Bye Brover, Bye Victoria

How I Met Your Mother, S08E05

Barney was getting a little too attached to his new dog, which Robin worried was due to his recent breakup with Quinn.  Ted realized that  Victoria wanted Ted to make a commitment to marry her and promise not to be friends with Robin anymore.  Marshall was being trained by Lily to give out sassy advice and got too carried away with it.

I groaned when I heard that Barney had named his dog "Brover." But I suppose him letting a dog be his wingman was kind of cute and better than seeing him use some stupid gimmick to pick up girls like he usually does.  His story also helped to put some strain on Robin's relationship, which needs to end already.  I felt a little bad that Barney had to give back the dog, but at least at the end it looked like they still could hang with each other.

Ted was incredibly thick in this episode.  I don't know why he would think that Victoria would want to take things slow when she had ruined a wedding to be with him.  I sort of forgot that he did owe her a commitment for taking such a big risk with him.  Yet, Ted couldn't give her 100 percent.  She should have known that asking him to cut Robin out of his life (which he has already tried at least once) wasn't going to fly.  But at least they sort of ended things on a less disastrous note.  They both saw that it wasn't going to work with them both wanting different things.  I feel bad for Victoria wasting her time with freaking Ted.  He should have just returned her to the church and never looked back.  Was there really a point in them being together this short time again?  So far, it just seems like a delay tactic before the "mystery woman" finally appears.  Get on with it!

Marshall and Lily were a little funny in this episode.  I thought it was weird that Marshall's inner goddess came through as this southern lady.  But as a Lily-in-training he wasn't so bad.  I mean, at least it was cute that they were dishing out advice with attitude together as a team.  It's just too bad that he didn't get the hang of actually dishing out good advice most of the time.  I also liked how annoyed Ted was to have Lily and Marshall keep telling him what he needed to do, especially when he told them they were the worst.  I don't know why that was the funniest thing to me, but it was.

Now that Robin has shown that she puts all of her friends ahead of Nick, I hope that their relationship falls next time because we haven't even really seen anything sweet or meaningful between them that would make you want to see them last.  Anyway, Robin is a train wreck, so she doesn't really deserve any guy (even Barney because she made him break up with Nora and then stayed with Kevin).

Not a great episode.  But I see potential for the next few episodes because we're getting rid of more clutter the more we progress.  It's just not progressing fast enough for my tastes, but as long as we're sort of moving along, I'm momentarily pacified.  I won't be , though, if next time Robin and Nick don't bite the dust already.

A Dog Story Worse Than Old Yeller

American Dad, S07E14

A story about Stan falling in love with a dog?  How could that possibly not be a wonderful episode?  Luckily the writers are paying attention in some fashion because Francine pointed out that it's been done (though you can't blame shows like this for a little repetition when you've done so many stories), but it still didn't stop them from making us suffer through Stan attaching himself to another dog that ends badly.  We had to watch him obsess over a dog that needed to be put down in the most humane way possible, but instead was made into some Frankenstein monster of a dog.  If only the Hayley and Jeff story could have lightened the overall tone of this disturbing and slightly depressing story.  No such luck.

Since we were privileged to watch Stan's childhood dog, Freddie, meet an undeserved end, it was sort of a given that Kisses, the new dog, would not live long enough to repair the hole in Stan's heart that had been placed there by his mother's deceit (did you really need to lie to your son and make him kill his own dog?).  However, instead of being killed by a car in the street during some innocent frisbee play, Kisses is killed by an air balloon basket (not the most incredible part) which was piloted by what seems to be a gang of pirate kittens.  What in the world??  Okay, I know you writers have to throw our expectations out the window, but that is almost too hard to believe even in SF world.  They might as well just made the dog dead without us even knowing what happened if it was going to die in such a meaningless, only for a joke way.

The best thing about Stan refusing to let Kisses go, despite the dog was only alive thanks to a machine at first, was when he went to library and studied how to fix the dog on his own.  After he had defaced the library, a librarian urges the sleeping security guard to do something.  The guy's lazy, half-hearted attempts to stop Stan (he didn't even get up) were hilarious.  I hope they bring that man back.  He was great.  I also liked that they played the theme to Weird Science during his studying montage.

Another funny scene was when Stan stole Kisses and brought him to Dr. Lizzie (voiced by Amy Sedaris--yay!) .  She crackles for the longest time in what you think would be really disconcerting to the listener, but Stan, with his face dead serious, tells her that she has a beautiful laugh.  Amy did a good job of conveying a pretty creepy doctor who would be capable of turning that cute dog into something that only Jesus could love.

I think that Steve put it best to describe the sight of that dog which had eyes for testicles, a drumstick and a frog leg for hind legs, a softball mitt for a skull, and was dragging some kind of electric box on wheels:

Oh, God!  Please kill this dog!

Even as a cartoon, it was pretty hard to see that blind dog hobbling around and breathing for dear life.  It's beyond sick.  I'm glad that Freddie came to Stan in a dream to convince him to let the dog be at peace, but did he really have to blow it up to bits so that its bloody head hit their bedroom window??  Excessive much??  That dog had been through enough.  At least he could have killed it peacefully.  Watching this was almost on par with that horrible kitten cutaway gag on Family Guy.  Let's stop with all the dead animals, shall we?  I think I got my fill last Sunday, for real.

