Black Sheep does TV: HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER Season 7

I think it was somewhere around the fourth or fifth season of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, that I started truly disliking Ted Mosby, the ensemble show's pseudo protagonist. In fact, I may have even tweeted that he was a douche. It wasn't his constant punning or need to educate the world about architecture that bothered me. No, it was more that he purported to be the champion of chivalry and romantic love in a modern society that seems to scoff at these very notions any chance it gets, when in reality, Ted was barreling through woman after woman with very little care for their well-being on his grand quest to find the one.

Ted (Josh Radnor) needed a serious reality check and I am happy to see that, in the show's seventh season, now available on DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Ted finally gets what he deserves. In fact, it has been some time since I've seen one show take all of its characters to the next level of their development so seamlessly. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER has shown in the past that it knows very well how to balance big laughs with life's more painful moments, from the passing of Marshall's (Jason Segel) father to Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) finally finding his. This latest season foregoes some of these larger monumental life events for some of the necessary changes that come naturally with time. This group of friends (rounded out of course by Alyson Hannigan's Lily and Cobie Smulders's Robin) couldn't bumble along blissfully forever without changing in one way or another and this season faces that head on.

In their seventh season, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER grows up. Even that douche, Ted Mosby, realizes that he's spent all this time looking for the woman of his dreams, but that he perhaps still isn't even ready to have her in his life. As Ted turns 34, being single and not having the family life he's always dreamed of, takes its toll on him. It becomes harder to find the faith that everything is going to work out in the end, that his dreams will really come true. The impetus is to give up and perhaps accept that life has other plans in mind but this is actually the time to hold true to what he most wants. After all,  Ted knows better now than he ever did what exactly that is.

Review copy provided by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

AMERICAN REUNION

AMERICAN REUNION
Written and Directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
Starring Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan and Seann William Scott

I never went to my high school reunion. It wasn’t because I was so insanely popular in high school that I didn’t need to belittle myself by making an appearance. Nor was I such an incredible outcast that I would be too afraid to show my face. I was simply sick the night it was happening. One could suggest this was psychosomatic but regardless, there was no getting more than ten feet away from my washroom that night. That said, I’m not sure I would have gone even if I was feeling well. I certainly would have seriously considered it though if it meant getting a fat pay check at a point in my career when I desperately needed it. Welcome to AMERICAN REUNION.

It has been 13 years since the first AMERICAN PIE film hit theatres and announced to parents everywhere that their kids were into some weird stuff. Since that point though, things have mellowed to the point of tired, cliched monotony. Jim and Michelle (Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan) have gone from fun with flutes and pies to baby duty and solitary sex in separate bedrooms. And the rest of the gang isn’t doing any better. Everyone has some form of overdone problem to overcome, from issues with success to general lack of direction. There is even another boring marriage; it’s different though because they at least have sex and are still bored. Naturally, everyone needs a break from life and a trip to simpler times. There is no better cure for adult problems like resorting back into childlike behaviour and getting plastered in the process.

The reason I might have maybe made myself sick in my own head before my reunion is because I didn’t feel the need to go back there. I had moved past it and left it behind me, the good and the bad. And if I didn’t care enough to go back and see my own high school friends, I certainly saw no real reason to revisit these sad sacks. AMERICAN REUNION reeks of desperation.Their original audience is 13 years older now, and some of us have matured a little since then. Yet, the film is aimed at a much younger frame of mind because that’s the audience it wants. The trouble is that generation doesn’t even remember AMERICAN PIE in the first place. And so I left this reunion feeling exactly like I assumed I would after leaving my own - like I never should have gone in the first place.