Fall TV 2013: Monday Nights

The TV blogging continues. (I swear I am doing actual work in addition to this.) Spoilers up to the current seasons of How I Met Your Mother, Sleepy Hollow, Castle, and Bones. Also, the briefest of discussion on Almost Human and Mom.

Mondays
Keeping Current

• How I Met Your Mother (ninth season, 9/23)
  I've been watching this show since the second season (ah, "Slap Bet," you are the best ever), and I will continue to watch it until it is done. Thankfully, since the last couple of seasons have had only occasional high points, this is the last season. The producers, Carter & Bays, have unfortunately refused to have focus character Ted (Josh Radnor) actually meet the mother until the last episode and, oh man, how it has contorted this show past all plausibility sometimes.
  
  BUT. How I Met Your Mother began as a goofy hangout comedy, spiced up by the premise that everything we see is part of an epic tale a father is telling his two (mostly bored) teenagers sometime in the now-near future. It's remarkable for its time-shifting tricks, which include flashbacks, flashforwards, "we'll get to that later," a bit of Rashomon, imaginary scenarios, and once, sublimely, a matryoshkan feat of four embedded narratives in one episode. And it's lovely, but it almost doesn't even matter, because these are five people that really, truly care about each other as friends, even when they're cruddy to each other, and even when they make each other cry. They're in their early 30s, and negotiating what that means.
  
  I grok that. I grok that enough that I actually buy each episode via Amazon Instant. I AM PAYING FOR THIS SHOW WITH CASH MONEY. Let's take a moment to consider that.
  
  And, finally, while Neil Patrick Harris has stolen most of the spotlight as the oft-lamentable caricature Barney Stinson, this is cast is just MONSTROUS with talent. In addition to Radnor and Harris (who had worked in theatre together prior to the show), we've also got Alyson Hannigan, Cobie Smulders, and Jason Segel. The show often demands breakneck changes in mood, from goofy to heartbroken to rageful to madcap, and none of them has ever, ever missed a beat.
  
  
• Sleepy Hollow (first season, 9/16)
  
  TIME TRAVEL. NO BIG.
  So I was skeptical of this show, and then all the reviews were good, and then fandom exploded. I queued up the four already-shown episodes on Hulu Plus and watched them alllll. And everybody was right.
  
  This show is ridiculous. Like, what if the headless horseman was actually Death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse? What if George Washington had a Bible rife with notations that would allow those in the know to avert an apocalypse? What if Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) was almost-killed, put into suspended animation by his witchy wife, and then brought back to life in our times so he could avert the apocalypse with his reluctant partner Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), a police detective who was bound for Quantico until her mentor was beheaded by the headless horseman?
  
  No, seriously. That is what this show is about. It is silly, and it is gorgeously diverse, and I don't even know, y'all. But I am IN IT.
  
  
• Castle (sixth season, 9/23)
  Castle is, as always, goofy fun. Nathan Fillion is Nathan Fillion, and now that his character and Beckett (Stana Katic) are a romantic pairing, it's actually way MORE interesting. Instead of weird obstacles and will-they-won't-they, it's genuine conflicts about procedure and priorities and power. But, fun. Silly! The worst episodes of this show are the ones that get all ~~~dramatic~~~. Anyway, I usually try to watch this show every couple of weeks on Hulu Plus, but if there's plenty of other things to watch, no big.
  
  
• Bones (ninth season, 9/16)
  Seriously, we could find and replace the names from my Castle description, and it would be pretty much the same. I'm more interested in the characters on this show--there are more of them, first, and they've been around three seasons longer, second--and the procedural stuff is at least kind of interesting. I mean, instead of rote police or legal procedural, this show is all about GROSS SCIENCE. Like, it is their special delight to come up with new gross things to do every week, and I respect that.
  
