Dear me, Cinecultist loves her DVR. We will tell pretty much anyone who asks that the ability to record television no-muss-no-fuss has totally changed our lives. So it was with extra meta-mirth that we enjoyed "A Quiet Prayer to the Tivo Gods," courtesy of tonight's Super Bowl themed How I Met Your Mother episode.
"All mighty Tivo. We thank you for all the gifts you have given us. The power to freeze live TV to go take a leak is nothing short of god-like. Let's not forget being able to fast forward through commercials. It seems greedy to ask for anything more from you, oh magic box. But if you malfunction and miss the Super Bowl, we will destroy you in the alley with baseball bats. Amen."
Monday night is a good night for television if HIMYM is on; Cinecultist was happy to hurry home tonight through the bitter cold knowing a new episode was waiting for us in our recorder. However, Monday is also the night that Aaron Sorkin tortures us with a new installment of Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip. Lordy, this show gets worse and worse. As of last week, we were but a hair's breath away from declaring Sorkin, a man who brought us the joy that was Sports Night, dead to us.
At the beginning of the season, we often defended the series out of affection for Sorkin as well as some of the cast members like Amanda Peet, Sarah Paulson and Bradley Whitford who through sheer force of charisma we thought might propel the program. However, now we realize that this show has dug itself into such a Well of Unlikable that it will never yet again see the light. Every character on this show is such a king sized jerk/fuck up that we can't root for a single one. Have we seen any of these characters do their jobs as well as they supposedly do? We don't even want the two couples to get together and you know that CC is the most incurable of all romantics. And the plot gets more baroque each episode, yet it still doesn't add up to anything substantial. Where are we going here, Sork? Do you, the allegedly OCD TV creator, even know?
Tonight as Danny (Whitford) goes running through the theater yelling out "Jordan" (Peet) because he's realized she's crazy about him, from the note she slipped into his sleeve of course, all we could say, out-loud to the TV no less, was "you've got to be kidding me!" This show tries to pretend it's smarter than such hackney rom com structures, but it's not. It's less smart that even the lamest clich�. Less smart! Even a good Pretenders song over a montage isn't enough to cloud CC's judgement on this one. The other good thing about DVR? You can cancel a series recording mid season and that's our next order of business dear Sork, after we post this entry.
Posted by karen at February 5, 2007 11:12 PM