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

Via Youtube, i found out that Robin played a hottie artist/sculptor on The L Word. A show I still have never seen.

scott, you are right abt this show. it is cute! and pretty funny!
(i wish it weren't in traditional sitcom form but hey)

i like this show

these kids are alcoholics

whoa so weird b/c i watched a bunch of episodes this week and was going to revive this thread
i laughed out loud several times! - the barney runs a marathon one, the fiero one, etc
i like that they hang out in a bar

my gf loves this show, and it is pretty charming. I'm glad NPH got an Emmy nom.

if John Larroquette got 4 Emmys for Dan Fielding, NPH is due.

I really only watch this show because Jason Segel is a comic genius. There are some funny jokes and scenes but the standard sitcom format of the show is a tremendous drag on it. The laugh track pains me so much. It's watchable now, but it could be just so much better without the cruft. Also, they get points for putting Martin Starr in an episode.

http://slapcountdown.com/

The last episode I saw of this show - where they go to Atlantic City so that one couple (sorry I can't remember their names) can get married- was pretty disappointing. It was all zany plot twist and no point, and not very funny. The Robin character depresses me because she's not bad looking, but she seems to repel any attempt to script her some sex appeal. The Doogie Howser guy is pretty much the best thing about this show.

That episode is terrible but in general I like this show.

they should bring back becker

I have never heard of any of this but am roffling majorly to to "i'm gonna rock your body to Canada Day" line

3rd season premiere was ok, but this week was great. all the plot strands were awesome: hippie robin making out with normal robin, barney with a southern accent, ted's anti-new jersey rant, marshall's over-the-top death letter and the flashforward.

enjoyed the "broda" world of warcraft crazy girl episode of mother. (i know they are just taking the flashback thing from Friends - what with the hairstyles and all - but i always like them. and the flashes of the future too!)

but does anyone like the nerd show after how i met your mother? i do. and, come on, david and darlene getting it on after all these years! i hope mother gives it enough of an audience to last.

last night i watched this for the first time. NPH is so great! would watch again A+++++

one of the flashback kids is a former student of mine

watched the nerd show for the first time last night. it was ok but I miss New Adventures of Old Christine.

isn't christine coming back though? they could ditch that david spade show and i wouldn't mind. mother/nerds/charlie harper/christine would make me happy.

I'm assuming it's coming back. It better. J L-D is hottt.

I believe Christine is coming back as a mid-season replacement in a few months (after, I hope, The Big Bang Theory is cancelled).

last night's ep was probably the best this season so far. HIMYM is already starting to get a little too self-conscious and deliberate with its coining of catchphrases and stuff, but the whole Hot/Crazy Scale bit was still gold.

I had to explain the significance of "the Vicki Mendoza line" to my children last night after it made me laff and laff until I almost barfed.

I noticed they played GBV's "I Am A Scientist" in one of the dorm flashback scenes.

I like the show too, it's the new Friends. And like that show it'll probably wear out its welcome after a few seasons but continue on because the ratings are high.

i like ted mosby more than ever

Are the Friends comparisons superficial? Young people in NY - but the show has more depth in the characters and in the way its written. Attention to backstory is almost Lost-esque.

Also, everyone seems to have a soul, where all the Friends could have been the spawn of Satan. Maybe I'm just blinded by my hatred of Matthew Perry.

i don't think the characters on friends ever ate sandwiches

Well, besides Phoebe.

Milo is right that the HIMYM characters have more depth, but it does seem it fills the same niche, just with better writers.

for some reason i thought slap bet countdown was last night?

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/slapbet_countdown/

LANCE HARDWOOD, SEX ARCHITECT

john cho was great

Re this show and "Friends": does anyone else remember that episode where they try hanging out in a Central Perk-ish coffee shop instead of a bar and can't stand it?

That was a lot of risque material for early prime time. Guess they figure the kiddies don't even know how to find CBS.

Wow, Mancuso is so ripe for parody, he isn't even safe on his own network. Another fun episode.

also: didn't realize they've had the same girl (wendy?) playing the bar waitress since the pilot.

kind of awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXsJjVdj1E

He didn't actually spend nine years telling the story (the kids haven't aged), but it probably felt that long to them

That's why I said nine years of anecdotes not nine years telling anecdotes.

