Awesome Protection

It’s true; How I Met Your Mother has been my most recent preoccupation, with the final episodes drawing closer and closer. But with all the wedding hype, I nearly forgot the most important plot twist of the season!
Well, arguably the most important. Certainly the most important for any other aspiring bro readers out there, and a topic I’ve covered a few times with only the most hopeful avail.

The Cool TV Props store knows what a fan wants when they see it, and so they bring you—after a much-anticipated wait—the BroBib! Frustrated in the least that the original website didn’t have actual bibs for sale? I was, I wanted to drool in style like Barney Stinson. But Cool TV Props delivered, and they have this to say:

“Brobibs. Bibs, for bros. This isn’t your average dude apron—Brobibs are the convenient catcher any self-respecting gentleman uses dressing up for the day. The Classic design, obviously in three-piece suit attire, helps you “suit up!” while you sit down for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Take one to the dining room and one to the conference room; then bring one along for your co-worker, too.”

The only thing they may not be good for is being the Center of Attention. If you’re not wearing the bib, that is. Robin Scherbatsky found this out the hard way, trying to make Barney jealous surrounded by un-bro-ed peers. Little did she know Barney toted the greatest idea in a century in his briefcase! Now every bro can grab a suit they can drool over, or spill their beer on, or smother in wing sauce.
The point? It’s in style.

The Cool TV Props BroBib comes in the Classic style…of Barney Stinson, that is. Tie look familiar? That’s because it’s among Barney’s most notably worn. You could say its even legen…
No, no, I won’t make that joke yet again.

…dary.

Don't Answer That

Well. Ted branched out.

Ted found his current squeeze catching up on his leather-cuff-shopping and discovered in quite a short amount of time he wasn’t into the “hipster” scene. To be fair, you can be young without being young. And when Barney has to tell you pretending to be someone else is “embarrassing,” you’re likely being truly embarrassing.
Until it comes to Star Wars; Star Wars is timeless.

“Nothing about weird poets, or buildings, or any of those e-mails with the weird subject line ‘Food for thought’.”

Barney discovers he can’t live without pursing one night stands during his engagement “detox”—even if it means pursuing hot girls vicariously through Ted. Talk about being a wingman.

Plot twist of the night? In happenstance worthy of Shakespeare, Barney discovers Ted’s love interest is none other than his half-sister. I could see a few resemblances: the blonde hair, the late nights, the obsessiveness. I would have been more worried about Barney’s end-of-the-episode wedding antics if I wasn’t more concerned about his tick-like winking. But I suppose some questions are better left unanswered.

Robin, as opposed to being someone else for the world, finds that being her current—engaged—self has its cons. In nerd, it makes her “not precious.” Though by the end of the show, she discovers the true ‘glow’ of the whole affair. And I don’t mean the way she sneaks into getting a beer at the bar.

Ted isn’t the only one with leather-cuff success; the cuff’s “bad boy” grandeur has an affect on Lily. At least now they’ve found a way to make their post-baby lives a little more exciting, a refreshing change from other episodes.
Lesson learned: a leather cuff isn’t the only thing that makes a husband sexy to his wife. Or a man to a minor.

“Retraction-five!”

When it came town to it, we saw ourselves an episode where two women couldn’t see the bar, two men had certain—varied—reactions, and I’m one episode closer to Robin and Barney’s long-awaited wedding. 

Every Quote I Learned In Life...

Does anyone else have the one show—or movie, or book—they quote tirelessly and without end? I shamelessly do:  F.R.I.E.N.D.S! The “friends” that stayed by my side through my childhood on.

For our resplendent Saturday, fans demanded another round of guess-the-quote, starring the F.R.I.E.N.D.S sitcom series! Try your hand at placing these funnies. No peeking now!

Q:

"Some girl ate Monica!!!"

"Shut up! The camera adds 10 pounds."
"Oh. So how many cameras are actually on you?"

A: Joey, Monica and Chandler in The One With the Prom Video

Q:

"Hey, you guys in the living room all know what you want to do. You know, you have goals. You have dreams. I don't have a dream."
"Ah, the lesser-known 'I don't have a dream' speech."

