"Who ARE these people?"

Ok, let's see. With so much tv happening these days, I keep getting overwhelmed and putting off posts that I want to write until it's pretty much too late to write them. So I'm just gonna make a list of points and go down it, as I am wont to do.

- After re-watching last week's Community, I take back whatever I said about it in my last post. It was great. Everyone was great. The Chang part was a little weird, but I'm past it. Omar was great, like always. Danny Pudi's facial expressions and Donald Glover's line delivery were, like always, the best. Strike that and reverse it, and they're still The Best. "Second paintball."

- I have watched the first two episodes of House out of curiosity but man have they lost me now. I really just don't have time for the same old bullshit and House's hair is ugly and although I find Charlene Yi charming she is a terrible actress and not made for network tv and really that show is just SO BAD! So bad.

- How I Met Your Mother is actually getting better this season! I mean, it's still not up to Swarley par, but it's much better than last year. Bringing Kal Penn on was a great idea, and definitely brings some tension to the Barney's wedding plot point even though obviously Barney and Robin are getting married but also obviously they have to do something interesting to get us there. So. Good news! Also loving the Ducky Tie. That whole episode was great and boobariffic and would have been perfect had it not been for Victoria whom I despise.

"See You Next Fall"

I'm so sorry it's been a whole week since my last post. But this is my third job, and the only one I don't get paid for, and it just so happens that my other two jobs are also culminating in these last two weeks of May, meaning that I barely had time to watch all the season finales this week, much less write about them. So - here's another big-ass Sunday morning post, just for you.

How I Met Your Mother

Not a bad episode, overall. Kind of a nothing plot leading up to the so-called cliffhanger, but that's 6th season HIMYM for you. Even Chi McBride and Dave Foley, two of my favorites, couldn't really do anything to help the episode beyond just being in it because the writing wasn't there. I did really like Barney and Robin coming together to keep Ted from getting back together with FJM, but the above picture may be the best thing to come out of the whole episode. I thought the pregnancy reveal was illogical and un-clever - just because you're a television character doesn't mean you would continually return to a restaurant that makes you sick (and Marshall & Ted's favorite pizza joint doesn't count - they were in COLLEGE). If that were true it would make humans dumber than the animals that don't eat monarch butterflies because they look like other, poisonous butterflies. So.

Robin and Barney are going to get together eventually, like I predicted. The problem with this is that it was already a cliffhanger two seasons ago - but then the writers freaked out and had NO IDEA how to handle their relationship and concocted the dumbest breakup story ever. I'm pretty sure that episode was the shark-jumper for me. Oh, sure, there have been great moments since then, but the overall quality of the show has been in decline ever since. The truth is that I can't really get completely behind any CBS show these days - and the new fall lineup doesn't show any improvement (except that new show with Ben Linus! That I will watch). It's just such milquetoast, hypocritical programming - they're afraid to do anything edgy in their comedies, but have gotten progressively more disgusting and disturbing with their crime procedurals. I love Bill Irwin and all (my mom went to clown school with him) but his SEASONS-LONG storyline on CSI has sucked almost all of the fun out of it - though most of the blame should be laid at Laurence Fishbourne's feet. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I miss Numb3rs, and I miss the days when HIMYM felt like it was getting away with something. Now it just feels like a show that comes on before Two And A Half Men reruns that doesn't give NPH nearly enough to do.

Your Summer Watching List

It's summertime, y'all! Maybe not officially, but it's sunny and warm here more days than most and the kids I work with are starting to go ca-razzy (thanks, Tom Haverford), so that means that summer is upon us. Ron Swanson gets what I'm talking about. And you know what they say, April showers bring May season finales, so as all of the great and terrible shows from this year start to end my mind looks ahead to the wasteland of nights with nothing new to watch. Oh, sure, you could do something silly like go outside in the summer, but once you're tired of that or the fog starts rolling in or if you live in a place where it actually gets too hot to go outside, well...that's what this list is for. It's a reminder of shows you may have forgotten about or put off watching until you had the time, and of the shows that will be airing new episodes this summer that are worth checking out. And, IMO, summer is a time for shows that are silly, lighthearted, and not too thinky (unless you're Mad Men, but there's no new Mad Men until NEXT YEAR. *SOB* Blame the effing bureaucrats.). That's why you'll find Wipeout on the list, but not Breaking Bad (which is too dark, depressing, and gruesome for me any time of year, thankyouverymuch), along with some of my favorite shows that I haven't gotten a chance to talk about on here yet.

Away we go!

"I know you guys love some A. Wang!"

I don't usually write about reality TV. The truth is I don't watch that much of it (Top Chef, RuPaul's Drag Race, ANTM, The Fashion Show) on a regular basis - I like the competitive shows way more than faux-life shows like The Real Housewives. Those shows would be much more interesting to watch if I could actually hear most of what they're saying, but all the most interesting, crucial parts get bleeped and that is just boring. But really, if I was going to write about anything right now, it should probably be RPDR, the best reality show of all time. But I'd like to save my gushing over amazing, fabulous drag queens (and Sutan, whose Tyra impersonation looked a whole lot like the above picture) for once we get closer to the Drag Race finale.

Now, normally I leave all ANTM blogging to Rich at fourfour. But I just found out (literally, just now when I went there to get the link) that he is not doing his famed recaps anymore. I am heartbroken. It's almost the entire reason I read his blog at all, I mean...I like some of his other posts but when he gets into music reviewing I'm just like zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. And the gifs! Oh, how the gifs will be missed. But really I think that someone needs to call Tyra on her megalomanaical shit, so, for at least this first episode, that's what I'm gonna do.

From the beginning, Tyra is clear that the theme of this season is making girls cry. Not that that hasn't been the theme of every season, but this year it's explicit - because the fashion industry is mean, panel is allowed to be as cruel and hope-crushing as possible. This starts at casting, where the 14 finalists are tricked into thinking that they've been eliminated. I could see how that would suck until they find out they're in the house, but HOW MUCH WORSE is it for the girls who were told that they were continuing and allowed themselves to be happy about it and then walked of with the Jays and were told it was all a trick and Tyra didn't love them? So much worse. Everything on this show is about Tyra, in case you've forgotten in the few months since Ann won.

Speaking of Ann, how tragic is it that we have to look at that god-awful Cover Girl photo of hers every week? I'm still pissed they didn't give it to Kayla.