Fall Season: How I Met Your Mother, Family Guy & Heroes

How I Met Your Mother: -Dary! Great start to the episode, nice use of Mandy Moore (although I liked her better in both Scrubs and Entourage... weirdly, I'm a fan of TV cameo Mandy Moore). It wasn't a *great* episode, but it was a good one, and I got several laughs out of it. I was especially impressed by the "Slap Bet" epilogue, which was totally for the long-time fans of the show, but recalled one of my favorite moments of the entire show (the second slap in the middle of Barney's "play"), and I also enjoyed the facial hair gags and Ted's "And that's the last thing I remember" narration. Funny show, off to a good start for the season.

Family Guy: I haven't watched any of season five, but I might be on board for this new season. The Star Wars episode was a lot of fun, especially if you can catch the in-jokes for not only Family Guy but Star Wars. I died laughing when they revealed Obi Wan. The "Dirty Dancing" sequence was overlong, but sometimes Family Guy can do that milking a gag type thing well, so I can't blame them for trying it. It was a callback to the "Somewhere That's Green" extended sequence that was one of the funniest in the show's history, in my opinion. I have to admit, I didn't catch Meg's role, I need to watch it again. I was also amused to see that they actually got Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo for the voices in the brief Vacation bit.

Heroes: Disappointed. Some of the same cliched writing that plagued the original pilot, the new characters aren't terribly interesting and I don't find any of the new status quo that interesting either. Well, except Parkman, who gets to be more of a real character than he was for most of the first season. But I don't really want to see Hiro in feudal Japan (even though David Anders is great), I think re-doing the "Clare's got to pretend to be normal, and so does her dad" plot was a mistake (and seriously, why on Earth would he go to work at a Kinko's? He can't do a *little* bit better and at least find a decent middle management job?) and I don't yet care about the Honduran brother and sister. Nor do I have a ton of interest in Mohinder reprising his arc from the first season, although I will admit the last minute twist makes that more interesting. Mildly curious about seeing more of the older generation (Ma Petrelli, Hiro's dad, etc.) but I'd like it to move faster, and I wasn't pleased to see "another shadowy guy in a hoodie" as the mystery villain. Basically, it wasn't awful, but they did seem to be repeating themselves an awful lot.

Now, Heroes started off kinda mediocre last season and got better and better, and hopefully that's what will happen here. But after the way they dropped the ball on the season finale, they really needed a stronger opening to hook me back in.

In other news, I decided I don't really care about Journeyman, and didn't watch it. And I watched Chuck early, so I already talked about that one.