Please tell me you’re watching this show.

Some of you may remember my obsession last summer with John Oliver’s stint hosting The Daily Show. It’s like last summer all over again, but it keeps going, and yes, there’s dancing.

The other thing I wanted to share is that if you don’t already have HBO (we didn’t) you might try calling your cable provider and asking for a free trial (we did) (they said sure.)

It’s not TV, it’s HBO! … although so far, all we’ve watched are TV shows. The funny thing about watching HBO shows is that when Joel and I sit down together to watch an episode, after the static fuzz, I expect the Sex and the City theme to follow … Joel expects The Sopranos.

Remember when I said in my last post that I haven’t been doing much? It’s the truth, but only part of it. The whole truth is more like this …

I’ve been meaning to write a thoughtful and eloquent post about each of these shows for the past couple of weeks, and since it clearly hasn’t happened yet, I’m just going to toss them all into one super-post. Here goes.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I started watching Buffy two summers ago, and I am finally … almost done with the third season. And of course, once I finish the seven seasons, there are three seasons of comic books and a spin-off to catch up on. I’m thoroughly enjoying it, and I suddenly have a new understanding of the “Teen Paranormal Romance” section in every Barnes and Noble.

Watching Buffy is inciting flashbacks of being thirteen, and the hours I spent pouring over Seventeen magazine, trying to duplicate Sarah Michelle Gellar’s hair. Anyway, I’ve said this before, but it remains true: at its core, Buffy is not about vampires or the forces of evil, it’s about being a teenage girl in the 90s.

Heroes

When this show was airing, I was obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy, and I remember reading about it when I read up on Grey’s spoilers and thinking it sounded so cliche and disinteresting. So … it should come as no surprise that when I actually watched it (with much coercion from Joel) I actually loved it.

It’s basically what would happen if the X-Men were made into a weekly soap opera.

Wilfred

Honestly, we only started watching this show because we’d finished all Lord of the Rings movies and we I wanted more Elijah Wood. Anyway, neither of us had any expectations but we ended up laughing our butts off. It’s crude and offensive, but still makes witty social commentary … I guess I’d say it’s kind of like South Park, if South Park were live action with a guy in a dog suit.

What Not to Wear

You probably aren’t surprised to hear that I adore this show. I actually hadn’t watched it in a few years, but caught up on the recent seasons that are on Netflix. I was a bit surprised that the format had changed so much … it’s less about advice for putting oneself together and more about pop psychology and snark. But, really, was it ever actually about fashion advice?

Here’s all the fashion advice you’ll ever need, according to Stacy and Clinton: don’t wear pants with an elastic waist ever, and belt all the things!

Brooklyn 99

We were really late discovering this show, but Joel and I powered through the entire first season in about a week. It’s SO funny. We couldn’t stop.

It’s basically the 2014 version of Scrubs: a goofy, immature guy works for a boss who’s uptight and seemingly disdains him but inside has a heart of gold. There are fantasy sequences and flashbacks, and of course he’s into one of the girls he works with but won’t admit it.

The bad news is that since I’ve been obsessively watching older shows, my DVR is totally full and I’m way behind on the current seasons of my favorite shows. My life is so hard!

Joel and I just finished watching the last episode of the last season of Veronica Mars last night, and now I understand why longtime fans were so desperate to get a Veronica Mars movie made (the ending is pretty abrupt) but more importantly, now I understand why the season three love triangle has polarized fans in the ensuing years.

With the movie coming out in just a few weeks, I wanted to take a moment to declare that I am staunchly Team Piz.

Two reasons:
1. I get really tired of good girls choosing the “bad boy” in movies and television. Characters on the screen should choose the person who is easy to be with, because that’s how real life works. Sigh. I know I can’t expect TV to be anything like real life, but this is a case where it really bugs me.

I also think that Ilsa made the right choice by leaving Rick in Morocco, in another love triangle that polarized its fans.

2. I get really tired of TV shows abusing the will-they/won’t-they plot line for their entire run. Veronica Mars didn’t take this as far as, say, Friends or Scrubs, but it’s really boring to watch an on-again-off-again couple break up and make up countless times over the course of all the years the show airs.

