Sometimes the Toys Don't Work
Posted September 19th, 2006 by RD Heldenfels
I had hoped to write something here about the season premieres of "How I Met Your Mother" and "Two and a Half Men" last night. Unfortunately, I only saw about one-and-a-half shows.
I saw "HIMMY" and found it funny enough, although I do fear how "Friends"-ish it is getting in blending the romantic drama into the comedy. And even though the show is trying to liven up Ted, he's still pretty bland. Best thing in the show: Barney's bold twist on Henry Fonda in that "we'll be there" speech.
I recorded that, as well as "Prison Break," "Two and a Half," "Vanished" and "CSI: Miami" while mostly watching football. Unfortunately, Time Warner's HD DVR decided to eat "Two and A Half," "Vanished" and "CSI: Miami." "CSI" wasn't recorded at all, and "Two and a Half" and "Vanished" did some weird scene-skipping thing that boiled them down to a fraction of their running time; although "Two and a Half" surprisingly still sort of made sense, I was missing halves of jokes — setup but no punchline, or vice versa. I'm hoping it was all a one-time glitch in the system; still, I'm limiting use of the DVR tonight in case it messes up again — and has to be swapped for a fully functioning one.
That gets into one of the problems I have with a DVR. Although it's nice to have all that programming stored in it, you risk losing a lot of material if the machine goes bad. Still, it's preferable to those old stacks of unmarked videotapes lying around.
And I may just be having a bad technology streak. Today, a tape of the second-season premiere of "Little People, Big World" arrived — and I know a bunch of you are interested in hearing about the show, which returns on Oct. 7. But the top bar on the tape was broken, making the tape unplayable. Fortunately, I have run into this before and have swapped the broken piece with a working one from an old tape — and it was working in a VCR. So I should be able to watch and comment on it.
September 19th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
When you watch Little People watch out for their oldest son Jeremy. He was the worst part of the show. If he's anything like he was last season Rich you'll want to slap him for being such a spoiled little brat. If you were his father you would have disowned him long ago. On his first day at school he forgot his book bag on the bus, then got all mouthy and belligerent towards his mother when she chided him for being so careless and having a lackadaisical attitude about it. Then in another episode he joined the soccer team and then proceeded to tell his mom he wanted to skip a practice or two to go clothes shopping. Again he got all belligerent when she took him to task for his lack of loyaly to the team and acted like he was doing a favor for her when he went to the practices. Finally as Christmas approached the entire family per tradition was decorating the tree and when asked to help as he usually did, this brat said that this year his youngest brother was old enough to help and he was going to a friends house and just walked out the door without a backwards glance. Those were the most insipid incidents that have come to mind making him extremely unlikable. You'll enjoy the rest of the show and like the rest of the family, but if he continues to be a self-absorbed me-me-me teenage brat, you will grow to hate Jeremy.