 Roger was being his creepy self, despite this disturbing episode, only slightly lightening the mood.  My favorite scene of his was when he was hitting on Jeff in the pool.  Also, even though it's pretty nasty, I like how he was trying to get Stan to have popcorn from a bucket he had clearly cut a hole into.  Which makes me wonder what kind of genitalia that he has.  I assume he's a male, but he is an alien so maybe he has something else that is some combo of both genders (he is bisexual, after all)?  Actually, I shouldn't wonder this.  I think I would be better off not knowing the answer to that mystery.

I feel like I could have been fine not watching this episode, though I'm not as disgusted by it as I may make it seem.  I've seen worse (where I had to turn away from the TV), but I think I was mostly bored by Stan connecting with a pet again.  Like Roger said, he is the only pet that family needs (and no one gives a damn about Klaus since technically he was originally a human).  I hope this episode marks the end of Stan ever having to deal with a dog again unless it's guard dogs or something less intense.  I don't think I can tolerate another bad end for a pet that didn't do anything wrong (though it was nice that it was dedicated to the real life Freddie who passed--aww).

How You Don't Like 90s R&B??

Parks and Recreation, S04E16

Leslie organizes a Sweet 16 party for Jerry who was born on February 29th to prove that she hasn't overextended herself between her campaign and government work.  Since I knew that Ron was the one who was suggesting that she take a break from work, I assumed that she wouldn't win the fight, and thus wasn't very invested in the story.  What was the most of interest to me was Ann and Tom's relationship.  It looked like the two would be over before they even started, and April was just fine with that.  In another side-story, Chris bonded with Champion and Andy felt a little jealous of how well Chris took care of his dog.  This story was also more entertaining to me than Leslie's quest to prove Ron wrong.

Let's talk about Chris and Andy for a moment.  I'm not the biggest animal person, but I felt like Andy's level of pet care-taking could practically be called animal abuse compared to all the things that Chris did for Champion in one day.  This included grooming and training (which also made Chris fluent in German in regards to all things concerning dogs).  In Andy's defense he is not some kind of overachieving superman, nor has the funds to do all the nice things for his dog he could.  I also don't think that Andy has ever thought about these sorts of thing.  His policy is that you have to let dogs be dogs.  Fair enough.  But I felt so bad that Chris was practically stalking Andy in order to spend some more time with the dog.  He is so obviously lonely.  He also scared the crap out of Andy when he was walking Champion.  Loved that.

Chris spells out his loneliness to all at Jerry's party, and I felt even worse for him.  But I think that he felt compelled to share his despair after hearing Tom announce that he and Ann were still strong as a couple.  He keeps making unhappy looks when Tom is talking about Ann; when is Chris going to do something about it, though??  I'm just waiting for that moment that encourages him to act a little angry.  So far it seems like Chris only has two states: hyper positive or hyper melancholy.  I haven't seen hyper pissed yet.  I really want to see it soon, as much as I like Tom.  Tom might scream like a little girl, which would make me giggle like a little girl.

If I can't get my giggle on, I was happy to see that Chris got his giggles on after Andy decided to lend out Champion to Chris from time to time to help him not feel so alone.  Say whatever you want about Andy but he is such a nice guy.  It's impossible to hate him.

Concerning Tom and Ann's relationship, I'm glad that things are starting off so rocky because it wouldn't make any sense.  We all know they are so completely different, and Tom and Ann start to see that these differences do matter.  Tom had especially funny complaints about Ann, including her disinterest in bluray, her low number of UGG boots, and depreciation of Paul Walker movies.  The best of Tom's "Oh-No-No's" was that Ann lacked a love of 90s R&B music.  Particularly insulting was that she had no idea who Ginuwine was.  I love that Tom believes that this topic is so important.  I can appreciate someone who thinks that "classic" R&B is vital.  I just wondered what kind of music does Ann does like anyway?  The best of Ann's "Oh-No-No's" was by far that Tom refers to himself as the "Brown Gosling."  I hate to say it but I am not a Ryan Gosling fan.  In fact, I don't really know who he is outside of everyone talking about him.  I've seen his picture, but I don't recognize him.  However, I'm not much of a celebrity follower.  I like who I like (like Aziz) and don't have time to worry about the mountain of others in the entertainment business.

I've gotten off topic.  My feelings about Tom and Ann deciding to stay together after April's drunken advice are mixed.  If for nothing else, I like them together so that April can continue to hate both of them while they annoy her.  And once again, I want to see if it will bring about the resurrection of Chris and Ann.  But Ann probably wouldn't take him back.  She would be a fool to after he broke up with her for reasons I'm not too sure about.  Perhaps he was just smart and realized they were too different?  Still, I'm not sure who would be a perfect match for Ann; she's pretty unenthusiastic about everything (in a way that differs from April) and only seems to get motivated through the forceful pushing of her bestie, Leslie.

We had pretty good development in this episode, so I was very pleased with it.  And we had a mentionable line from my favorite guy in Pawnee, Ron Swanson:

[Ron] Is this all the eggs we have?

[Donna] Yes.  What are you making?

[Ron] Eggs.

 Ron, you can make anything about food funny!  He is the highlight of my TV week most of the time.

I wonder if the next episode will be about how the quality of things at Parks and Rec will be down because Leslie is no longer running everything so smoothly.  It could mean a good opportunity for some Ron scenes, as he is the last person to be enthusiastic about doing work, and Leslie is the one who covers his lazy behind.  Crossing my finger, too, that we see the angry Chris come out.  Don't keep me waiting, Parks and Recreation!