I'm With Swarley

One show that I don't believe is getting the attention it deserves is "How I Met Your Mother." The actors and characters are great, the show is funny, the situations are as real as they should be on tv, and most of all, they have great catchphrases. Most of them come from Neil Patrick Harris, also known as Barney. He suits up when he goes out, asks people, "Haaaaaave you met Ted?" and liberally uses the adjectives awesome and legendary. He is also the guru of the phrase, "wait for it."

In tonight's episode, Barney goes to a filming of The Price is Right. The reason for this is not what you may think: see, Barney believes that Bob Barker is his father, so he wants to meet him. In a rare glimpse into Barney's life, we see him at a young age ask his mother who fathered him. She says she doesn't really know, looks around, sees the television and says, "that guy," pointing at Bob Barker. After that, Barney spent a lot of time watching TPIR (as he refers to it), talking to his Dad. As an adult, Barney decides to try to become a contestant on the show, and he does it in true Barney style. He trains for the show studying prices and spinning bike wheels. He's a machine. He even perfects his run to the stage.

On the show, Barney performs perfectly. He takes some time to show Bob some pictures from his childhood, but he also wins every prize by naming the price to the dollar. This is especially beneficial to Lily and Marshall, who get the prizes as wedding gifts, but Barney is also able to make his dad proud of him. In the end, Barney elects not to tell Bob Barker about their relationship and instead keeps his childhood memories intact. In this moment, we learn more about Barney than ever. He reveals his vulnerability in a way that is legen ... wait for it ... dary.

Addicted

I am officially addicted to Grey's Anatomy. I know that I'm not alone as it's a craze that's sweeping the country, but I'm getting to that scary place where I kind of think that the characters are real people. I also say seriously a lot. I'm so, like, mainstream.

In my mind, Meredith is my cuter younger sister. The one that gets guys. We are alike in our dark and twistiness but she uses promiscuity and not swimming (maybe on purpose, maybe not) to deal while I rely sometimes on promiscuity but mostly on eating Dairy Queen Blizzards. Cristina works as her best friend because she can deal with the directness but I am better friends with Izzie, mostly because she's more compassionate and better at being silly but also because she's great at baking.

The guys are a whole other matter. Dr. McDreamy is hot, but too earnest for me. McSteamy has the bad boy qualities that I admire and I could always count on being treated a little badly by him (something I apparently look for in men), but the perfect compromise is Alex Karev. He's bad, but he's starting to show his earnest side. We all know that Addison is leaving to start her private practice/spin-off, so that will leave him all for me. I would love to stand in a supply closet telling him to seriously take off his pants.

Another Disaster for Kelly?

Sadly, I did not have cable in the early 90s. This was for several reasons: first, it took so long for my town to get cable, by the time it came around my parents were able to make the argument that we had already proven we could live without it. Naturally they also wanted us to avoid rotting our brains and it didn't hurt that they saved money at the same time. Being deprived of my entertainment like this may have contributed to my current television mania, but it also meant that I didn't get to see 90210 when it originally aired. See, not only did we not have cable, we didn't even have good enough reception to get Fox. We lived so far in the sticks that we really only got NBC. On a clear day we also got ABC and a fuzzy CBS. People nowadays feel they need high definition, but I'm still amazed by clear reception.

Anyway, I digress. Now that I do have cable, I have been able to catch up on the years of 90210 that I missed thanks to the magic of SoapNet. One thing that has amazed me is the incredible number of tragedies that Kelly Taylor has had to endure. Now, I knew about the fire, the cult near-miss, various sexual abuse, and that she killed an attacker in the store she shared with friend Donna Martin. This week, however, I learned of another tragedy - Kelly was shot in a drive-by in the airport parking lot and now she has amnesia! Poor Kelly! Poor Brandon!

Now, I appreciate that 90210 is a soap opera, but I think they need to spread the drama around a little bit. Maybe Val could've gotten amnesia and the gang could've made her think that she was a nice girl, then she could remember how evil she was, pretend to still have amnesia and exact revenge on foe Kelly. Or, Donna could have had amnesia (really, the only thing that ever happened to Donna was that she almost got raped) and David could have told her that they live together and have sex all the time.

Of course, it doesn't matter what happens - I love 90210 and will continue to watch two episodes a day. I'm really looking forward to seeing how in the heck Donna ends up with Noah and I'm dreading that Brandon is leaving soon.