HIMYM & The Class: Apartments and houses

Skipped over "Prison Break" so I could toggle between the CBS comedies and the first game at the Superdome in 21 months. Feel free to spoil me; while I like it, it's become skippable to me.

Spoilers for "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Class" just as soon as I put up some drywall...

Interesting parallel theme here, as each show's best line revolved around real estate: Lily's "The apartment is a metaphor for Marshall!" and Duncan's "This place is not well-built!" And the latter is really to Jon Bernthal's credit. Lily's line is funny in and of itself, though Alyson Hannigan's delivery was perfect, but "This place is not well built!" is funny entirely because of the goofy pride Bernthal invests in it.

That line, and Duncan demonstrating all the things wrong with the house, were easily the highlight of the second "Class." The scenes with Holly and the three gay men were a complete waste; not only is Holly's husband a cheap gay joke, but they used him to make cheap accent jokes. (And Kyle's partner's accent isn't even that thick.) The scenes with the other quartet were up and down, though I liked Richie's look of resignation after realizing his bad timing with the pills.

Still, the fact that I laughed out loud three or four times marked this as a significant improvement over the pilot for me. But as I've said, others have told me I'm out of my gourd on this one. What say you?

Meanwhile, "HIMYM" continues to fire on all cylinders: Barney's magic, the fast-forwarded conversation about "candy," Ted mocking Robin's Canadian heritage, the real version of Lily's summer in "SF" (including the exact same dialogue, just with different emphasis), and, of course, Marshall's revenge on Barney. I like that they're willing to allow Barney to be a total sleaze; I was afraid that he had some kind of noble motive for swiping Marshall's women, but thankfully, he's just an ass.

I suppose it would be too easy for Marshall to just take Lily back, plus it would create two happy couples plus Barney, but I prefer the show with the soap quotient as low as possible.