It served something of a purpose, though. And not nearly as annoying/pointless as the Seinfeld finale.

for something
. . . as dramatically unwieldy as the finale was, I was surprised how much it had me in tears.

I think the one word that comes to mind is, "Huh?"

orringer
Just read How to Breathe Underwater a couple of weeks ago. Well-written and crafted stories, but they also didn't really come alive for me. However accomplished they were, too often they felt too typically MFA-ish literary.

I tried reading Tigana and just didn't mesh with his prose style at all. But then I've found as I've grown older, I've become more sensitized to prose styles, for good and bad.

I know, I know, I'm a horrible person. I love cats and literature, but I clearly didn't get The Filth. Some day hell will claim me and make me suffer for my sins for all eternity. Crap.

In terms of Brian K. Vaughan, there's no going wrong with Y: The Last Man.

Cheese, not in the least rewarding. I hated it. There's an opening page or two of satiric surgeon general-like warnings about reading The Filth, which were good. But the rest of the book didn't live up that start, and it all went irrecoverably downhill from there. I liked All-Star Superman and Arkham Asylum and New…

I just read it last month. Wow was that a struggle to finish.

not only no zero effect . . .
. . . but no Great Expectations, either. Sigh.

Valentine's Day domestic gross: just north of $110 million . . . successful, but nowhere close to the top hundred highest grossing films ever, let alone top five. True, people will eat up shitty romantic comedies, but with the very rare exception, that doesn't happen when there aren't any real stars in it (unless,…

Ah, Quirk, I recognize satire. But, you know, just b/c something is intended as satire doesn't automatically make it funny. I see how we were supposed to find the the episode funny, but I simply didn't find it that way.

Yep.

man, am I differing from the Murry/Bowman household tonight
I didn't enjoy tonight's BBT any more than I did HIMYM. Noel's making some great observations as always, but to me, the comedy itself seemed far too easy and (mostly) absent.

Out of curiosity, I just scrolled through the top-grossing domestic movies of all time and unless I missed one, the first romantic comedy on the list is My Big Fat Greek Wedding and it was in somewhere in the 60s. And yeah, that was a terrible movie with one-dimensional characters and an utterly predictable plot, but…

I'm almost with you, but at least Marshall was somewhat amusing. And Robin pointing out that all of Ted's great, romantic moments were actually cheesy as hell. Though neither Marshall nor Robin were anywhere close to rescuing this one. Yeesh.

First and foremost, the movie was terrible. I know it's not supposed to be believable, but then they thoroughly oversold it as not only universally beloved but also the the fifth-highest grossing film of all time. What? Even if they hadn't, it wasn't even funny terrible. It was just bad.

oh good lord
That was, for my money, the worst HIMYM ever. Or that I remember offhand. Anyway, it was awful. Marshall was just about the only redeeming factor tonight.

"four years prior"?
I thought the abuse of the other girl happened in the 70s.

Yeah, but is there anyone who can veer more between giving a great performance and a totally bored (and boring), disinterested one? I still remember seeing Michael years ago and how laughable his delivery was of "I love you" to Andie MacDowell. It came off like someone looking out at his lawn and saying to himself, a…