How I Met Battlestar Galactica

There's no denying the fact that the last...six months or so of my life have been somewhat less than awesome. In fact, the I've spent vast majority of that time either in a state of complete mania and panic or catatonia. I always knew adult life posed its own unique challenges, but this has all seemed a bit excessive. I fucking get it, Universe.

So, with the collapse of my entire life plan (boyfriend, career, housing, financial whatever), and without any sort of employment in which to immerse myself, I naturally returned to my first, best method of coping: TV.

I love Friday Night Lights more than most people, and it really is very relatable, but for some reason it was more of a Band-Aid than actual healing tissue. (I'm talking about biological tissue here, not Kleenex.) Apparently my worldview was so thrown off-kilter I needed two radically different four-season-long shows to get it back on track. It took Battlestar Galactica to put my problems into context, but it was How I Met Your Mother that taught me how to solve them.

I started out with my beloved Battlestar Galactica. [SPOILER ALERT for the next paragraph, if you haven't watched the show all the way through.] The concept of having your home eradicated, your species' entire future in doubt, spoke to my melodramatic streak, and I adopted that feeling. I wallowed in it. And the episode after they discover "Earth" is nothing more than an irradiated cinder, that their reason for living was all just a lie (4x11, "Sometimes a Great Notion")...Well, a character's death was never more poignant for me than when Anastasia Dualla--a character I didn't even like, mind you--pulled out her gun after one last happy moment and put a bullet in her brain. She worked until they wouldn't let her; she loved until her heart gave out. She fought until she couldn't. And that was the feeling I was struggling with: Once your life is blown all to hell, and everything you've ever believed has been proven a lie, how do you go on? How do you find another reason? Are there any other reasons?

Again, I wallowed in these questions for a while. It was only natural. (Gossip Girl's funeral episode also contributed to this period of deconstruction. What happens when you're measured and found wanting, but you never get another chance to be measured? What happens when you're just not enough?)

I didn't intend to leave my existential crisis anytime soon, but thankfully the TV gods intervened and sent me the first three seasons of How I Met Your Mother on DVD. (Well, they sent my roommate the first three seasons. It amounts to the same thing.)

Of course, I blew through those three seasons (and SurftheChannel'd the fourth) in no time and loved every hilarious, sweet, realistic second. Granted, these characters are a good six to ten years older than me, but they're wrestling with the exact same issues as I am.

Logically, I knew the odds of staying together with the first person you ever dated, or keeping the first job you ever have, are astronomically small, but for some reason I always had this horrific sense of shame that accompanied thoughts of that not happening. HIMYM finally got it through my thick head that it is okay for you to be unlucky on the first try. That it does happen with some (Lily and Marshall), but that even those who seem really well-suited for each other don't make it (Ted and Robin). Oh, and [SPOILER ALERT if you haven't gotten through season three] that sometimes what you really wanted was in front of you all along (Barney and Robin, which, by the way, I am such a fucking fangirl 'shipper for them it is ridiculous: "But with you, the trouble doesn't seem so...troubling." God bless you, NPH).

The fourth season continued drilling those ideas into my head, but one of my favorite moments in the entire show came in the finale:

Ted: This is a disaster. How am I going to come back from this?
Lily: Okay, I'm just going to ask this. Do you really want to come back from this?
Ted: What's that supposed to mean?
Lily: Architecture is killing you, Ted. And it's killing us to watch it killing you. You're like that goat with the washcloth. You want it so bad, and every time the world tries to take it away from you, you keep grabbing it. But, you know what? It's just a washcloth. Why do you even want it?
Ted: Because I have to be an architect! That's the plan.
Lily: Screw the plan! [...] Look, you can't design your life like a building. It doesn't work that way; you just have to live it and it'll design itself.
Ted: So I should just do nothing?
Lily: No. Listen to what the world is telling you to do...And take the leap.

What my leap is remains to be seen, but at least I'm not holding on to that washcloth anymore.

The Bro Code

Just hop on over here and take a listen to the as-narrated-by-NPH-as-Barney-Stinson Bro Code.

Also, I should never listen to commentary tracks on TV shows, because they just make me unfathomably jealous of everyone who works on them. I want to hang out with them.

