Watching Sitcoms

I know I haven’t been writing about sitcoms too much lately, which is a little sad, since this site is called Watching Sitcoms. I guess there just aren’t too many sitcoms that I like to watch anymore. Maybe there never really were. At least not anytime in the last few years.

There are a couple I still watch, every week, even though I don’t always talk about them, and they are The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother. The last couple of weeks were repeats, and so is this week, which makes me unhappy, cause I do miss them when they aren’t on.

I think part of the problem why I haven’t been blogging about the eps, which were great, is that Mondays are a very busy night. At 8:00 pm, I’m also watching Chuck, House, The Bachelor and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. I’ve basically been DVRing two shows upstairs (Chuck and House) and two shows downstairs (The Bachelor and Big Bang Theory/How I Met Your Mother). I have to DVR The Secret Life when it repeats at 10:00 pm. Of course, I also watch Heroes and True Beauty on Mondays (or at least I DVR them and watch them at some point).

So what that all means is that I end up watching The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother on Tuesday and Wednesday during my lunch hour when I come home from work to eat. So I’m downstairs and not near the computer. I should take notes so I can blog later, but I never do, cause I’m eating.

And that’s really my entire story about why I don’t talk about sitcoms too often. I’ll try to do better.

I got such a kick out of this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother. There were a couple of story lines, one is about Ted and Robin, who are constantly arguing about stuff like not taking out the garbage or drinking all the milk. They can’t figure out why, since they practically lived together when they were dating and they never fought. They decide that the only difference is they were having sex then, so they decide that they need to have sex now. They plan on never telling anyone, but then Marshall walks in on them.

That brings us to another story line. Marshall’s need to find a bathroom where he can “read a magazine” in peace. That really hit home for me, since we’ve all just gotten over the stomach flu here and this was a bad week for magazine reading. Marshall is ashamed (more…)

So I sat down and wrote out a complete schedule of all the shows I want to watch coming up in the next few weeks and I realized something.  I’m not gonna be able to do it.  There just isn’t enough time in the day for it.  Especially since I went back to work full-time.  *sigh*

Here’s the breakdown:

Mondays (7 hours)
8:00 pm - Chuck (NBC), House (FOX), The Secret Life of the American Teenager (ABC Fam), The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
8:30 pm - How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
9:00 pm - Heroes (NBC), The Bachelor (ABC)

Tuesdays - (4 hours)
8:00 pm - 90210 (CW), American Idol (FOX)
9:00 pm - Fringe (FOX)
10:00 pm - Law and Order: SVU (NBC)

Wednesday (2 1/2-3 hours)
8:00 pm - American Idol (FOX), America’s Next Top Model (CW)
9:00 pm - Lost (ABC)

Thursday (4 hours)
8:00 pm - Bones (FOX), Smallville (CW)
9:00 pm - Kitchen Nightmares/Hell’s Kitchen (FOX), Supernatural (CW)

Friday (4 hours)
8:00 pm - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (FOX)
9:00 pm - Dollhouse (FOX), Monk (USA)
10:00 pm - Psych (USA)

That’s over 20 hours of television. There is no way I’m fitting that all in, still working full-time, maintaining two blogs and having a life besides. Some shows are gonna have to go, but I just don’t know which ones. Monday is the worst. I was just coming around to being OK with the fact that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles had been banished to Fridays, mostly because Monday’s wouldn’t be so crowded anymore. Then they moved both House and The Secret Life to the same time slot on Monday. So now its gonna be even harder.

I guess I’ll just have to watch some shows online, since I can only DVR two things at a time. But when will I have time to watch these other shows. They kinda frown upon that sort of thing where I work. (”Gee, boss, I’m sorry, but I didn’t have any other free time to watch The Bachelor. I didn’t think you’d mind.”) *sigh*

I think I’m a TV junkie. I may need help.

New stuff is coming!! Maybe I get too excited about TV, I don’t know, but I can say that I’m happy that some new shows are coming. Well, not actually new, but returning shows with new episodes. And one new show that I care about, anyway. But that’s not until February.

Here’s how the week starts out:

On Monday, January 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm (ET) The Bachelor is coming back to ABC. I’m not a huge fan of reality TV, but some shows I just love and this has turned into one of them. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s all the stupid hot chicks. I guess it makes me feel good to know that they really are idiots. I mean, it wouldn’t be fair if they were all beautiful and young, with great bodies, and smart, too!

Also returning on Monday (more…)

In this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, “Not A Father’s Day” we find Barney worried that some girl he slept is now pregnant and he is a father. Meanwhile, Marshall and Lily are contemplating starting a family.

When Barney founds out that he is not going to be a father, he starts a new holiday, Not a Father’s Day, which be promotes by handing out t-shirts and cigars and initiating men into a type of fraternal order.

