Things that annoy or delight you on the telly right now

[GordonD]

1 hour ago, MSU said:

Just recently finished hate-watching How I Met Your Mother. Must've got through the entire series in a month, mostly background noise while I did other things, and I laughed out loud perhaps 12 to 15 times. Worked out around 1.2 laughs per season. Only reason I watched it was on a friend's recommendation who afterwards was quick to point out that he didn't necessarily say it was any good, he just wanted me to watch it for my reaction. So there was that and questions on it come up quite frequently at Trivia Night. What a hateful bunch of c***s the characters in this are. And the finale, after nine years of building up to meeting the mother, made it clear that the writers hated the show almost as much as I did. Couldn't have been a bigger f**k you to the audience if they tried.

I've seen maybe half of an episode. What happened at the end that pissed you off so much?

[MSU]

To explain why it pissed me off, I need to go back to the start. Spoilers Ahoy, obviously.

So in the first episode, Ted (a guy in his twenties who is inexplicably worried that he'll never find The One and settle down) meets Robin, a Canadian woman he finds beguiling. On their first date, he steals a blue French Horn from a restaurant for her (because he's quirky) and then declares his love for her (because he's an idiot). She doesn't feel the same way and she's focused on her career as a news reporter. But she's new in town and she ends up friends with Ted and his friends; There's womanizing Barney (a truly despicable human being) and Marshall and Lily (who are already in a relationship and, for the most part, nothing of any consequence happens to either of them in the next nine seasons). This is all framed with the device of future Ted telling his kids the story of how he met their mother. This works for maybe two seasons. Future Ted refers to Robin as Aunt Robin, so we know from the start that she's not the mother.

Despite this, over the next nine years, Ted and Robin have this on again off again relationship. Then Barney and Robin have an on again off again relationship and it seems that finally (this is around season seven) Barney is actually going through a bit of character development and is becoming less of a slimebag. There's friction between Ted and Barney about this, but largely the group is so incestuous that they are able to maintain their friendships, despite how unrealistic this would be in real life or most other forms of fiction. Then midway through season eight, Barney proposes to Robin and she accepts (in what it probably the best episode of the entire series). Ted declares his love for Robin but again it's unrequited. Up to this point, the story that Future Ted is explaining to his kids isn't so much How I Met Your Mother, but rather How I Fucked A Ton of Chicks in New York and Because I'm so Emotionally Juvenile I Managed to Screw It All Up.

Then Season Nine, 22 out of 24 episodes are set during the weekend on Barney and Robin's wedding. We finally see the Mother meet all the other characters through chance encounters, except Ted. During this season, there's an episode told completely in rhyming couplets. There's an episode where Boys II Men show up. The rage is building quite nicely at this point. Then in episode 22, Barney and Robin finally get married (hurrah!). Then ten minutes into episode 23, we jump three years in the future and they announce they've divorced (wait, what?) and Barney immediately goes back to his philandering ways, undoing two years of character development. In flash-forward, we see Ted and The Mother together and happy but we still haven't seen how they met. Then we do (yay!) and it's actually quite sweet because there have been little hints like a recurring yellow umbrella cropping up now and again so there's emotional pay-off for the audience. Then we learn that The Mother dies (huh?). Just like that. Of what, we don't have a clue. We see her in a hospital bed and then she's just dead. They met, she was a baby factory for Ted, and then she died. Then the kids tell Future Ted to go after Aunt Robin. So he turns up at her apartment with the blue French Horn from episode one, she looks down at him from her window and smiles (you've got to be fucking kidding me). And that's how it ends.

I mean, I was pissed off after watching this over a month. I can't imagine how much more I would've pissed off had I been a fan who had stuck with this stupid premise for nine years. We heard Future Ted tell his kids how amazing their mother was and then we see them together for maybe fifteen minutes. And the sad thing was, the woman they got to play the Mother was pretty great. We spend an entire season at a wedding that almost immediately fails. We see Barney and Robin's characters grow only to hit a reset button and revert to form (until Barney finally knocks up one of his hundreds of conquests and has a baby to this unnamed, unseen woman and the baby changes his life to the point that he slut-shames a couple of young woman that earlier on in the episode he would've totally picked up).