A: Chandler and Ross in The One With the Stoned Guy

Q:

"What the hell does a paleontologist need a beeper for?"
"Is it, like, for dinosaur emergencies? 'Help! Come quick, they're still extinct!'"

 A: Joey and Monica in The One With the Ick Factor

Q:
"Oh! Sorry, did I get you?"
"NO, you didn't get me! It's an electric drill! You get me, you kill me!"

A: Chandler and Joey in The One With Frank Jr.

Q:
"Thank you for my beautiful earrings, they're perfect. I love you."
"Oh, now you can exchange them if you want, okay?"
"Now I love you even more."

A: Rachel and Ross in The One With the Two Parties

If more concrete life-lessons are your thing, you’d be amiss not to check out the Everything I Learned In Life I Learned From Friends poster! More than quotes, the poster shares the craziest, crass, and most-cherished life lessons based on the episode events. Take a look and reminisce about much more than a five-question quiz can supply!

Fans Talk: Monica Geller

When you think neat, organized, unspontaneous, frizzy, fun, kind, caring, your mind probably wanders to your more deranged housecat.
Well, stop that, and start thinking about F.R.I.E.N.D.S femme Monica Geller.

Fans dissect the shining qualities, for good or ill, making up the “mother hen” star of the show. Monica and Rachel’s apartment boasts more scenes than any Manhattan layaway for the entire season run, for good reason. Monica hosts and boasts, bends-over-backwards for her friends and loved ones, and sometimes turns heads trying to win table-tennis tournaments.

Let’s take a closer look at our contortionist, shall we?

“Okay, so I’m responsible, I’m organized, but hey, I can be a kook!”

-- Monica Geller

MoniCAN, not MoniCAN’T: a repeated sentiment by an online Facebook fan, says it best. Monica’s can-do attitude pervades her career and love life. Between restaurant-and-stock-hopping (remember her Moondance Diner days?), she plows ahead, the driving force behind her success, with only her gumption and wit behind that wheel.

“Monica. She’s pretty, she’s sweet, she’s simply amazing. I just love the Geller’s.”

-- xforeverfangirl.tumblr

Left with her label-maker, Monica organizes and prototypes her friends’ lives and luxuries. F.R.I.E.N.D.S fans catch her cleaning in her sleep, or managing her frizzy curls with cornrows. There isn’t a dilemma she can’t ditch.

Including the patch I can’t ignore, if it can even be called a “dilemma” (we’ll stick with change—it indeed did change), the years the ‘friends’ dubbed: “Fat Monica.” Monica indeed weighed more growing up than her Greenwich self, spurred to change by finally hearing Chandler call her “fat” one Thanksgiving (what IS it with Thanksgivings on sitcom shows?). She cut the weight in one year.
Ironically, in The One That Could Have Been, she ended up with Chandler despite her size. A fitting end for that relationship…no pun intended.

As you can see, writing such a short piece on such a complex, amazing character as Monica hardly does her justice. But the fans know her power and don’t cease to remark on her legacy. She is why fans talk.

"Do you believe in Destiny?"

Speaking of weddings, I could point out that spring is just around the corner, and wedding season will soon be as a-flurry as the flower pollen. Yet, given the year and the surviving-the-holocaust, every month shows drastic highs for the wedding industry.

Another landmark—more private, special, closer and dearer to my heart—would be the number of “yellow umbrella” requests.

How they’re related? Well, besides the “wedding” part of the connection, being the infamous How I Met Your Mother conclusion, I mean the landmark in a very literal sense. Wise customers don’t simply purchase the trademark parasols to keep their heads dry.
Reportedly, brides-to-be are buying umbrellas in bulk. Say that ten times fast.

Brides and their wedding planners have an eye on the yellow-umbrella for major wedding components: the theme, the reception, and, more creatively, the wedding pictures! It’s such a neat, statement, classic HIMYM nod…I’m wondering why I didn’t think of suggesting it in the first place.

The cute umbrella obviously serves convenient and functional purposes in one’s life; besides the color, the umbrella comes with more explicit quotes pointing to the program, if your friends need the mental shove. As with the “Mother,” it can keep off the rain off your shoulders, and your bass guitar, on some faraway train station.