...I guess maybe it's not too late to get into showbiz? I'm still only 21, after all.

Neil Patrick Harris Is the Greatest

Having finally gotten around to watching How I Met Your Mother and concluding that it is, in fact, legen-

(wait for it; and I hope you're not lactose-intolerant, because the second half of that word is...)

-DAIRY, I naturally fell totally in love with Neil Patrick Harris. Granted, I was already sort of in love after the wonderfulness of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and his SNL episode, but he's so fantastic as Barney Stinson that I'm able to forget my current heartache (long story). In less capable hands (both in terms of writing and acting), Barney would be just another cad. But his evolution this last season into the conflicted, adorable--though still masculine--man has been completely natural and believable. So, you know...Kudos.

And now, after YouTube-ing his magnificent Tony closing number, I came. Across. This:



This must be integrated into the show. Maybe we can have an episode where they all want to go see a show on Broadway, but they each want to see a different one and somehow Marshall and Barney find common ground in their Les Mis love. Look, I don't care how it happens, it just needs to. So, uh, CALL ME, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. I'll help you out.

Supervenous Without Pity

I found Television Without Pity via some old site called Bored.com. I was 15 years old and just beginning to start my journey to Obsessive TV Watcher Land, so you can imagine my utter delight in finding people like me. TWoP taught me snark and told me it was okay to love something as "trivial" as TV.

(Now, of course, I'm confident enough to make the argument that TV is not trivial. While there's been a pretty steep decline in quality--or maybe just a steep increase in shitty shows--I maintain that TV is a pretty important part of our culture, and those that dismiss it need to understand that this is just the medium in which we get our epics these days. Well, when it's done right.)

During my years as a pretty frequent poster on the TWoP boards, I learned the ins and outs of the TV business. It's how I can now talk about the differences between Jeff Zucker and Les Moonves and not sound like a total rube.

The recaps themselves were fantastic. The writers and editors--Sars, Wing Chun, and Couch Baron especially--distilled my favorite shows into reasonably-sized summaries with just the right balance of detail and commentary. This commentary was pretty freakin' funny (see: Uncle Arvin's Office Of Over-the-Top Technical Treatises, etc.), and actually contributed somewhat to whatever "voice" I currently have, if I actually have one. I dunno. Anyway.

Understandably, the creators realized what an awesome thing they had, and when Bravo came along and offered to buy it, they accepted.

Thus began the not-really-all-that-slow and steady fall of an empire.

Previously, each show had its own little woodcut-like graphic related to the show's premise (but not actually a direct representation). Buffy's was a garlic bulb. You know, stuff like that. But then those went away and were replaced by actual pictures of the show. And then my favorite recappers started leaving after their shows ended...or even before that happened; they were replaced by people who (forgive me, current recappers) just aren't that funny or deft at the art of recapping. The creators left.

Then, the number of shows recapped exploded...because they started recapping sitcoms. The old TWoP didn't recap sitcoms because: a) They're already pretty short, and b) Why would you try to make jokes about something that's actually funny? Proving that theory correct, their comedy recaps are indeed irrelevant.

After that came Movies Without Pity, and video blogs, and news items and slideshows that have turned what was once a safe haven for intelligent people who just wanted some snarky recaps into a smorgasbord of crap that lacks the charm and wit of the original TWoP.

So thank you, Bravo, for killing one of my favorite things in the world. Well done.

Dear MotherZucker...

Dear MotherZucker,

We are recent college grads, but we could run your network better than Silverman. Why, you ask? Well, first, we are 22 years old and, therefore, have that whole "binge drinking" thing out of our systems. (Or we save it for appropriate times, like one odd Saturday night a month.) We also have never been big fans of white tigers outside of the zoo. (Or even in the zoo.) We may not have any real scheduling experience, but hey, neither did this douche when you hired him.

But why should you hire us? Because NBC can't really (really, really) get any worse, so why not put it in the hands of two post-grad TV junkies? We anxiously await your call, Jeffy.

Hugs and puppies,
O and Brady

P.S. "SyFy"? Seriously? Way to make your network sound like VD.