I'm not sure when this happened. I used to be interesting! Promise! Yoga classes, painting lessons, band practice, school plays, beekeeping, drawing a thrice-a-week webcomic. Today, I just have a case of the "used-ta"s, which does not make for a person who would be considered a fascinating addition to a dinner party.
On the bright side, I have chosen an excellent time in television history to become boring. As a comedy-fan, TV has never before boasted such a -- dare I say it? -- cornacopia of basic cable laugh-a-minute gold. 30 Rock! Modern Family! Cougar Town! Parks & Recreation! Community! I barely have enough exclamation marks to go around, and it's keeping me pleasantly distracted from the meaningless hole that is my post-grad day-to-day existence. Ha! Ha! But you may have noticed one 'fan fave' has been left off of this list of shout-able proportions, a show that is often recommended with the precursor "It's actually really funny!" which seems too apologetic a statement to be trusted: How I Met Your Mother.
Ohhh, it takes place in New York! Clever angle! Green-lit! |
I want to like this show: everyone else seems to, Bob Saget included, and Danny Tanner has never lead me astray before. But How I Met (or HIMYM or whatever the popular abbreviation is) and I just can't connect. My eyes roll automatically at the sight of Arrogant Womanizer Character. I suspect the bar they hang out in might just be a revamped set from the Drew Carrey Show. Every story arc I've seen feels vaguely familiar, like Friends already did it, and it was boring enough the first time.
The most unforgivable sin The Never-ending Mom Story has committed though, and what will presumably forever keep us apart, is the laugh track. Yes, laugh tracks have been around since the birth of Greek theatre, but it's pandering and insulting to have jokes pointed out to a generation of viewers who are so good at being an audience that they can do it on a meta-level. How can a show be clever when they can't trust their audience to get it without a nudge? I'll be sticking with the programs (am I old enough to call them "my stories" yet?) that are confident enough to crack wise without the recorded cackle of a presumably long-dead studio audience behind them.
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