Or, put another way, is there only so much funny out there in TV land that if another success story shows up, or something already on the air gets better, everything else is destined to get worse?

Maybe it’s that as individual viewers we’re only allotted so much laughing in a week. I don’t know which is the case … all I know is that, week in and week out, some of my favorite sitcoms are consistently falling flat. Read the rest of this entry »

“If you fall for that one, my heart breaks for you, but I’m sorry, you’re a Smoron.” – Robin about Barney’s SNASA playbook entry

Last weeks episode of How I met Your Mother ended with a simple, two-word promise: “Daddy’s home.” And home he is, because tonight, Barney’s back. I won’t say he’s better than ever, because I don’t actually have any quotable lines from this episode, but he’s ripe with the Barneyisms we all love and Barney’s in full form — no pesky Robin scars to make him a changed man.

I couldn’t have been happier with the way this episode unfolded. We had the Bays-Thomas non-linear storytelling, a Barney-centric episode and more catch-phrases than you could fit into, well … a playbook.

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After the dramatic entrance of V last week, there were no similar big splash stories to lead things off this week. Then, as I was perusing the year-ago numbers, something occurred to me. It’s quite possible that FOX could improve both Monday and Thursday at 9:00 if they swapped Fringe and Lie To Me. If you look back to the initial Fringe run, it had a lot of success following House. In fact, while the House numbers are virtually unchanged from Tuesday to Monday, Fringe was holding much more of the House audience on Tuesday than Lie To Me currently is on Monday.

Example:
11/18/08: House (13.03m/5.5), Fringe (9.36m/4.2)
11/09/09: House (13.31m/5.3), Lie To Me (7.41m/3)

And that was against very similar competition. Both faced DWTS on ABC, which was pretty much a wash. NBC was greatly improved against Fringe with Biggest Loser (7.84m/3.3), as opposed to Trauma (5.35m/1.8). And CBS was mixed, with The Mentalist (15.83m/3.5) trailing the Men/Big Bang hour (13.62m/4.6) in the demo.

Now we look at where we are this season. Fringe did manage something of a rebound this week, finishing with (5.91m/2.2) on Thursday. That’s still a distant fourth place, and should find the show on the hot seat at the end of the season. It would, obviously, do better on Monday following House. The question is, would it do better than the (7.41m/3) that Lie To Me is currently offering? I think it would.

On the other side of that coin, while I’m not quite as confident about the move of Lie To Me to Thursday, I do still see the potential for it to outperform the current Fringe numbers. That bar has been set, after all, rather low. It would likely take a  hit in the move, but the end result would be that Thursday at 9:00 is stronger as well. Just something to think about. The usual numbers junk is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

“It was called the Death Star, baby — they knew what they were getting into.” – Marshall to Lily when she realizes that Stormtroopers are people, not robots

It’s funny that this episode about how Robin and Barney just aren’t working as a couple comes on the heels of one of the few episodes that I thought did work with Barney and Robin as a couple. I wonder if the writers read my reviews from this season and changed their minds about the match-up, or if this was the plan all along.

There have been inklings along the way about not knowing who Barney is anymore, seeing Barney and Robin fight, Barney and Robin not understanding the relationship stuff that keeps Lily and Marshall together. And tonight, when Ted says, “It’s the end of Barney Stinson as we know him,” it was definitely bringing those past pieces back around and defining that there is a problem with Barney being in a relationship.

Either way, we got some ridiculous funny out of it. This was probably the most absurd episode since “The Goat,” with random things just coming together for the good of the funny. One of my favorite things about HIMYM is when they bring back great moments from old episodes and further them, and they did tons of that tonight.

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The World Series was the big ratings winner last week, but with New York involved, everyone kind of expected that, right? What nobody expected — most notably ABC — was the success of the V premiere. The numbers weren’t just good. It was the highest rated scripted program on the network, topping the Housewives and Grey’s. Even better, the V demo rating was the highest for a scripted show on any of the networks.  Someone at ABC has to be kicking themselves for only ordering four episodes of V, while they continue to crank out more Hanks than they know what to do with. Read the rest of this entry »

I have missed the Supernatural boat. Everyone tells me what a great show it is, but I’ve never taken the time. If this week’s lead quote is any indication, I sure am missing out. The week before the start of November Sweeps also brings us some good quotes from Modern Family and Community. Next week, however, I promise the return of Glee!

Supernatural

“You gotta calm down.” — Sam
“Calm down? I’m wearing sunglasses at night!! You know who does that? No talent douche bags! I hate this game! I hate that we’re in a procedural cop show and you want to know to know why … because I hate procedural cop shows! There’s like 300 of them on television and they’re all the freaking same. It’s, ‘Oh, plane crashed here.’ Oh shut up!” — Dean

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“That must be that tantric bagpiping that Sting is into … shut the bagpipes up.” – Ted to Robin, about the noisy “bagpiping” neighbors upstairs

What? A How I Met Your Mother episode that was centered around Robin and Barney being a couple, and Marshall and Lily’s domestic issues? I guess that’s not so weird this season, but what is weird is that I actually liked the way both situations were handled, and I laughed.

I’ve been lukewarm about Barney and Robin being together this season. At first, I was really open-minded and on-board, trusting the writers. But then, as they became just a typical couple, I felt disappointed, let down by Bays and Thomas and the entire writing team that I trust to deliver such greatness as “Slap Bet” and “Naked Man.”

Tonight, it worked. I enjoyed Robin and Barney together on several levels, and here’s why it worked:

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