Where Are They Now?: HIMYM

The antiquated way of sneakily asking, what would Neil Patrick Harris do, I decided to go exploring the outside jobs of our cast members; starting with How I Met Your Mother. Do Ted (Josh Radnor) and the Mother know each other offscreen? How many fan sites exist for Alyson Hannigan (Lily)? Who else thinks Cobie Smulders (Robin) should just take up modeling?

What the fans report.

Josh Radnor: After premiering his latest Sundance directorial project, Liberal Arts, last year, our Ted stayed faithful to his leading man How I Met Your Mother project. He only took one break for the little known—though hardly straight-to-Redbox fodder—romance Afternoon Delight in January 2013. Josh stays so committed!

Cobie Smulders: The woman with a full plate. Or four. Breaking in to the world of Marvel upped her exposure and her acting dexterity. She’ll begin touring press setups for her role in The Delivery Man, out October 2013, in addition to her three other film appearances in the coming two years: They Came Together, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and The Avengers 2 (2015).

Jason Segel (Marshall): We’ve seen our funny man in a few other projects outside the series, by now, but I’m zoomed in on the latest come-up for the actor. That’s right. I don’t even need to say it. Okay, I will—the Muppets sequel “The Muppets…Again!” We’re dying for the release, right?
Don’t miss the comedy apocalypse parody This Is The End, either, starring Segel and the common Hollywood comedy crowd, coming soon!

Alyson Hannigan: ...is sticking to the series! She isn’t doing much besides taking care of her one and only during the HIMYM taping, though that doesn’t halt the number of dedicated fan and character websites on the Internet. Thanks, Buffy!

Neil Patrick Harris: Besides the countless TV appearances and hosting gigs this man gets, he’s travelling in the post-production hustle and bustle of both The Smurfs 2 and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. I know…there’s a sequel. Currently, he’s filming A Million Ways to Die in the West, out in 2014. More details on that flick later.

The H Virus: How to survive the Hiatus Apocalypse

It’s that hazy time of year: the gap between the end of fall-airing seasons and the start of summer one-hit-wonders, trials and errors and all in between. The desolate darkness reserved only for repeats you don’t like.
It’s…hiatus season.

Don’t worry—as we’ve survived the other three sitcom seasons, we’ll survive this one. TV’s winter. But how? Well, to hibernate in your living rooms and man-caves properly, you need supplies and an itinerary (and maybe an artillery, depending on how gung ho you get).

Based on experienced accounts from other, well-worn shows, I can offer you this lasting advice:

1. Watch like shows.

Repeats will make you stir-crazy; never forget the looming series premiere. You’ll go nuts. Watch shows with similar humors for the fresh entertainment.
Based on Netflix recommendations:
Like How I Met Your Mother? Watch Rules of Engagement.
Like New Girl? Watch 2 Broke Girls.

Like The Big Bang Theory? Watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

And get a Netflix account. It’s the price of a movie ticket.

2. Collect show swag.

Being surrounded the comforts of sets can assuage the pain left where your heart used to beat. To remind you The Mother is just one summer away, look into purchasing The Yellow Umbrella for your foyer. Or The Ducky Tie for on the job. Or The Bazinga Poster.

To remind you you’ll get your sense of feeling and sentimental attachment back again.
Bazinga.

3. Read.

Arm yourselves with the world’s greatest weapons: books. Sci-fi (maybe educate yourself on some of TBBT’s never-ending references!), romcom, or thought-provoking, soul-searching titles, all exist on the page as well as the LED screen.
Or, by reading, you could just pull up those individual Wikia pages one more time. Yeah.

4. Go out with friends.

Remind your friends you exist by tagging along with them the next time they go to your favorite local coffee shop. Maybe downstairs to your regular Irish bar for a drink. Then to the comic book store with your latest paycheck.
…Just try not to start sobbing in public this time.

What was the present?

What was the present?

What was the present?

Anyone else wonder if a ring box could fit in that packaging?

Thanks to Howard’s help, Stephen Hawking offered Leonard a spot on his four-month voyage to the North Sea to try and prove one of his theories. (Guess Sheldon didn’t have as big a “friend” connection.) While Leonard makes his plans to go abroad for the term, the other roommates and significant others act accordingly:

Sheldon: discovers jealousy. Penny teaches him how to overcome the catty voice in his brain and how to do what’s right—and how to score a toothpaste commercial. Still, I wonder if the career move foreshadows something else on the horizon for Sheldon’s future?