When Veronica and Logan got together in the first season, I dug it. It was a fun tryst. Vulture posted that creator Rob Thomas is Team Logan, or at least felt that way when watching season 1:

“When I started writing the movie, I would get on my treadmill each day and watch an episode,” said Thomas. Eventually, he reached the season-one episode where Veronica and Logan have their first kiss … and he broke down. “I rewound it and I rewound it and then my wife entered and I have tears in my eyes,” Thomas laughed. “It was an embarrassing moment that I’m watching my own work and crying … but it just felt so earned to me!”

But three years later, it was equally earned when Veronica and Piz had their first kiss.

I’m sure this makes sense only to the one or two of you out there who are also Veronica Mars fans (marshmallows? Am I using that right?) but I wanted to put it out there because I’m really excited about the movie. I hope I’ve sided with the team that gets the girl, in the end, but I have my doubts.

Kids, How I Met Your Mother is ending after this season, but the creative team can continue to rest on their laurels even after nine(!) years because the spin-off (How I Met Your Dad) was just picked up.

Viewers met Ted Mosby in 2005 when he decided he was ready to settle down and set off to find himself a wife and he’s been falling for the wrong girl ever since. And notice I don’t say “viewers fell in love with Ted Mosby in 2005” because for its first few seasons, HIMYM was continually on the verge of being cancelled. I personally didn’t start watching until 2009 (as season three was ending) and I remember worrying that the show would end and I would never get to find out how Ted met the mother of his future children.

Obviously, that has not been the case.

Let me say for the record that I genuinely like the show. The characters are charming and likeable, the dialogue is appropriately witty, and what I liked best in the first few seasons was seeing the gang’s comings and goings in New York City because I’d just come home from my third trip to the city and I secretly wished I could live in NYC and see Barney’s one man off-Broadway show.

How the final season is structured is interesting – it’s pretty clear (to me, anyway) that the final moment of the show will be Ted meeting his future Mrs. (maybe we’ll even learn her name.) We’ve been invested in many (many) of Ted’s previous relationships, so to make sure we have the same investment in this relationship, we’re not being denied the important moments – we’re seeing them in flash-forwards.

Also, every other character on the show meets the mother before Ted does. I really dig the way they’re introducing her into the gang – it’s just as important that she fits in with the other characters; I respect that the writers found a clever way to work that in. It’s cool.

But having said all that, I will probably not watch How I Met Your Dad. Because after nine seasons, I’m really tired of this concept. There are very few TV shows that can go on for nine or ten seasons and still be interesting and pull new tricks out of their hats. HIMYM is not one of them. I don’t remember much from the past three or so seasons because it’s a blur of repeated jokes and story lines.

Also – THOSE POOR KIDS. First, their dad told them a nine-year-long story, and now their mom is going to do the same. And if you were wondering how they’re going to incorporate the kids when the actors look nine years older, they’ve already filmed those scenes. Which makes me wonder if they’re going to keep using the same stock footage of those kids for a new show.

Well, maybe the kids won’t be subjected to a nine-years-long version of the story from their mom’s perspective. I’d be pretty shocked if the spin-off turns out to be as popular as the original, because I doubt I’m the only HIMYM fan who’s burned out on this show. But who knows – maybe it’ll be hugely successful and they’ll just keep making How I Met Your … series indefinitely.

Addendum: It’s been clarified to me that the mother of “How I Met Your Dad” will not be the mother of the same kids; the show will feature an entirely new cast. HOWEVER, I stand by my argument that this is no longer a clever or original premise and I do not intend to watch.

We’re one week in to the new fall TV season, and I’m already behind. My DVR is full of new shows, and I really only made an effort to watch the shows I’m already invested in (like South Park and Parks and Rec and a few others that don’t have “park” in the name.)

The only new show that I took the time to watch was Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (I’m just going to call it “Agents” from here forward, for brevity’s sake, k?) But it actually fits in the category of “shows I’m already invested in” because I’ve seen the movies from the Marvelverse, which spawned the show, and I’m a big fan of Joss Whedon’s other shows, like Buffy and Firefly and Dollhouse.

It’s hard to compare Agents to Whedon’s previous shows because we’ve already met the main character, Agent Phil Coulson, in Iron Man and The Avengers movies. He’s a great character, and I’m glad he’s been revived (or something – his resurrection is being purposefully teased in the pilot episode) but since the viewers are expected to already know him, he’s largely absent from the action so we can get acquainted with the new faces.

