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.

045. The Next Best Thing

045. (05 Feb) The Next Best Thing (2000, John Schlesinger) 35



So this is what would've happened if Will & Grace had been piloted with Madonna and Rupert Everett and they had a kid in the first episode. Considering its reputation, The Next Best Thing isn't that bad. It's just a wacky sitcom paced and written rather hideously. There's no consistency in tone whatsoever. For stretches it's a weird comedy and then a sappy, sentimental romance before turning inappropriately dramatic.

Rupert Everett is rather charming while Benjamin Bratt is wannabe dashing. Madonna repeatedly steals the show with a performance always attempting to be sincere and rarely succeeding.

In the last act, she blindsides Everett by essentially kidnapping their six-year-old son. It's a moment that's truly jarring, messing up the film's entire dynamic by making her unfathomably unsympathetic. It also turns out she's been lying about paternity for years, offering up a scene that's straight out of a soap opera. The melodrama in the last thirty minutes is surprisingly well-acted and totally engaging despite some very bad writing.

Had the finale taken a lighter approach, this would've surely been a cult classic. Instead, it's just a weird, deeply depressing misfire.

045. The Next Best Thing

045. (05 Feb) The Next Best Thing (2000, John Schlesinger) 35



So this is what would've happened if Will & Grace had been piloted with Madonna and Rupert Everett and they had a kid in the first episode. Considering its reputation, The Next Best Thing isn't that bad. It's just a wacky sitcom paced and written rather hideously. There's no consistency in tone whatsoever. For stretches it's a weird comedy and then a sappy, sentimental romance before turning inappropriately dramatic.

Rupert Everett is rather charming while Benjamin Bratt is wannabe dashing. Madonna repeatedly steals the show with a performance always attempting to be sincere and rarely succeeding.

In the last act, she blindsides Everett by essentially kidnapping their six-year-old son. It's a moment that's truly jarring, messing up the film's entire dynamic by making her unfathomably unsympathetic. It also turns out she's been lying about paternity for years, offering up a scene that's straight out of a soap opera. The melodrama in the last thirty minutes is surprisingly well-acted and totally engaging despite some very bad writing.

Had the finale taken a lighter approach, this would've surely been a cult classic. Instead, it's just a weird, deeply depressing misfire.