Random Musings: LONE STAR, MIKE & MOLLY, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, & More!

Shame on Twitter! In response to an interesting conversation that popped up amongst the TV Twitterrati that we happen to follow, this TV Addict now finds himself doing something we never in a million years thought we’d be forced to do: Come to the defense of both Charlie Sheen and NBC. Sadly, LONE STAR’s dismal ratings have absolutely nothing to do with the popularity of time-slot competitors TWO AND A HALF MEN and THE EVENT. Rather, there is a far more insidious enemy at work here, one that fans of both quality scripted drama and comedy need to band together to defeat. That enemy: ABC’s DANCING WITH THE STAR, who inexplicably continues to attract an astounding forty-million eyeballs (or twenty-million viewers) per week.

And on a somewhat related note as we wait with bated breath for Fox’s proverbial powers that be to reach a conclusion with regards to LONE STAR’s fate, consider the following: Actor Jon Voight’s daughter on the show is played by Adrianne Palicki while his real life offspring is Angelina Jolie. Greatest genes in the world both in front and behind the camera? Discuss.

Bad news for MIKE & MOLLY. The funniest thing about last night’s episode was the fact that the network deemed it necessary to include a “Previously On” at the beginning of the show. You know, just in case you couldn’t follow along with the complex mythology and seemingly endless barrage of “fat” jokes offered up in last week’s pilot.

Despite co-creator Carter Bay’s promise in the recent Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Preview that this sixth season of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER would be less “sitcommy,” last night’s episode was anything but. Luckily for us fans, it was “sitcommy” in the best sense of the word. No really. In the grand tradition of a FRIENDS and/or SEINFELD, the episode that saw our fab five — for lack of a better word, trapped — in one locale not only allowed for Barney to acknowledge that (spoiler alert) his father wasn’t Bob Barker while the gang cleaned up his mother’s old house, but more importantly gave Neil Patrick Harris an opportunity to inject some much-needed humanity into the often overtly comic caricature that is Barney Stinson. Added bonus: When you’re delivering laughs like these (see video below), the identity of the mother is moot! (Or, as Joey Tribbiani would put it, “Moo”)