*Breath*

tl;dr -- it's just fucking awful.

 

Edited December 14, 2017 by MSU

[19QOS19]

Jesus m8!

http://breathingspace.scot

[Mr. Brightside]

Seasons 1 and 2 were the best, then it was pretty much downhill from there, especially when Stella showed up.
And I couldn’t agree more with regards to the ending/mother debacle. The thing that annoyed me most about that was that the mother was actually a good character, they should’ve introduced her far earlier.

[MSU]

4 hours ago, Mr. Brightside said:

Seasons 1 and 2 were the best, then it was pretty much downhill from there, especially when Stella showed up.
And I couldn’t agree more with regards to the ending/mother debacle. The thing that annoyed me most about that was that the mother was actually a good character, they should’ve introduced her far earlier.

Spot on. In casting the Mother, they actually achieved something that I reckoned would be impossible; to get an actor who was quirky and interesting and likable enough to warrant 200 episodes of build up. And they did it! The way they underused her was utterly shocking.

[Cerberus]

 

9 hours ago, MSU said:

To explain why it pissed me off, I need to go back to the start. Spoilers Ahoy, obviously.

So in the first episode, Ted (a guy in his twenties who is inexplicably worried that he'll never find The One and settle down) meets Robin, a Canadian woman he finds beguiling. On their first date, he steals a blue French Horn from a restaurant for her (because he's quirky) and then declares his love for her (because he's an idiot). She doesn't feel the same way and she's focused on her career as a news reporter. But she's new in town and she ends up friends with Ted and his friends; There's womanizing Barney (a truly despicable human being) and Marshall and Lily (who are already in a relationship and, for the most part, nothing of any consequence happens to either of them in the next nine seasons). This is all framed with the device of future Ted telling his kids the story of how he met their mother. This works for maybe two seasons. Future Ted refers to Robin as Aunt Robin, so we know from the start that she's not the mother.

Despite this, over the next nine years, Ted and Robin have this on again off again relationship. Then Barney and Robin have an on again off again relationship and it seems that finally (this is around season seven) Barney is actually going through a bit of character development and is becoming less of a slimebag. There's friction between Ted and Barney about this, but largely the group is so incestuous that they are able to maintain their friendships, despite how unrealistic this would be in real life or most other forms of fiction. Then midway through season eight, Barney proposes to Robin and she accepts (in what it probably the best episode of the entire series). Ted declares his love for Robin but again it's unrequited. Up to this point, the story that Future Ted is explaining to his kids isn't so much How I Met Your Mother, but rather How I Fucked A Ton of Chicks in New York and Because I'm so Emotionally Juvenile I Managed to Screw It All Up.

Then Season Nine, 22 out of 24 episodes are set during the weekend on Barney and Robin's wedding. We finally see the Mother meet all the other characters through chance encounters, except Ted. During this season, there's an episode told completely in rhyming couplets. There's an episode where Boys II Men show up. The rage is building quite nicely at this point. Then in episode 22, Barney and Robin finally get married (hurrah!). Then ten minutes into episode 23, we jump three years in the future and they announce they've divorced (wait, what?) and Barney immediately goes back to his philandering ways, undoing two years of character development. In flash-forward, we see Ted and The Mother together and happy but we still haven't seen how they met. Then we do (yay!) and it's actually quite sweet because there have been little hints like a recurring yellow umbrella cropping up now and again so there's emotional pay-off for the audience. Then we learn that The Mother dies (huh?). Just like that. Of what, we don't have a clue. We see her in a hospital bed and then she's just dead. They met, she was a baby factory for Ted, and then she died. Then the kids tell Future Ted to go after Aunt Robin. So he turns up at her apartment with the blue French Horn from episode one, she looks down at him from her window and smiles (you've got to be fucking kidding me). And that's how it ends.

