As most of my fellow avid TV watchers know, the regular network television season is on hiatus. And while that offers a lot of opportunity for the cable networks to entertain us (to say nothing of the cracktastic reality shows currently running), a girl can’t help but feel a certain longing for some of her favorite shows.
Recently, I caught a repeat of How I Met Your Mother called Little, Minnesota. It made me actually itch for a new episode, and not because I’m dying to see how last season’s story threads are wrapped up – The Mother’s in Ted’s class! Barney + Robin = 4evah? – but because I just really, really miss these guys!
One of HIMYM’s strongest points is its sense of continuity. Considering it’s a show being told in a series of massive, extensive flashbacks, continuity is more important than it is to your average half hour comedy. Slap bets aside, HIMYM does a great job of calling back memorable and not-so memorable moments from show’s past.
Take Little Minnesota for instance – Marshall (the gigantic, hysterical Jason Segel) takes a sad Robin to his favorite bar, which she promptly ruins for him by sheer force of her awesomeness. To apologize, he finds a Canadian bar in New York to cheer the resident Canuck up – but the beauty is, when Marshall gets on stage, and does Karaoke to Robin Sparkles’ biggest hit, “Let’s Go to the Mall,” a video the gang had watched endlessly on loop to torture their one-time Canadian pop star friend.
Little touches like that is exactly what makes HIMYM such a great place to visit every week. You feel like these people really exist in each other’s lives, that their memories and emotions are real because they don’t forget the things you remember so well, like most made up TV characters do. It almost makes you not care who the Mother is. Almost.
Check out Robin Sparkles’ biggest hit, “Let’s Go to the Mall” over at Hulu!