First Impressions: How I Met Your Mother / The Big Bang Theory

Even though I have known for four months, it didn’t hit me that I would have to wait an hour after the end of How I Met Your Mother for the start of The Big Bang Theory. More specifically five seconds and one bad joke into Accidentally on Purpose, which it was all I lasted before turning off the television and stare at the blank screen pondering what to do for the hour before the new episode The Big Bang Theory. Apparently the big wigs at CBS don’t watch Sheldon and his idiosyncrasies otherwise they wouldn’t know what trauma they would cause by changing its timeslot.

But before my obsessive compulsionisms kicked in, we had the fifth season premiere of How I Met Your Mother which is really showing its age. Right off the bat we are reminded of the creepiness of Ted meeting the mother in his classroom to the soundtrack of the clever Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend. Naturally we still don’t get to meet her although it is alluded to that the mother was in the economics class not his architecture class. But even if this is true, still creepy.

The other storyline is a potential jump the shark moment with Barney and Robin becoming an official couple. Barney and his Barneyisms is the heart of the show and if he is too busy tied down to one girl, and one in the group, just screams disaster if he starts becoming more human. The last thing I ever need to see is Barney suiting up to go on a date with a girlfriend.

How I Met Your Mother airs Mondays at 8:00 on CBS. You can stream recent episodes over at CBS.com. You can also download How I Met Your Mother on iTunes. How I Met Your Mother came in at #40 on The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.


Here’s hoping that the writers of The Big Bang Theory by its fifth seasons don’t run out of ideas and just puts Sheldon and Penny in a relationship. Although a drunken one night stand would be hilarious. Instead to start the third season we get the re-coupling of Penny and Sheldon so sudden I thought it was a dream sequence. Kaley Cuoco laughing during the kiss didn’t help things much either. Although the epilogue to the episode suggest another one and done episode with some weird post-coitus talk. Granted not as weird as the pre- coitus talk that derailed the act altogether.

But of course Sheldon remained the center point of the episode with another of his classic hissy fits. And this is one of the ones where he had legitimate reasons to throw one when his buddies tampered with his experiments to make their lives at the arctic better with a happier Sheldon. Granted I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get an explanation as to why Sheldon had time to groom down to a goatee. But you could tell the writers had some Sheldomisms lined up from their summer break. It almost made sitting through the last three minutes of Two and a Halg Men worth it. Almost.

The Big Bang Theory airs Mondays at 9:30 on CBS. You can download The Big Bang Theory on iTunes. The Big Bang Theory came in at #14 on The 100 Greatest Television show of the 00’s. Both shows are available on Amazon Video on Demand (see below):