But for the nuptial nuances, the umbrella makes an adorable theme highlight and cause for photo ops! Picture this: umbrellas propped in a yellow-adorned reception with the flowers, used near the bride and groom’s seating. Or gathered outside with your new beau, posing in your photo-album spreads with the yellow umbrella, symbolizing both union and fate. Or, as would be the case for your excited brides, calling for umbrellas in the ten’s, one umbrella per bridesmaid for bridal party pictures!

But seriously, how awesome would it be to host a HIMYM themed wedding? I’d call it nothing short of…legendary!

The Wedding

I still wonder if Barney and Robin are literally “uncle” and “aunt”? Time will tell come Ted’s own wedding!

The episode begins, however, with The Wedding. Barney and Robin’s wedding, that is, along with the clash of the wedding planners, Lily and Ted.
I should have assumed an architect would have a knack for color coordinating.

After the engagement, we learn Barney never asked Robin’s father for his daughter’s hand. Turns out, her father transformed from “frightening” to “fun” in his mid (ehem, very late late) life-crisis. It still didn’t make Barney’s asking for permission any easier; even his “fun” hair color didn’t grant him the respect he sought.

The episode’s debatable topic? The Facebook Request. To accept or not to accept a parental Facebook request? Do we want to see what’s behind that “door?”
Robin probably didn’t, how necessary it was. As it turned out, her father—a rather hypocritical one right now, life crisis aside—already married the Carol so responsible for his claim to “fun.”
And here I thought this episode would be fun and light-hearted.

I’ll be honest—a large part of the episode revolved around the same wedding planning woes. I was beginning to wonder.
Or, did, until Ted revealed he didn’t fully support Barney and Robin’s union. As revealed prior to the engagement, for a split second in the car, Ted realized he felt even worse about letting Robin go.

And then Lily let out her frustrations toward parenthood, shooting this episode from funny and quirky, if not blatantly stagnant, to horribly sad and…utterly realistic.
Because you can’t always get what you want, no more than you can always go back and reverse what you started.

Ultimately, Robin’s father did apologize to Robin for his error, in a manner. A first, evidently, in her lifetime.

And us yellow umbrella-seekers got another sneak-peek of where Ted finally glimpses: The Bass Player, The Wedding Band, and The Yellow Umbrella.
The Mother.

…Until next Monday.

“Because if Robin and Barney had taken my stupid advice and hired a DJ…I never would have met your mother.”

-- Ted Mosby

"Give Geeks A Chance"

I think we all noticed yesterday’s episode of The Big Bang Theory really examined stereotyping. The writers build the show entirely around stereotype anyway: four “nerds” of four different “classes” spend time across the hall from a “normal,” attractive female.
Now, in reality, the above definitions assume far too much, based on maybe the pilot episode. Any thorough BBT viewer knows they’re anything but totally true. In that regard, the last episode turned all the show’s stereotypes, as we knew them, on their heads.

All the same, I want to touch on the tropes we see in the series, but don’t actively acknowledge. We may see them as “common themes” in movies and TV shows anyplace. I see them as both helpful, and harmful, frames and boxes.

I sourced tvtropes.org for some specific idiom names and came across the most obvious series trope, highlighted by the very show itself: the “Nerd Nanny” trope.

The website explains, “You are one of Two Gamers on a Couch, enthralled by the latest noisy console game…As you are about to deliver the final blow, a mysterious figure steps between you and the television. Who could it be? Oh, it's just your extremely hot female roommate trying to get you to do something other than play video games.”

Or, for a more specific Leonard vs. Penny situation, the “Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl” idiom: “The usual gender stereotype is that guys are physically better…while girls are soft, but nice, or just smart. This averts that stereotype hard (for the most part at least): the guy is the smart but physically inept one and it seems he got himself the company of a girl who most guys would have trouble keeping up with in the first place.”

Either of these sounds familiar? In that they breach the “regular,” overplayed idea of “nerd guy” vs. “hot girl,” they create their own, equally common stereotypes. My questions are these: why would it be so unheard of for a girl to enjoy common “nerd” activities? Why is it hard to imagine that a “nerd” could possess any attractive qualities?

Do you think the last episode conveyed that yes, girls can release their inner geek? Comment with your opinions, and in the meantime, get excited for the next TBBT installment!