now, my wife has been on me to watch This Is 40 with her. I had, admittedly, no real interest in seeing what was buzzed as the “sort of sequel” to Knocked Up (reviewed here!). I was not exactly motivated to watch This Is 40 because Knocked Up did not thrill me (though, admittedly, it grew on me some by the time I had my third viewing of it), so I went into This Is 40 last night with ridiculously low expectations.

And I was very pleasantly surprised.

Gone were the juvenile jokes that have plagued so many of Judd Apatow’s recent works and in its place was the Judd Apatow who originally got my attention with the magnificent Freaks And Geeks (reviewed here!). Despite its simple story and no real acting triumphs, This Is 40 is solidly entertaining and it explores well life in middle age when relationships take work and people get to the point where honesty trumps comfort and a couple has to find a way to live with the truths they expose to one another. This Is 40 has some wonderful lines – “J.J. Abrams is ruining our child!” – and a very modern understanding of the world and how it is to raise a child today.

As Pete and Debbie’s 40th birthdays approach, with Debbie insisting she is only turning 38 and going so far as to lie to her medical practitioners (and their billing departments), the couple experiences above average torsion associated with aging and the specific problems of their family. Pete has a record label that signs classic rock artists for new recordings and has been tragically unsuccessful. This comes at a time when Pete has loaned his father a lot of money and his current artist, Graham Parker, is dropping an album that all of Pete’s backers are convinced will not sell. With their money stretched for their joint 40th birthday party, financial problems overwhelming them and trying to help their children with bullies at school and their dependence upon technological devices, Pete and Debbie struggle to stay together and recall why they wanted to be together in the first place.

This Is 40 has a number of moments that any healthy couple who has had a dynamic relationship will recognize, from the moment where Debbie and Pete lovingly tell one another that they desperately never want to fight again to the moment they return from a retreat together to the first problem their children have and realize life never offers a full-time vacation. Judd Apatow, who wrote and directed This Is 40, is smart enough to include a multi-generational sense of conflict and comparison in this film. Debbie’s father is almost entirely absent and when he pops up for the birthday party, he mis-identifies Debbie’s employee, Desi, as one of his grandchildren. Conversely, Pete’s father is around more often than Debbie would like and his financial woes – the result of having three children very late in life – make his presence much more draining than enjoyable.

The presence of the parents to Pete and Debbie and their assorted issues – along with the comedy of adults now having siblings younger than their own children (Pete and Debbie’s children are older than the half-brothers and sisters both Pete and Debbie now have from their respective parents!) – puts the strained couple at a serious crossroad. In fact, one of the unfortunately dangling plotlines in This Is 40 is Debbie’s pregnancy. Debbie spends more time trying to track down who stole $12,000 from the boutique she runs than actually addressing what she and Pete will do about her unplanned pregnancy. Glossing over that is unfortunate given how straightforward This Is 40 is in tackling the other real world issues the movie takes on.

As for the acting, Judd Apatow uses his considerable cache to bring together some truly amazing talents for This Is 40. Despite oblique references to Ben and Kate (how the film gets around Kate missing her sister’s 40th birthday party is entirely dodged, though the presence of weed in the film is explained by the movie’s lone reference to the central protagonist from Knocked Up), the film employs remarkably few performers from Knocked Up. Apatow regulars Jason Segel and Charlyne Yi have supporting roles which are little more than cameos to service Debbie’s character (otherwise, Leslie Mann’s presence in the film would be entirely to react to relationship issues her character has with Pete). Graham Parker makes the most of his limited time on screen, though is oscillates between seeming like an advertisement for his new projects and making him seem like a bit of a dick (Pete is losing everything investing in the guy and he blithely notes, “I’ll be fine . . . they’re doing one of my songs on Glee.”). Sure, Apatow goes for some obvious eye candy – Megan Fox appears as Desi and is sure to show off most of her breasts – but he also goes with substance and quirky comedic deliveries with heavyweights like John Lithgow and Albert Brooks, respectively.

Much of the film hinges on Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Pete and Debbie) and they do a great job of taking two background characters who were closer to non-entities (Pete) and annoying (Debbie) in the prior outing to make them entirely interesting and viable characters worth spending two hours watching. Rudd is wonderful at playing a man with a quiet dream who is slowly watching it fail and slip away and his body language and deliveries – where almost everything comes out in quietly exasperated tones with only a hint of hope (which often borders on desperation) sneaking in at the end – are spot on. Mann makes Debbie sympathetic and not at all annoying, which is a nice step up from her portrayal of Debbie in Knocked Up. She is a fighter, fighting for her family and the “guard dog” mentality she presents is much less abrasive than in the first film.

In the end, This Is 40 does well what so many films try to do, but fail; it straddles the borders of comedy and drama to create a movie that explores serious, real-world issues and the consequences of relationships, while managing to be entirely entertaining (and not emotionally oppressive in any way). That makes This Is 40 one of the late-release gems of 2012 and a must-watch now that it has dropped on DVD and Blu-Ray.

