Prom-athon

Since I'm having to pick up both Matt's workload and my own for the forseeable future, free time has been cut a little short, so the only Monday show I saw (and may see for several days) was "HIMYM," plus a quick zip through Sunday night's "Grey's."

There's been a lot of discussion lately, both here and elsewhere, about whether "How I Met Your Mother" is the new "Friends," and crashing a prom to hear a wedding band sure seems like the kind of thing Monica and Chandler would have done. (Marian and I once crashed a wedding to hear a potential band and got kicked out, but no vomiting or turtle costumes were involved.)

Despite the premise, the focus on Lily and a marginal role for Ted, this wasn't as funny as I was expecting. A pretty good episode -- frankly, the best joke was the idea that The 88 play proms in New Jersey -- but not up to, say, Game Night, or New Year's Eve or some of the other episodes "HIMYM" has really killed with. I have a tape of the season finale on my desk that I've been sitting on until I see all the episodes leading up to it, but I'm guessing it'll be dealing as much with Lily's cold feet as with Ross 'n Rachel 2.0.

Because some nights I strugggle to have interesting thoughts of my own, I lean on Marian a lot for opinions. When we started watching "Grey's Anatomy" last night, she said, "Do I still care about this show?" I noted that she had still been really into it the last time a new episode aired and asked, "Is it just because you haven't seen it in a while?" She nodded, and she may have been right. Either this was a mediocre episode, or absence made the heart grow bored with this show. Between the reruns and the clip shows, it's been so long since I watched it that whatever spell it had over me feels like it's gone. Or maybe next week's mass-casualty (or whatever the preview was suggesting) will pull me back in. I don't know. Again, this is one of those days where the brain hasn't really turned on yet.

Blog as column idea incubator, take 946: a column about how this season of "American Idol" is still lacking its Moment. And for NY/NJ area "Veronica Mars" fans, third verse, same as the first two: Nets game pre-empting tonight's episode, which will finally be shown on Sunday at 7.