alyson hannigan-related stories
Posted Nov 3rd 2009 11:04AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S05E06) The thing that always amazes me about this show is that how Old Ted is perfectly content to tell his kids about all the tawdry things he or Barney did back in those heady days of the mid-to-late-'00s, but every so often he realizes who he's talking to and substitutes a clean term for a dirty term. I'd imagine this inconsistency is done on purpose by Bays/Thomas and their writers; why have Old Ted pull back on his stories unless there's a laugh to be had?
This is how we got the references to "sandwiches," for instance. And this is how we got the running joke about bagpipes tonight. I liked how it was just a joke in the background and didn't really reference any major story. The major stories, though, were both pretty funny this week.
Continue reading Review: How I Met Your Mother - Bagpipes
Posted Oct 19th 2009 11:58PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews
(S05E05) Sometimes an episode of
HIMYM is full of "mythology" advancement. Sometimes it explores the romantic relationships between the characters. Sometimes there's a goofy website or video to accompany the episode. But sometimes,
HIMYM just tells one or two semi-isolated stories. Last year, many of those episodes weren't all that great. But this season is different; everything's been funny, including the mostly silly episode we got tonight.
Which reminds me... I have to figure out where to get a hold of some Tantrum. That stuff is more powerful than 12-Hour Sudafed.
Continue reading Review: How I Met Your Mother - Duel Citizenship
Posted Oct 13th 2009 12:07AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S05E04) Let's get this notion out of the way right here: Couples "dating" other couples isn't exactly a new idea in the sitcom world. Countless comedies have had the episode where the lead couple is blown off by another couple they really like, and they go through the same process that a someone goes through when he or she is jilted after a first or second date. This week we saw all of that.
But, it was done with some funny touches, not the least of which is a photo montage,
website, and music video (embedded after the jump) that gave the tired story a unique spin. And there was enough other fun stuff packed into this episode to make you forget that the main plot has been done since at least the days of Sam and Diane.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: The Sexless Innkeeper
Posted Oct 10th 2009 9:38AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Casting, Reality-Free
It'll be how I met Lily's dad on
How I Met Your Mother.
Chris Elliott has been cast as Lily's father on the CBS sitcom, a character who is supposedly something of a good-for-nothing parent. Elliott is hilarious and specializes in playing these kind of goofy roles. On
Everybody Loves Raymond, for instance, his was Robert's overly familiar brother-in-law, Peter, who liked Ray just a little too much.
On
HIMYM, Lily's dad will appear for the upcoming Thanksgiving episode on November 23. According to Michael Ausiello of EW.com, there will be series of flashbacks to illustrate exactly what's what with Lily and her father, why their relationship is "troubled." I'm hoping for more from this casting than
Eric Braeden as Robin's dad; they never really used him right.
Continue reading Chris Elliott cast as Lily's pop on How I Met Your Mother
Posted Oct 5th 2009 11:22PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S05E03) Well, it seems like Bays and Thomas are batting about .750 to this point in the season. Of the first three episodes, they made solid contact on each one, only really missing with the "double date" A-story of last week's episode. This week stood out not just for the fact that it was a heavy Brobin (Rarney? I'm still trying to find a nickname I'm comfortable with) episode, but it showed that even Ted can see the dark sides of the cartoons and balloons perspective he brings to relationships.
Oh, and I've seen the Robin nostrils-flaring look. It's different on every woman, but it means the same thing. It means: Run like the wind! No time to go back for your things! Run! Hopefully, Barney will get less of this look and more of "You're an idiot."
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Robin 101
Posted Sep 30th 2009 7:01PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Video, Celebrities, Reality-Free
Funny or Die has up an amusing clip starring a group of television and movie stars including Alyson Hannigan, Emily Deschanel, Kat McPhee, Minka Kelly and Jaime King in which they are at a slumber party together. One of them feels a lump on her breast and starts to panic. The issue gets resolved but not before the paparazzi show up to get some rather embarrassing photos of the group.
The sketch was co-written by King and
Taryn Southern and is sponsored by Her Energy in support of breast cancer research. The entire six-part series is called "Tit for Tat." Let's hear it for amusing double-entendres.
Still, it's for a good cause and stars a plethora of television personalities (including the ever-cute Ms. Hannigan whom I've adored since her days on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer), so it's worth a look even if you're just a perv who likes watching female celebrities grope each other. Video is after the jump.
Continue reading TV celebs touch each other's boobs for cancer research
Posted Sep 28th 2009 11:36PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S05E02) If there was ever an episode that demonstrated how creative Bays and Thomas and their writing staff can be, it's this one. Not only did we bend time and space -- Ted even had an alternate universe-ish goatee -- but we got a doppelganger and an elaborate fantasy about hiccup disease thrown in for good measure.
What's interesting about it is, the bending-time-and-space A story, while fun to watch, turned out to be not much different than what we may have seen in the past. The B story was much more entertaining, and it gave us some insight to how the two currently active
HIMYM relationships are going to run for the time being.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Double Date
Posted Sep 21st 2009 8:33PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S05E01) Fans of
How I Met Your Mother had reason to worry that, with last season's ratings success, the funny little show that they'd been watching for four years would get away from what made it fun.
Fungible timelines, comedic head fakes, the burgeoning relationship between Barney and Robin, and Ted's eternal search for The One were all there last year, but the show's syndication-friendly embrace of more self-contained stories forced a lot of that into "subtle reference" territory. But
the fourth season finale reassured fans that Bays and Thomas are going to continue to explore these issues, even as the show approaches its 100th episode and beyond.