For other works Judd Apatow has been involved with, please visit my reviews of:
Girls - Season 1
The Five-Year Engagement
Wanderlust
Bridesmaids
Year One
Pineapple Express
Step Brothers
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy
The Critic

7.5/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Argument Against Long Dramedies: The Five-Year Engagement

The Good: One or two lines, The acting is okay
The Bad: Not particularly engaging characters, Not particularly funny, Pacing, Dull plot
The Basics: The Five-Year Engagement took me so many times to get through, I can’t possibly recommend it.


It always amuses me how fast the current flavor of the month is parlayed into new opportunities by producers and studios. The Five-Year Engagement is billed as a comedy by the producers of Bridesmaids (reviewed here!) and it may be one of the biggest drags of a mainstream dramedy in recent memory. In fact, my wife, who loves comedies, put off watching the film for four weeks and when we started it – despite the fact that she was looking forward to seeing it based on her love of Bridesmaids, Horrible Bosses, and Bad Teacher - it took her fifteen laughless minutes before she decided she was out. It took me three more weeks to bother trying to sit through it again.

The Five-Year Engagement is a stacked-deck cast that seems like it would deliver comedic gold. With the likes of Jason Segel, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, Chris Parnell, and Brian Posehn, it seems like The Five-Year Engagement should be riotously funny. Alas, though, it is surprisingly flat on the humor front, opting more toward realism and painful awkwardness than anything that will generate laughs.

After dating for a very short time, Tom Solomon proposes (awkwardly) to his girlfriend, Violet Barnes. After a disastrous announcement dinner where Violet’s sister messes around with Tom’s idiot best friend, Alex, Violet fails to get her dream job. Instead, she gets a teaching job in the social psychology department in Michigan. Tom’s job prospects dry up in Michigan and he finds it impossible to keep with the status quo.

As Tom and Violet begin fighting about her continued work, his desire not to have children and his lack of direction in life, Tom becomes an outdoorsman and hunter. Violet tries to confide in her professor, Winton Childs, who takes the opportunity to make a move on her, and their engagement stretches on for years as a result.

Jason Segel and director Nicholas Stoller co-wrote the script for The Five-Year Engagement and Segel seems determined to make another version of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (reviewed here!) in terms of mood and characters. The Five-Year Engagement has pacing that is so slow it is excruciating to watch. None of the characters are particularly likable and the humor falls so flat that the longer it went on, the less interested I was in how the film might get resolved.

By the halfway mark, I found myself considering the career of Rhys Ifans. Ifans appears in The Five-Year Engagement as Violet’s boss, Professor Childs. I was thinking of how last year, when The Five-Year Engagement was a good year for Ifans. He appeared in this and as the villain in The Amazing Spider-Man (reviewed here!). I could have lived with him being cast as the villain in Skyfall (reviewed here!) and he could have really hit the trifecta. It seems like he had the gravitas for Silva, the villain in SkyFall and the fact that The Five-Year Engagement was so slow and dull that I was left thinking about that should be all that really needs to be said about how bland the film is.

Despite not having likable characters and any number of lines that are more awkward than funny and the rest of the film being not particularly funny, The Five-Year Engagement has fairly competent acting. Jason Segel has a good dramatic presence and Emily Blunt plays pretty much the same type character I have seen her play in virtually everything I have seen her in (including interviews where she is just playing herself). The Five-Year Engagement does not use most of its comedic firepower to actually deliver funny lines and for me to write more about it seems to just be beating this particularly dead horse. I cannot think of a movie in recent memory that I flat-out enjoyed less than The Five-Year Engagement.

For other works with Emily Blunt, please visit my reviews of:
Looper
The Adjustment Bureau
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen
Charlie Wilson’s War
Dan In Real Life
The Devil Wears Prada

1.5/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Oh Judd Apatow, You (Sort Of) Make Me Laugh! Knocked Up.

The Good: Moments of humor, Interesting enough characters, Good casting
The Bad: Nothing extraordinary on the DVD bonus features, Very predictable
The Basics: In a just-funny-enough-to-recommend movie, Judd Apatow uses Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl to tell the story of a stoner and a successful woman who have sex, then work to fall in love.


Culturally, it does seem like the United States is at a place where pop-culture is rather preoccupied with the whole concept of movies that start with sex and let the love come later. This was a pretty weak concept in Juno (reviewed here!), but it makes for a very simple and direct premise for Knocked Up. Knocked Up is another young stoner comedy film from writer and director Judd Apatow. I became familiar with Apatow's work when he was half of the creative genius behind the one-season-wonder Freaks & Geeks (reviewed here!). Since then, Apatow had been a writer and director who seems to have gone for some of the most obvious comedies and there has been a slight sense of disappointment from those of us who began our appreciation of his works with what appears to have been the high point in his career.