On the night they plan to start trying to conceive, Marshall gets tied up at work and Lily sits home fretting about whether or not they are ready to have children. She invites Ted and Robin over to help her decide. They aren’t much help. Ted, who they call already a dad, is all for having a baby, but Robin, who is afraid of babies, is very much against it. There is a fun scene where Lily tells them that she and Marshall had made this big decision to have “dinner” and now she’s not sure if they are ready for “dinner.” And then she tells them that “dinner” is a “baby” and Robin says, oh, that’s terrible. It’s almost like a dumb blond joke.

It gets a little crazier, when Lily gets drunk and winds up at Marshall’s office, just before his big presentation. She starts acting all crazy and tells Marshall she wants him to get her pregnant right then. While he is trying to give his presentation, she is racing up and down the hallway outside of the conference room in a desk chair, shooting off the fire extinguisher and taking off her clothes.

In the end, they decide they probably aren’t ready just yet. Good idea.

Well, I’m like three episodes behind in talking about How I Met Your Mother.

Let’s see, there was “Shelter Island” when Stella’s sister calls off her wedding, just days away, with everything already planned and paid for, and so Stella convinces Ted to go ahead and get married themselves. As can be imagined, it didn’t go well. Ted invites Robin, who quits her job and comes back from Japan, but then Stella wants him to tell to leave. Stella’s ex, Tony, won’t allow their daughter to come, so Ted has to drive back and get her, and then he makes the mistake of inviting Tony. Unfortunately, Stella realizes that she still wants to be with Tony and runs off with him, leaving Ted at the altar, so to speak. It was sad, but I was kinda glad since I didn’t care for Stella that much.

The next ep, “Happily Ever After” has Ted hiding under a table in a restaurant in order to avoid running into Stella. The gang then chats (mostly still under the table) about all the different people they would not want to run into again. Ted finally gets angry, when he realizes that even though Stella was going to make him move to New Jersey, she and her daughter must have moved to New York and are living in Tony’s apartment. So Ted gets up his courage to confront her and show her what a mistake she made by dumping him, and he follows Stella home, only to see her meet up as a happy family with Tony and Lucy. His anger gone, Ted slips away quietly.

I was talking to some friends about shows we watch in common, and it was pointed out to me that I watch a lot of TV. I didn’t really think so, well, I guess I did, but I didn’t think it was that noticable. Anyway, it got me to thinking about (more…)

So sorry I haven’t been around for a bit. The problems between Time Warner and LIN Broadcasting were really crimping my style. As it turns out the only sitcoms I watch are on CBS (The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Gary Unmarried). So that was a real problem. I needed to wait for someone to upload the shows and then I had to find time to watch them other than the time they are actually on, and then I had to care enough to talk about them.

I’ve also been sick for the past couple of weeks. In a bad way. When you add all that up, it basically meant no blogging for me. But the good news is that we have CBS and the CW back!! Yay!! I didn’t think I would miss them so much, but it really messes up your schedule.
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This week we were treated to another fun filled episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Ted feels like he’s spending all his time traveling between New York and New Jersey to see Stella, but he is confident that once they are married, that will all change, because they will be living in his New York apartment. But then he becomes aware that Stella assumes he will move to New Jersey after they are married. There’s just one little problem with that. He hates New Jersey. (He even has a shirt proclaiming so.)

Even so, he convinces the gang to come to New Jersey with him to hang out there. Unfortunately, Stella can’t get a sitter and they are forced to spend the evening in her basement (and the only beer Stella has on hand is some she bought several years back when she was pregnant with her daughter, Lucy).

At this same time, Robin is going through a crisis. (more…)

Thanks to LIN Broadcasting, I no longer have CBS (or the CW) on my TV. They decided to have a disagreement with Time Warner. Apparently, when the contract ran out, since they had not come to an agreement, they pulled their stations. They suck.

What makes me even crazier is that LIN Broadcasting is going around trying to say this is all Time Warner’s fault, when its not. The fault lies entirely with LIN Broadcasting, who demanded more money from Time Warner and then chose to pull the channels from Time Warner’s line up during negotiations. Time Warner doesn’t want consumers to have to pay more money for channels that we can get for free, and I totally agree.
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I watched my second ep of How I Met Your Mother, “The Best Burger in New York.” I feel like I’ve been missing something all this time by not watching this show. Now I’m gonna have to go back and watch them all on hulu or something.