I mean, I was pissed off after watching this over a month. I can't imagine how much more I would've pissed off had I been a fan who had stuck with this stupid premise for nine years. We heard Future Ted tell his kids how amazing their mother was and then we see them together for maybe fifteen minutes. And the sad thing was, the woman they got to play the Mother was pretty great. We spend an entire season at a wedding that almost immediately fails. We see Barney and Robin's characters grow only to hit a reset button and revert to form (until Barney finally knocks up one of his hundreds of conquests and has a baby to this unnamed, unseen woman and the baby changes his life to the point that he slut-shames a couple of young woman that earlier on in the episode he would've totally picked up).

*Breath*

tl;dr -- it's just fucking awful.

 

 

Wasn't there something that fans were so upset that Ted didn't end up with Robin that they had to quickly add in the 3 years in the future part?

It's utterly shite even without that. Ted was a whiny p***k, Marshall was a cock and the Suit-up stuff from Barney got boring after Season 1.
Anyone that stuck with this shite for 9 years is a c**t.

[GordonD]

17 hours ago, MSU said:

To explain why it pissed me off, I need to go back to the start. Spoilers Ahoy, obviously.

Wow, that was far more detail than I was expecting! Thanks for it, though!

[KnightswoodBear]

The new League of Gentlemen was excellent 

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

1 minute ago, KnightswoodBear said:

The new League of Gentlemen was excellent 

A nice wee nod to their other project when the flat door closed.

[Bully Wee Villa]

Yes, spotted that. Generally excellent episode. Only down side is that Herr Lipp wasn't particularly funny seventeen years ago, and hasn't improved with age. There are plenty of other characters I'd rather they had brought back. Hopefully he'll be killed off.

 

 

[Christophe]

Really enjoyed that, the Pauline dementia bit was far more lip trembling than it had any right to be! 

[Bully Wee Villa]

Yeah, it's brilliant writing how they turned a hate figure (in the opening episodes) into a sympathetic one and turned Ross, our identification figure, into someone you desperately want to fail.

[Bert Raccoon]

Really enjoyed The League Of Gentleman as well, a good episode to reintroduce the characters, looking forward to tonight's episode.

[Silvio Tattiescone]

Are you aware ...

No, I'm a woman  

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

The c**t that says 'zuss' constantly on the Nutella advert.

[Bert Raccoon]

I've not really watched Mock The Week since around the time Frankie Boyle left it but decides to give it a watch tonight, utter shite and the comedians they have on now are atrociously bad. Does anyone actually still watch this pish?

[Gianfranco]

Taskmaster is fucking brilliant.

[Spectre]

11 hours ago, Gianfranco said:

Taskmaster is fucking brilliant.

 stopped watching a lot of tv,  but Taskmaster is one of the few programmes I still watch.  Just an example of a fairly simple concept executed well, with some fantastic and ridiculous results. still coming up with tasks which are distinctive and characteristic of the show. I personally think they have peaked with the insane ineptitude of Paul Chowdhry, but every episode es excellent. I hope they continue the show for at least a few more seasons.

[Boghead ranter]

Lassie on Pointless this afternoon, called Amber.

Only she isn't Amber, as in the traffic light colour, she 'Omm-berr'.

Twat.

[GordonD]

6 hours ago, Spectre said:

 stopped watching a lot of tv,  but Taskmaster is one of the few programmes I still watch.  Just an example of a fairly simple concept executed well, with some fantastic and ridiculous results. still coming up with tasks which are distinctive and characteristic of the show. I personally think they have peaked with the insane ineptitude of Paul Chowdhry, but every episode es excellent. I hope they continue the show for at least a few more seasons.

I like when they give one contestant a task that nobody else gets, just to make them look stupid.