Knocked Up does not change that; while far funnier than many of Apatow's other cinematic attempts, it is still far too obvious and less well-developed than it could be. This makes for good, casual viewing for a night when one needs a laugh from something they do not have to think too much about, but it's a tough sell to argue in favor of buying the DVD. This movie has pretty limited appeal outside the target demographic of young college students who might well get drunk at a club, have fairly anonymous sex and end up pregnant. One hopes that is an ever-shrinking demographic, but I'm not holding my breath.

Ben Stone is a slacker who is living with his four friends and living off money from a lawsuit, money which is rapidly drying up. Ben and his housemates spend much of their time getting stoned and watching movies to find what celebrities get naked and at what point in a movie they are shown naked to make a website with that information. One night, after being promoted at work to on-air talent at E!, Alison Scott goes out to a club with her sister, Debbie. After a few too many drinks, Alison takes Ben back to her home - the pool house at Debbie's - and the two have sex.

Eight weeks later, Alison realizes that she is pregnant and decides to keep the baby. She informs Ben of the pregnancy and - despite his limited means and his initial freaked out reaction - Ben decides he wants to be there for Alison and his child. As a result, Ben and Alison begin dating in earnest to try to prepare for parenthood and in the process, they try to fall in love.

Knocked Up is a remarkably formulaic romantic comedy. Two people who have no real connection and few shared values begin to see the value in one another's lifestyles. There are the usual predictable events including attraction, repulsion, acceptance, misunderstanding and then resolution. This could pretty much be one of the defining films for following a formula for romantic comedy. Like many romantic comedies, Ben and Alison's relationship is set opposite a more obvious and loving relationship, that of Pete and Debbie. Pete and Debbie have their own fallings out which contrasts with Ben and Alison's and allows Ben to make a more normal and likable companion than his four stoner buddies.

The friendship between Ben and Pete allows Apatow to actually say something useful with Knocked Up, though, even if it is only one line in the entire movie. Pete's issue with Debbie has him sneaking around with his friends at odd times just to have some "me time," which is - of course - uncovered in the course of the movie. In trying to resolve this pseudo conflict, Pete realizes that the biggest problem in his marriage is that he has a wife who wants to spend more time with him. This is a concept too infrequently realized in any type film and it is refreshing to see it be realized in Knocked Up.

This also contrasts with the relationships of Ben's friends. Rarely has a more pathetic collection of miscreants been collected on film and while the sheer pointlessness of their attempted business venture eventually becomes revealed, far too much of their screentime is dumb jokes performed by post-teens who ought to know better. The peak of this is the character of Jodi who enters the household as Ben departs. She speaks in a giggly incomprehensible dialect that utterly wastes the viewer's time. Bad enough to be subjected to several minutes of stoners being idiots; even worse to have to watch the idiotic attempt to portray one of their wasted girlfriends.

Knocked Up manages to work - when it does - because even though it follows a remarkably predictable formula for romantic comedies, the concept is presented in a way that makes it feel just new enough to be amusing. Watching Ben and Alison learn about one another and discover the simple charms each possesses almost makes up for the fact that the viewer can see what is coming about a mile off.

Fans of Freaks & Geeks will enjoy seeing Knocked Up in that it stars Judd Apatow regular Seth Rogen, as well as Freaks & Geeks alums Jason Segel, Martin Starr (who looks nothing like he did in his television role) and a cameo by James Franco. Fans of Grey's Anatomy will no doubt enjoy seeing Katherine Heigl in a role outside her star-making role on that. Knocked Up works in part because when they sit opposite one another, Rogen and Heigl are able to portray a realistic amount of romantic chemistry.

Rogen has an unassuming quality to him and a look that is anything but Hollywood typical. As a result, Apatow frequently uses him in roles where he appears as a slouching slacker. In Knocked Up, Rogen is allowed just enough moments where his character assumes the mantle of respectability and comes into his own in a way that implies he might have the chops for serious drama. Despite things like the on-air prank that makes up the "topless" scene on the unrated DVD, Rogen has moments where he plays Ben quiet and contemplative in a way that genuinely works for him.

It is not a real surprise, for most viewers, that Katherine Heigl holds her own with Rogen. She has all of the qualities for a classic Hollywood star from the figure to her delivery of serious lines. She plays the straightman throughout the movie, while Rogen plays wacky. Heigl is a good choice, though (Anne Hathaway turned down the role) and she lends a seriousness that helps to exaggerate Rogen's absurdities. At the right moments, though, Heigl illustrates she has her own decent sense of comic timing, playing out a few physical gags in the movie.

Largely, though, Knocked Up is an unsurprising romantic comedy that unfolds in exactly the way a seasoned cinephile might expect it to. On DVD, there are a bevy of deleted scenes, a commentary track and a few alternate scenes, including a gag topless scene (It's not Heigl). The film looks good on DVD, but it's one I recommend solely for the rental as opposed to the buy. At least it is not unfunny and it's a fair way to kill an afternoon.

For other works with Seth Rogen, check out my reviews of:
50/50
Paul
The Green Hornet
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Observe And Report
Zack And Miri Make A Porno
Pineapple Express
Step Brothers
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy
Donnie Darko

6/10

For other film reviews, be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2008 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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