"In order to understand how I met your mother, you should first hear the sexual history of me and aunt robin, focusing primarily on 2005-2013, but there will be some tangential flashbacks - I do ramble."

If it had just ended with "but then I met mom...speaking of mom, when's dinner?" The show basically would have been a pg-13 version of Nas' "remember the times"

alternate ending getting a DVD release.

It would be awesome if the alternate ending was otherwise like the official ending, except that Marshall and Lily and Barney die too.

mother lives, kids are ghosts

So I wasn't going to cop to it lest that became a tangential debate, but I didn't actually get to watch the finale until last night (my wife was out of town and wanted me to wait) - my opinion's basically the same, but there was a bit of nuance I lost:

1. I can't believe they didn't just end it with the train meet-up. Even if they felt weird about not showing the kids again, not staying true to their vision, whatever, it was such an earned moment, the moment promised by the very title of the show, that the postscript was guaranteed to be superfluous-to-offensive.

2. ...especially cuz following it, it's the kids that come off weirdly cavalier at the end. If you're going to hear that whole story, let it end with dad getting misty-eyed over your mom, I don't think you're going to go "Dad. What the fuck. You're in love with Aunt Robin" unless you're going to follow that with "I HATE YOU SO MUCH" rather than "go fuck aunt robin, it's been six years and you have such good chemistry when she comes over for big holidays. Which is a thing she does now despite how much time this episode was spent discussing her remove from your social circle."

3. If they WERE going to jump from "and that's how i met your mother" to "but i've been a widower for six years, yeah...guess i do still wanna bang the ex. thanks, kids!" Wouldn't it have made sense to cut down on some of the shoe-horned "marshall's journey to the supreme court" filler, have the kids' robin intervention come at the half-way point, and make the last half about future ted talking to future marshal, lily, and (probably climactically) barney about his trepidations re: hooking up with robin again? Like, actually give some weight to this theme-disrupting postscript? Then the point could be about there being more than one One rather than that there's a One but that's no reason to live without sex after a proper mourning period. You can always just have future Marshall in judge's robes, we'll figure out the middle period ourselves.

Which is a thing she does now despite how much time this episode was spent discussing her remove from your social circle.

TBH, Ted's stories pretty much end in 2024, when Tracy dies, the period between that and 2030 is hardly covered at all. So there's plenty of time for Robin and Ted become pals again, and it'd be understandable why the lone widower Ted would like to hang out with her. (Possibly he also feels the kids need a new mother figure, and judging by how much Robin appears in the kids' drawings, which were shown in the early seasons, she does appear to become that too.)

But that just brings us to your point 3, which I totally agree with. Instead of jumping from the mother's death to Ted dating Robin again in 2 minutes, and letting the viewers' imaginations fill in what happened in those 6 years, they definitely should've shown some of that. It's understandable Ted wouldn't want to talk to his kids about how lonely he was after their mom died, or how he still has the hots for Robin, but you're right that he could've told that to Marshall and Lily. It feels like the writers were unnecessarily constrained by their framing device (this a story Ted tells to his kids about their Mother, and it ends with him meeting her), and didn't want to break it even in the finale.

mother lives, kids are ghosts

Having future Ted interact with his future friends would have allowed someone to confirm that future robin may not have lived alone with her future dogs yelling "TV! Show security camera!" since her divorce.

She was probably getting strange ass all around the globe, but I don't know if we needed to see that

speak for yourself!

ring bear, classic for the ages

Why did I watch this all the way to the end??? The last season was so terrible.

to see if it was a real bear

we had to know who jacob really was

to give that villain from The Karate Kid a new lease on life

Did they ever release the supposed alternate ending?

Hannah sent me a picture of a Tim Horton's receipt from Leicester cos she was super excited to be there

The "How I Met Your Dad" pilot w/Greta Gerwig has surfaced.

https://www.avclub.com/after-watching-the-failed-how-i-met-your-dad-pilot-we-1847345513

I had to watch out of curiosity; weird to see. Already feels dated, and watching Greta Gerwig like this feels like peering into another universe. Not as terrible as feared, tough.