By Amy Van Veen (Contributer) – Email
With NBC and Thursday night’s CBS taking a break this week, the TV load was a little easier to manage. All of the remaining shows this week elicited a strong bellow of laughter from even the most cynical audience member. For those who don’t think the line-up is funny enough, ABC announced the spring premiere date of their new half hour comedy Happy Endings.
HIMYM has been a little lacking in the past few weeks and as a result, a panicky ache has been growing that the best years were behind this quintuplet’s guffaw-inducing charades. Fear not, audience members! This week is possibly the funniest it has been all season. There were some sweet emotional bits that included Barney finally having real feelings for Nora, especially after he gets sick and she nurses him back to health, neti pot and all. Even sweeter is how the entire gang follows Marshall’s lead to get their heart checked, and when a fearful Barney goes accompanied by Lily, she finds out the lying truth of his date with Nora. She wants to get married, have babies, live in a little house with a climbing tree and everything Barney has vowed against as a man about town and Barney, being Barney, lies and agrees with all of the above. We even get a taste of everyone else’s secrets when he blackmails them into lying to Nora about his dreams and future as well. There is an inevitable twist, thanks to the always observant Lily, in regards to Barney’s true feelings. As already mentioned, that was cute, but the real laugh out loud hilarity comes from Robin’s new boyfriend. She was going to get a dog, but when the gang talked her into getting a boyfriend instead, she brings home Scooby. He chases his tail. He hangs his head out of the car window. He catches Frisbees with his mouth. Smells out food. Chases squirrels in his garden. Gets his shots. Sits. And allows for a plethora of pun-tastic moments at McLaren’s. It gets even better, if it could get any better, when Scooby brings “sandwiches” for everyone to smoke and then escapes. It’s one of those episodes that needs to be watched and then re-watched.
Mad Love is getting a little better. The whole Kate and Ben thing is a little hard to differentiate from Ted and the mother thing, especially since Sarah Chalke is the same Stella who broke Ted’s heart. However, Larry and Connie make every episode ten times better than if it was just two people falling madly in love. This week, Connie plans Kate’s birthday, or KateFest, which she’s been doing ever since the two of them met in elementary school and they both missed a trip to the planetarium. This year’s theme? The Kate Gatsby. Kate is a name that sounds like a lot of other words, which is why the parties have been so successful. Ben thinks he has gotten her the perfect gift, but when he buys her something painfully predictable and Larry’s SkyMall solution doesn’t cut it, he has to get creative. After Kate lets it slip that Connie has a tendency to become Partyzilla, the two stop talking and KateFest becomes Fest. In the end, Connie is an epic flapper, Larry figures out how he knows Connie, and “you can never go wrong with a speaker that looks like a rock”.
Even though American Idol messed up FOX’s TV sitcom orientation for this week, Raising Hope’s Burt and Virginia made it better by being in the audience for just the right transition from singing predictability to secrets and gossip in the Chance family. Any time Virginia’s got some good gossip, she makes her gossip face which the guys are quick to pick up on. Unfortunately, things get complicated when Virginia is two weeks late on her gas bill because she’s two weeks late on another thing. She and Burt try to keep the possible unexpected news from their son, who they love to bug about unplanned pregnancy more than anything. When Virginia’s at the free clinic, though, she runs into Sabrina and those fabric walls they put up between the beds are not exactly sound proof. After Jimmy finds out about Virginia’s scare, though, she has no reason to keep her face from gossiping up about Sabrina’s own scare, which leads Sabrina to blackmail her. Maw-Maw’s moment of lucidity leads the family to vote for Burt to get the snip, which leads into another drama involving Jimmy and a razor and his father and some sedatives. At the dinner table, though, Burt’s question for gossip leads Virginia to share her own secret, the loss of their sex tape somewhere in town, which means they need to get to the bottom of Sabrina’s scare. In the end, Burt likes “flinking”, which is floating and thinking at the same time, Virginia and Sabrina are now gossip buddies, and the worst four words between men is “Surprise! It’s vasectomy day!”
Traffic Light was rudely pushed to Wednesday just because of some singing reality show, but it’s still holding strong to both comedy and heart. Adam will only keep his job if he gets a highbrow interview with Prince Harry, but when he finds out that Callie has a few parking tickets, things snowball into awkwardness. Turns out she’s $40 000 in debt, which is told in a happy lavender bubble bath place and improved with ice cream. Adam isn’t sure if he can get past something so opposed to his worldview. Ethan, on the other hand, is dating a crazy and uses her cat as an excuse to get rid of her while Mike takes the morning shift with Tommy. He’s always had the night shift which has been a dream since he’s a deep sleeper – cue flashback to Ethan and Adam playing with deep sleeping Mike – but the morning shift also means being the only daddy at Mommy Morning Group. His new social atmosphere also gives him some insight on Ethan’s crazy girlfriend Esme, who killed her cat in order to be with Ethan. Callie’s parking ticket fiasco leaves Adam without a car to get to his interview with the prince, which leads her to try to save the day by bluffing their way into a royal party. After an awkward moment of truth and a classic Adam move of asking for forgiveness, Adam gets his story and swallows his pride to pay the Callie Tax, which is a tax he has to pay in order to be with someone as awesome as her. Mike’s Mommy Group dream is shattered when a soldier dad comes home from his tour and Ethan gets jumped by Esme. From a tree. It’s epic.
Next: The Middle, Mr. Sunshine & a preview of Happy Endings!
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