  Anyway, I hope things get a little less turgid this season, now that Bones and Booth are for real married now. I mean, they've had a baby together for a while, so who knows why a wedding is such a relief, but there you go. Then again, they've offed their major antagonist, so who knows what happens next? I sound way more ambivalent about this show than I actually am--I pay more attention to it than Castle, but I watch it less frequently. Hulu Plus! Its ways are magic.
  

Undecided
These are shows that I haven't yet watched, but kind of like in theory.

• Almost Human (first season, 11/04)
  Michael Ealy is a super-emotive, sentient robot! Karl Urban is a grumpy cop! Together, THEY FIGHT CRIME.
  
  
• Mom (first season, 9/23)
  So all the critical reviews have noted the show itself is uneven, but Anna Faris and Allison Janney are excellent. I love Allison Janney! I have no objections to Anna Faris! I have not felt motivated to watch the show, but I will probably watch an episode or two at some point.
  

That's all I've got for Monday! Not a heavy must-watch night, it turns out.

How I Met Your Mother 6.08: Natural History

My response to last night's episode of HIMYM, which starts with some thought questions and ends with utter, delighted flailing. Spoilers!

• Marshall is resigned and/or content with his life as a corporate lawyer. Do you think this is as problematic as Lily did? (I...think it makes sense. I hope he continues to kind of rail against The Machine, as it were, but when faced with Lily's massive credit card debt as well as their decision to own a nice apartment and all, what else could he do, y'know?) And what do you think the tag scene implies about his next step?
• To what extent is Lily's reaction to Marshall's career path tied into her own mixed feelings about her artistic career? That is, she's made the decision to be a kindergarten teacher, but is she entirely settled with not being the artist she envisioned while in college?
• Ted and Whatsherface: endearing or annoying? (I don't have much to say about Ted from day to day anymore, but I was equal parts skeeved and touched by his agreement with The Captain to let Whatsherface have her fun. That is, WOW GUYS, way to be patronizing, but I tip my hat to Ted's sense of fair play.) I really don't know what to make of the implication of Ted/Whatsherface--while he's been shown as attracted to her, I don't get actual relationshippy vibes from them. Things I liked about Ted tonight: his fun architectural facts, his enthralled mockery of the monocle, and his gleeful naming of himself, which The Captain dutifully respected. "Galactic President Superstar McAwesomeville." LOL.
• Barney has a dad! I thought this would just be another fun and weird foray into Barney/Robin fun weirdness, and then BAM HEY Barney has a dad! Y'ALL. I expected the touching moment would be, like, the discovery that Barney actually tells the truth sometimes--which, honestly, would be surprising--but NO. His dad's name! Right there! In a file! That was a brilliant little gem of a scene with Barney and Robin, too: genuine and heartfelt and awkward, which is the best kind of Barney/Robin. It's always nice when the show remembers they're real people.

Clearly we need more diversity in the writers' rooms.

Note: Vague spoilers for past episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Community, and major spoilers for past episodes of Castle and NCIS. Last week's episode of Community had a joke about Dead Poets Society. This week's episode of How I Met Your Mother had a joke about Dead Poets Society. Either Sepinwall or the AV Club made note of this, with the comment that TV writers have the same median age, and thus the same cultural references. And that's fine. "O captain! My captain!" is a cultural touchstone when we start talking about teaching, and if shows don't reference it, often we the commenters do. NOW. Last week's episode of Castle hinged on Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, wherein two commuters make a deal to commit murder for each other, and they specifically referenced Strangers on a Train. This week's episode of NCIS hinged on Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, wherein two commuters did some insider training together, then one murdered the other. And they specifically referenced Strangers on a Train. Different plots, yes? Except, since I already had the plot in mind from last week's Castle, when they started talking about how the two people had nothing in common, I immediately went to the Strangers on a Train scenario. And spent the rest of the episode being bored. I don't watch procedurals for the surprising! Plot! Twists! But honestly. Sigh. I'm not proposing any sort of solution, or pinpointing any sort of complaint, because we can't change our cultural references, nor can we function without them. I just find the coincidences fascinating, and also annoying.