Playing catch up

Okay, I haven't been keeping up with chronicling my TV watching in the last couple of weeks, so I'm going to consolidate a bit and catch up in a few posts.

First episode of How I Met Your Mother since the strike (the St. Patrick's Day one): It was okay. I didn't really like Ted being a dick. I guess that was kind of the point, but I didn't really find it as funny as it was maybe supposed to be. Also, I may have just forgotten, but I don't think Barney made even one innuendo related to "kissing the Blarney stone". If that was really the case, that was definitely a case of the writers passing up a golden opportunity. That does remind me, I'd been having a few issues with Barney in some pre-strike episodes too. It's like some of the episode writers don't really "get" Barney and so he gets either way too over the top, or just downright stupid. Like they're thinking that as long as they use the word "awesome" a lot, they've covered what Barney is supposed to be. I felt like that was the case in this episode.

And then the Britney episode: For one thing, Sarah Chalke is great and fit in perfectly with the show...probably better than Alicia Silverstone would have. For a second thing, Ted is ridiculously charming and adorable and it's inexplicable that he hasn't found a girl yet, because that 2 minute date was brilliant. I also liked this episode because it had a lot of callbacks to previous episodes, and I really enjoy callbacks...and mustache humor. As far as Britney herself, she was fine, but not amazing. If I had to pick a really great and memorable (at least to me) brief guest star I'd probably go with Tom Lenk as the coffee shop barista in "Swarley" or Alexis Denisof as Sandy Rivers in any of the episodes he was in. Could be I'm just partial to Whedonverse actors though. All in all, I liked it better than the preceding episode and would certainly not be bothered if Sarah Chalke ends up being the mother.