The fifth season premiere does a good job of reinforcing this. Everything's there, including Indiana Jones' bullwhip. And it's funny, to boot. And as Bays and Thomas assured me,
the location of the Mother revealed in the finale is reinforced... sorta.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Definitions (season premiere)
Posted Jun 3rd 2009 5:01PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Animation, Celebrities, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reality-Free, The Big Bang Theory
OK, so she turned evil and veiny and almost destroyed the world after someone murdered her hot lesbian lover. But at heart, Willow Rosenberg was always a computer-hacking, research-loving nerd.
The
Buffy the Vampire Slayer character landed at number one on Topless Robot's list of
"Pop Culture's 10 Greatest Nerds." I was surprised by the pick at first, but I can't think of a better choice to top the list. Willow was a great character, and will probably always be actor Alyson Hannigan's best role (sorry,
HIMYM fans, but it's true).
Continue reading Buffy's Willow tops list of pop culture's greatest nerds
Posted May 18th 2009 10:12PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E24) It's been an interesting season for
How I Met Your Mother, hasn't it? The ratings for the show have never been better, but longtime fans (me included) have been concerned about its inconsistency this season. Episodes that would be considered in the pantheon of
Mother classics -- ones that mess with timelines and talk about the "mother mythology" and the stories of the rest of the Scooby gang -- were mixed in with standalone plots that were sometimes funny but other times were contrived and sitcommy.
I knew that the standalones would be more prevalent this season -- Carter Bays has told me and others as much -- but as I watched this season, I wondered why they were trying to make the show more accessible. Now that I've seen the fourth season finale, I completely understand why the show is going in that direction. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: The Leap (season finale)
Posted May 12th 2009 12:45AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E23) Earlier today, I received a rough-cut copy of
HIMYM's season finale. I was all giddy and wanted to pop it in the DVD player right away, but I wanted to wait until I saw tonight's episode first, figuring it would set up the finale, as it did in past seasons. This episode does so, at least a little bit. But the most important part of the story -- the results of Ted's chance meeting with Stella on that street corner -- was at once disappointing and refreshing.
Confused? Well journey with me after the jump and I'll tell you why.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: As Fast As She Can
Posted May 5th 2009 9:15AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E22) Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are a couple of clever guys, aren't they?
They're not only good at playing with time and space in their show -- something they did exceptionally well in this episode -- but they're also pretty good at tweaking the wording of an episode to make the audience feel like they're getting somewhere in the story when in fact things have only inched forward.
Just think about the words they used to describe the monumental outcome of Ted's day. Did they say everything you thought they said? Ruminate on it a second before you rejoin me after the jump.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: Right Place Right Time
Posted May 2nd 2009 10:10AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Last week, I devoted my first
Jane After Dark column to my
top five Buffy moments. I was thrilled to read all the responses, both here on
TV Squad and at
Whedonesque, where the post was picked up. Fans of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer are a passionate bunch!
This week, I thought it would be fun to delve into my favorite Buffy hookups. One that didn't make the list but holds a special place in my heart is Giles and Joyce. It was a fleeting moment, but one that was fun and would have made for great storytelling had it continued.
But who to pair Buffy up with -- Spike, Angel or Riley? What about Spike and Drusilla? And while Willow and Tara had a special love affair, there's a lot to be said for Willow and Oz. And what of Xander? Sure, he and Anya had a fun romance, but his hookups with Cordelia and even Faith were intense in their own way.
Oh the choices! Read on for my thoughts, and please add your own in the comments below.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Top five Buffy hookups
Posted Apr 28th 2009 8:39AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, How I Met Your Mother, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S04E21) Perhaps this dates me a bit, but I remember an episode of
M*A*S*H where Charles basically played both sides of a practical joke war between B.J. and Hawkeye, and ended up having the joke be on him in the end. That episode was what came to mind as I was watching this one, which was amusing but by far the least funny
HIMYM episode in quite awhile.
The practical joke plot, with someone always being in the middle, is an old saw of the sitcom biz, and Bays and Thomas pulled it out of their bag of tricks this week. They tweaked it a little bit, though; this became more of an exercise in Marshall and Barney teaching Ted a lesson that ended up going way to far, and everything seemed to work out for Robin, who was the middlewoman. But it was familiar enough that it had the ghostly imprint of sitcoms past on it. And when that happens on this show, it's never good.
Continue reading How I Met Your Mother: The Three Days Rule
Posted Apr 25th 2009 11:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I'm starting a new column here on
TV Squad called "Jane After Dark." Some of you know I work the "night shift" here at the Squad, editing and scheduling posts into the wee hours. I'm a big multi-tasker, so I also use those hours to get caught up on all the great shows I've missed along the way.
Over the past year, I've watched some really cool shows, including
Six Feet Under,
The Sopranos,
Moonlight,
Weeds,
Entourage,
Gossip Girl, and many others. So I thought it would be fun to write about my After Dark musings, and I hope you'll chime in with your own thoughts about whatever I'm watching.
I just finished
Joss Whedon's magnificent
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I loved so many things about the show. No one could look as stylish as Buffy as she slayed those vampires. Angel and Spike were both hot in their own way. The love between Willow and Tara was sweet and gentle, but also powerful. And the characters continued to grow and evolve throughout the series. By the last episode, you really felt like you knew these characters and had grown right along with them.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Top five Buffy moments
Next Page >
The TV Squad Podcast: Linda Purl talks about The Office, we talk spoilers, and more
Ask TV Squad: Ghost Whisperer and more!
The TV Squad Podcast: Bill Scheft of The Late Show, Cake Boss, Mad Men and more