And here’s the thing that bothers me about those new faces – while I love that Whedon reliably uses a diverse cast, it’s a little boring that every actor is super fit and thin with a beautifully symmetrical face. Look at those people. Those are supposed to be the office workers and scientists behind the superheroes. Even though this is TV, wouldn’t it be nice if one of the regular cast members wasn’t a size tiny?

Even Dollhouse, which was (on the surface, at least) a high end prostitution ring, featured Miracle Laurie, who’s an average sized woman in a sea of size zeroes. Here’s a nice blog post I found about Miracle Laurie, and making the case for more average and larger sized actors on popular shows.

I don’t want to be too negative about Agents because I did enjoy watching the first episode. It’s very cheesy and comic-book-esque, but it has potential. I am not convinced that Agent Coulson is interesting enough to have a multi-episode, possibly multi-season show centered around him. But we’re only one episode in, so everything could change.

Actually, honestly, I didn’t get really invested in Dollhouse until the final episode of the first season, called “Epitaph 1” – it validates the existence of the show, and it isn’t until this episode that us viewers at home understand what’s at stake. The previous twelve episodes were about beautiful women and a sketchy organization – “Epitaph 1” is about how that organization changed humanity, and identity in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s those issues that hit close to home that give the show meaning.

Likewise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a story about a girl who slays vampires, but more importantly, it’s about being a teenage girl and dealing with peer pressure and crushes and parents. And Firefly is on it’s surface about a man making a living any way he can (which often means resorting to criminal measures) but really it’s about being an outcast, and how people become like family when they’re in close quarters.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has the potential to hit those deeper notes, and to be a more widespread hit than the other shows in the Whedonverse. I’m rooting for him and the show in general … so far, anyway.

Have you been watching John Oliver’s takeover of The Daily Show this summer?

He’s adorable. And British.

But my favorite thing? There’s much more dancing on The Daily Show with John Oliver as host. This is just one example:

IMO, the only thing that Jon Stewart has over John Oliver at this point is interview skills, so when Jon Stewart comes back this fall, here’s the format I’d like to see:

Jon Stewart is still billed as host. John Oliver sits next to him at the desk. Jon Stewart still delivers his fine commentary on current events and the state of the world. Jon Stewart still interviews all the guests.

And in between segments and as they go out for commercial breaks, John Oliver dances.

That will be the perfect news show, don’t you think?

Update: NPR published this interview with John Oliver the same day I published this post.

At least ten years ago (but probably more if I’m really being honest) my little sister and I watched an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? with a round of “Props” where this happens:

Brad says to Wayne “our igloo have cable now.”*

And all these years later, Allegra and I still quote that line to each other and we still laugh about it.

And all these years later, the crew is back with a new season and a new face in the host’s chair (Aisha Tyler – the voice of Lana on Archer where she serves as the love interest and foil to Archer (Jon Benjamin).)

She’s a funny lady, and it’s really nice to see a woman in the host’s chair (also, a few reviewers have said that she does a little improv in coming episodes, so I’m excited to see that.) Here’s what she had to say about the reboot in an interview with Glamour magazine:

Do you think the reboot is going to be different from the original, or are you trying to stay close to the tried-and-true format?
Aisha Tyler: I think a little bit of both. People who love the original show will be happy to see that Ryan, Wayne, and Colin are back, so there’s a lot of familiar elements for the viewers. But there are also a lot of new games and guest improvisers. So to me, there’s a good balance of the old and the new. The one thing is that a lot of people who watched the show never watched it on TV. They saw it on the internet. There’s a huge crop of young viewers who watched the show on YouTube, so we have this whole new group of fans who have a passion for improv. I think they’re going to get the best of both worlds.

I respect the direction the direction the show’s creators are heading with this – I agree with Tyler that they’re finding a nice balance between having the familiar faces and bits with the new elements, and they have an understanding for how viewers are watching now (mostly in small doses, i.e. YouTube clips.) Also, Wayne Brady was tweeting with fans during the premiere! That was definitely not a thing during the show’s original run.

It’s a little jarring to see Ryan, Colin, and Wayne looking so much older, but they’re as funny as ever. I can’t believe there were doubters who questioned whether they’d still be funny twelve years later. That’s not a real question.

The real question is … will Jon Benjamin be a guest star?

*P.S. here’s the clip with the igloo bit if you’d like to watch the whole thing.