Penny: realizes she’ll have to maintain what she did when the flat studied in the North Pole mid-series. The three-month stint left them bearded, and her bored, but if she could manage that then, I’m sure she can manage this loss now.

Just about the rest of the apartment were preoccupied with Raj’s plot twist happening behind closed doors.

Trying to slowly introduce Lucy to all his friends, Raj overstepped his boundaries and over-fussed Lucy’s social anxiety.
Protip: don’t make such a big deal about social anxiety. Act like Amy and treat said person just as that—a person. Not a pedestal-propped spectacle.
Unfortunately, Raj learned his lesson the hard way and, for all his doting, Lucy decided the relationship was “just too much” via text-message at Leonard’s farewell affair. I expected a hero rush back, personally, but Raj instead spent the last five minutes reflecting. And reflecting. And reflecting.
The good news is, after six seasons and countless bottles of beer, Raj can celebrate his own converse achievement: he can talk to women! Or, at least, Penny, Bernadette, and Amy.

The next season premiere will tell us if Raj can win his “perfect” girl back. I think Lucy’s worth the rekindling, don’t you?
And for the love of all that is good, CBS, how dare you not tell us what was in Leonard’s gift?! How?

"You're not your father. You're me."

And because I’m not a big bad Fox subscriber, it looks like I’m crashing Winston’s birthday instead of Elaine’s wedding. Though we do get a decent preview of her lovely…ah…adornments.

Morning-after-Nick (see, getting better with the name thing) tries his hardest to impress Jess right off the bat—until her father shows up on their doorstep. Today of all days, no less. For Elaine’s wedding, no less.
On Winston’s birthday, no less.

While Jess spends the morning scrambling for her friends and co-workers, Nick and her father find themselves bonding into the afternoon; and panicking when he finally reveals he slept with Jess. While the father’s reaction wasn’t what I’d assumed it’d be (I thought he’d be the cricket and/or baseball bat wielder), his actual opinion bruised worse than a club to the head: that Nick was just like him, and that he wasn’t good enough for his own daughter.
Sobs.

But a family crisis calms down a middle school class of rowdy, law-abusing adolescents wonderfully. I wonder what Miguel’s car looks like.

Elaine, driven up the wall by her family’s enthusiasm, barely makes it through the first get-together before finding the end of her fuse. Taking Jess’ advice and napping post-Henna tattoo, she wakes to find the tattoo beautifully adorning her fingers, palms, and wrists…and face.
Winston notices first, running errands on his hitherto-forgotten birthday, and we leave the episode with little more reassurance than a doting fiancé can offer. At least we know in the finale preview she gets the ink off somehow. It isn’t with olive oil.

And Schmidt and Elizabeth repair their college relationship in the nick of time (zing) to share with roof with his roommate, Jess, and, ultimately, Winston. I’m glad they pretended to remember Winston’s birthday in the end, poor guy.
Then again, he got to buy a whole sheet cake to eat himself. I’ve never had the guts.

There She Is: HIMYM Season Finale

There we have it. There she is.
And yet, only a network like CBS can give us so many answers and leave us with so many more questions. All at once.
I’m sitting here in my living room in shock.
I don’t know whether or not to be excited or wary.
I feel a lot of both.

This has been the fullest half hour in recent memory.

When Marshall visits his mother for a week in Minnesota with Marvin, he spends the days assuring Lily his mother won’t make good on her idle threats to change their plans to move to Rome.
He never expected he’d be the person behind the plot twist.

Towards the end of the trip, he receives an offer for a last-minute Judgeship opening in NYC. Bent on the hard decision, we leave off discovering Marshall accepted the title; and hasn’t told Lily. If Lily’s free to pursue the highlight of her career, so is Marshall—but a year away from Marvin?
“Your Honor?”

Ted finishes the repairs on the house—only to break the news to Lily that he’s moving to Chicago after the wedding and, once again, to confess that he’s moving because he can’t stay in New York while he feels the way he does for Robin.
Moving on isn’t the same as letting go. But that’s okay.
Although he puts his wise words at risk, damning the Universe last episode, when he learns the locket Robin so searched for (and found…drunk) had been with him the whole time. I’m iffy about the locket being a gift. Hope he gets to Farhamption station in enough time.

And now to break down the plot twists in consecutive order, because I can’t process them properly without screaming:

1. TED HAS THE LOCKET.

2. MARSHALL IS A JUDGE.

3. WE SAW THE MOTHER WITH BOOTS AND THE UMBRELLA AT FARHAMPTON STATION.

4. AAAAHHH.

This season is just about legen…wait for it…married.