i know i'm one of the only people on ilx who watches *how i met your mother* on a regular basis, but did anyone else see the robin sparkles episode? where robin didn't want people to know that she had

Ha, I wasn't clear at all. I'd be really glad if they just let them goof around for our enjoyment. The thing that annoys me (and keep in mind its really a minor thing, I still watch this show every week) and which I guess is what I consider as filler is that they keep coming back to the mother and oooh, the mother is this week's Ted GF's roommate and ooh, look there goes a yellow umbrella and Ted says "I didn't know it yet, but I crossed your mother while on my way to robots vs wrestler, she herself being on her way to the great muffin specialty shop" or whatever. Basically I kind of dislike Ted (ok, blonde Ted was nice I guess) and when they lay it on thick with the mother-hunt it bores me. Them being at the bar and Barney disguising himself in all kinds of weird get ups, or whatever, or Lily & Marshall making stupid commitments about 5th doppelganger etc is fine by me. all that filler - by which I mean silly tidbits about the mother- is what bothers me more.

yeah, the teases are definitely getting tedious, i totally feel you there. i thought you were saying you wanted MORE of that stuff.

ideally it's something they should only reference every few episodes and only hinge a whole episode on once a season.

i still can't believe that they got out of that stella/marriage thing so gracefully. that would have been the end of most shows. AND they can still use it for laughs like in the ted movie episode. ted has his moments. i don't think he's the worst. i really did love him at that snooty dinner party.

Yeah, I totally want more of Ted at snooty/intellectual events.

ted's pretentious college gf was one of his funnier gfs

ok when i was complaining about filler it wasn't about mother hunting or lol barney does this (although this is starting to bore. the episode w/ his perfect week was terrific tho) but instead TED HAS DATE WITH WOMAN, DUMPS HER BY THE END OF THE EPISODE AND OH BTW IT IS THE SAME EPISODE EVERYTIME YAWN

Yeah the problem is that the show now is that started out as an original take on the bland Friends-style young people in love sitcom cliche, this whole season they seem to have finally given up and gone to that well over and over again. Practically every Barney/Robin episode. The perfect couple isn't actually! Couple friends! Let's all quit smoking! Keeping potential boyfriends/girlfriends "on the hook"! The relationship expert comes in the teach a lesson to the lothario, but the tables are turned on her! Let's get twin beds instead of sleeping in the same one!

HIMYM is often great because they can take these overdone plots and turn them into good episodes with original jokes, but it just hasn't had that magic in general this year...

I don’t really feel like I have that much more to offer with this character. Maybe if we got divorced or something — but that’s not gonna happen. It’s gonna be some iteration of, like, my TV wife opens the fridge, and she’s like, “What happened to the birthday cake?” And I walk in with a little frosting here (points to corner of mouth) like, “What birthday cake?”

this is kinda odd given that them having a kid is a new development?

guess it is frustrating being tied into a show when u could be making movies like franco or rogen

that quote is a total bummer to me since Marshall is maybe my favorite character and I think they've consistently mined him for new LOLs better than probably anyone else on the show. he should be happy the show has a shot at running that long (especially since it was perpetually on the bubble in the early years) and not bitch about a contract he already signed.

btw anyone else watching the Persons Unknown miniseries on NBC? last week a mysterious cab pulled into the mysterious town where the mysterious characters had been mysteriously kidnapped, and the driver was Ranjit, the cabbie from the early seasons of HIMYM, totally cracked me up.

it's kinda odd given that j-segs has by far the most successful movie career of the five. apparently HIMYM takes longer to film than most sitcoms tho, and he is coming off a comparatively slack season (though it improved).

yeah he definitely has the highest profile moviewise but tbrr i feel like that's mostly apatow runoff, don't think he's ever going to have starring vehicles as successful as Rogen or Franco etc.

yeah but fsm was big enough that he should be able to carry on writing whatever he wants maybe?

do have to fill for him though, himym does seem like its been dragging its heels (see our discussions from the past six months) and if they cut out the dull filler episodes it could have been like this 6 season comedy beast or whatever instead of the 4 seasons of greatness and 6 seasons of 'oh so barney gets laid, ted doesn't because he finds something to bitch about with yet another new girl, the girls are underused and marshall slowly turns into a wacky homer simpson'

don't think there's any real chance he'll leave, but if the new Muppet movie becomes a smash, his prospects will only improve

the girls are underused

the other Segel quote from that link is amazing:

“I had two other suggestions [about how the writers should end the series]. One is that they’re dead. The two kids and their father — they’re dead, and they’re in purgatory, and he’s telling the story for eternity. […] And then my other suggestion, which they never used, which I think would be so funny, is — it’s the future, right? I think in one of those scenes, they should open the window, and it should be, like, a postapocalyptic wasteland outside. It should be like I Am Legend. Horrible mutants.”

would love to hear audio of that just to figure out how serious he's being, or if he's making a Lost joke in the first part

lots of stuff has been said about this wont be so hacky and sitcommy this season and thats great but who cares

There will be a third installment in the Robin Sparkles saga; they're trying to get Alan Thicke back for it. It will relive the glory days of the tween-oriented, educational show that Robin Sparkles hosted in Canada -- with her showbiz partner, Glitter. Thomas and Bays are writing a song for Sparkles and Glitter. "We talked about it being a safety warning about thin ice," Thomas said.