In any case, this ep was just as entertaining, to me anyway, as the last one. I’m still happy that all the jokes aren’t about sex and that the humor isn’t all slapstick or gross. Also, the addition of Regis Philbin was so much fun.
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This year, because I’m a huge glutton for punishment, I decided to watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles again. I watched all of last season, but I really didn’t like it, cause it seemed like every ep was exactly the same. Lots of things blowing up and terminators smashing things. Look, I’m a big fan of blowing stuff up, but I do like a bit of a story line to go along with the blasts.

Last year, I didn’t think Sarah Connor lived up to even that minimal goal. But since I’m a fan of the movies, plus the fact that I like Summer Glau, (oh, and the glutton thing above) I thought I’d give it another chance this season. And, honestly, it’s not that bad. I’m not saying its masterpiece theatre or anything, but this season, three episodes in, I’m really enjoying it. I’m interested in what’s going to happen next.

Maybe I was just too hard on it last year, maybe I expected too much. I did notice that there aren’t as many explosions this year, so maybe that’s it.

One little issue that’s going to cause me a problem is that Monday nights suddenly got full. Last week The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother both started their new season on CBS at 8:00 pm and 8:30 pm, and this coming week Chuck starts back on NBC at 8:00 pm. With Sarah Connor on Fox at 8:00 pm, I’m gonna have to choose, since I can only DVR two things at once. And I can’t watch another station when I’m DVRing two different shows. It’s gonna get tricky.

Maybe I can go somewhere else and watch Sarah Connor.

I’ve only ever seen one or two eps of How I Met Your Mother, back in the beginning, and I wasn’t too impressed. But this ep was pretty good. Maybe because it was so Barney-centric (and I’m madly in love with Neil Patrick Harris since Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog), and there was a whole fun Star Wars thing going on, too. (By the way, how can anyone hate Star Wars? I was just a kid in 1977 and I can remember going to the theater with my sister and brother-in-law to see it. My sister was pregnant and the baby, my as yet unborn nephew, always got excited when they saw it and kicked and kicked. He’s a total geek today, too!)

Anyhow, the ep was about Barney, who is in love with Robin, telling Lily and asking for her help. Lily does her best to set them up and Barney does his best to act like a human being so that Robin will take him seriously. In the end, however, Robin, thinks he was just being nice, so to be nice back, she sets Barney up with a young bimbo waitress.

The other story line revolved around Ted who is worried he doesn’t know Stella, the women is going to marry, at all and worse yet, that she doesn’t like Star Wars, his very much all time favorite movie. Clearly, he can’t marry her if she doesn’t. She tells him she loves it, but then admits to Marshall that she really didn’t like it. (She calls Chewbacca a “talking bear.”) But when asks her, “Do you think you can pretend to like a movie you hate for the rest of your life?” She says, “I do.”

See, its stuff like that that makes a good comedy. Sure, there were the gratuitous sex jokes, but they didn’t dominate the show. I think I’m gonna have to give this show another chance, so I will be watching next week.

I’m so excited cause Big Bang Theory will be back on Monday, September 22, 2008. Finally a sitcom I can watch and talk about instead of all these other shows I’ve been reviewing, cause, well, I have to talk about something, right?

Not only is Big Bang Theory back starting at 8:00 pm ET, but CBS is also following with the season premieres of How I Met Your Mother, Two and Half Men and the series premiere of Worst Week. I know where I’ll be Monday night.

This is actually a big week for the sitcom, as Wednesday night, September 24, marks the season premiere (also on CBS) of The New Adventures of Old Christine at 8:00 pm ET, and the series premiere of Gary Unmarried at 8:30 pm ET. They are joined on Wednesday nights by the already started Til Death at 9:00 pm and Do Not Disturb at 9:30 pm on FOX.

Then on Thursday, September 25, we have the season premiere of My Name is Earl on NBC at 8:00 pm ET, followed by another new episode of Earl at 8:30 pm ET, and then the hour-long season premiere of The Office at 9:00 pm ET.

I know people keep saying the sitcom is dead, and maybe that’s true of the good old fashioned family sitting in the living room with their TV dinners watching together kinda sitcom, but perhaps there’s a new form of situation comedy for now.

Another new show that’s premiering this week, which is not a sitcom, but I wanted to mention anyway, is The Mentalist, which airs on Tuesday, September 23 at 9:00 pm ET on CBS. Apparently, its the story of a former fake psychic who uses his heightened observation abilities to assist the police in solving crimes. Can you say Psych, anyone?

On CBS, there are a few returning sitcoms and two new ones.

One new comedy is Gary Unmarried, which premieres on Wednesday, September 24 at 8:30 pm ET.  The show stars Jay Mohr and Paula Marshall.  Gary Barnes is a recently single painting contractor, who, after 15 years of marriage to his controlling wife, Allison, now faces post-divorce life as they each embark on new relationships and share custody of their two children, played by Laura Marano and Ryan Malgarini.
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