There will be a third installment in the Robin Sparkles saga; they're trying to get Alan Thicke back for it. It will relive the glory days of the tween-oriented, educational show that Robin Sparkles hosted in Canada -- with her showbiz partner, Glitter. Thomas and Bays are writing a song for Sparkles and Glitter. "We talked about it being a safety warning about thin ice," Thomas said.

There will be a third installment in the Robin Sparkles saga; they're trying to get Alan Thicke back for it. It will relive the glory days of the tween-oriented, educational show that Robin Sparkles hosted in Canada -- with her showbiz partner, Glitter. Thomas and Bays are writing a song for Sparkles and Glitter. "We talked about it being a safety warning about thin ice," Thomas said.

There will be a third installment in the Robin Sparkles saga; they're trying to get Alan Thicke back for it. It will relive the glory days of the tween-oriented, educational show that Robin Sparkles hosted in Canada -- with her showbiz partner, Glitter. Thomas and Bays are writing a song for Sparkles and Glitter. "We talked about it being a safety warning about thin ice," Thomas said.

last Sparkles appearance wasn't that great (the Dawson's Creek guy) but the last Thicke appearance was good, so i don't know

i don't know how biographical the show is (for the writers or creators), but it gives the impression of having been really well imagined / observed up until last season when suddenly they no longer knew what their characters would be like doing the things they decided to make them do.

thoughts on the first ep of the new season? i was into it

couple nice things like marshall leaving the office, and robin generally,* but i was a *bit* ehh [via yawnsome marshall-lily sub-plot]

*really, robin 'still being hot' shouldn't really be a joke, so kudos

really hoping marshall + lily dont get boring

some dude, you will be happy to learn that the daughter is now playing the mole on 'nikita'.

i've been thinking that maybe one reason the last season seems to have taken such a bad turn (or seems to me like it did—i haven't been able to work up the willingness to watch it again) is that everyone's future prospects seem to have gotten all confused—mainly, lily and marshall getting married takes away a whole bunch of stuff to put into play, and their careers have all gotten murky, robin's, ted's, and marshall's at least. (lily's and barney's have never much been in question, except for after lily dumped marshall—just sources for workplace-and-character-specific jokes.) a lot of the old humor played off the mix between their careers and love lives, but there hasn't been any dynamism in their careers since ted became a professor—which they could have exploited a lot more but didn't. the relationship plots are bound to start seeming stale with less change elsewhere.

lily and marshall are bound to be boring because the show's main comedic-dramatic engine is 'will i get what i want or not?', and now that they're married not enough is at stake.

fave joek, remembering it, was barney starting to tell the story of capt dibs or whatever

I believe the SS Dibs was lost at sea..

pretty avg episode, I laughed at "you're giving me a de-rection"

laughed at this a lot, but it may have been just that nice feeling from seeing friends you haven't seen in a while. in the form of a tv show.

i really enjoyed this because i had a DIBS argument with a good friend just this past weekend

some dude, you will be happy to learn that the daughter is now playing the mole on 'nikita'.

I have made up a backstory for her character where being locked in room listening to Ted's stories for many years turned her into a heroin addict/killer.

omfg actual realisation of how and where he meets the mother. i know everyone else is blase about this but omfg.

watched this when i was pretty drunk and genuinely don't remember that at all.

we don't know who's wedding it is tho right?

or did he mean at bilson's?

It's Barney and Robin's wedding duh

***SPOILER***

it's ted's wedding

PONDER THAT

***SPOILER***

Best man at his own wedding?

dude's a narcissist

was the chick the OC girl was into Leighton Meester? and if it is, do u think it's supposed to be a meta joek that josh schwartz' two characters from diff shows are way into each other?

Don't know who she was, but it wasn't Leighton Meester

yes that was rachel bilson - she was reprising her role from the 100th episode last season

ok this episode was a+ up there with the best of them

o rly. thought it was horrible.

yeah. super weak. espesh compared with the other ep at barney's mum's house.

Was the other ep with his mom the one where he had a fake wife and kids? Because I hated that and it was way over the line as far as plausibility goes, even for a Barney episode.

yeah it was

who gives a shit about plausibility?!

that ep was hilares

this ep wasnt v funny at all

i was amused by it enough. also liked the S2-style laidback ted and robin shenanigans

last one to air here in england was the funniest in a while, if only for the seinfeld-esque collision of the pickpocket, ted's model, the doll collection and the paper aeroplanes.

ok that was LOLz

ya classic himym imo

Liked how Barney perving on crying chick was actually setup for the end of the episode. also "Marshall v the Machine"!