OK, I sort of missed the boat on this one. It's been a few months since my favourite US comedies finished their latest seasons, and I can't remember everything that happened. But I'll still give my brief impressions of how they fared this year, simply because no one's put a gag to my mouth just yet.
The fourth season of How I Met Your Mother treaded a lot of water in terms of ongoing story. Whilst Ted and Stella (Sarah Chalke, always my 'marry' choice in any celebrity-based game of shag, marry, push off a cliff) continued to hit it off initially, the writers took the clichéd route of writing her off by making her a bitch. If it weren't for the slight redemption they gave her near the end of the season, I'd have been annoyed. The other ongoing romance in the show was the much more enjoyable sight of Barney secretly and madly in love with Robin, although this isn't revealed to her until the finale. This is my other gripe, which other sitcoms (Friends particularly) have also abused; Why can major plot developments only happen at the very end of a season? We're devoting a lot of time already to watching your show, so why do you not give us anything exciting until the finale? By then, it'll be another four months before the show returns, and we may have stopped caring. The only other notable factor of this season was that both Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders were at varying stages of pregnancy during its filming. Sometimes spotting the props and blocking designed to conceal said pregnancies was just as entertaining as the show itself. Not its strongest season, but still good.
After a couple years of wondering, the cat's out of the bag now... 30 Rock is a roaring success. The show in its third season managed to acquire a sickening amount of Emmy nominations, as well as a dazzling number of celebrity appearances (Jennifer Aniston, Alan Alda, Salma Hayek and Oprah Winfrey to name just a few), making it the live-action equivalent of The Simpsons circa 1994. Unfortunately, the endless cameos may have gone to their heads a bit. Season 3 was still funny, don't get me wrong, but also worryingly started to show its age; Despite initially being a hilarious combination, the continued silliness between Jenna and Tracy is getting a bit tired, and Kenneth too has been overexposed in terms of screentime. I kind of wish some of the bit-part players' roles hadn't been diminished; All too often I find myself yearning to see a bit more of Pete, Cerie or Lutz. Still, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin continue to dominate in their respective roles, and I continue to watch. Every time I see an entire socio-political message condensed beautifully into one of Baldwin's hilarious asides, I have to laugh. It's what makes 30 Rock so unique.
Perhaps I've been harsh on the above shows, but you won't find me being unappreciative of the second season of The Big Bang Theory, which grew more confident and more entertaining throughout the year. The viewing figures are up and Jim Parsons was given a well-deserved Emmy nod for his role as Sheldon. Whilst the central theme of the show had been the will-they-when-will-they relationship between Leonard and Penny, Season 2 actually found much more success in exploring the unusual friendship between Penny and Sheldon; More and more storylines were written in to incorporate their enjoyable bickering and highlight their differences. These guys are definitely from separate planets. Perhaps the highlight of the season was the Christmas episode halfway through, concerning Sheldon searching for a suitable gift for Penny. The resolution was fantastic as Penny gave him a gift that provoked the most extreme response - and the most fitting gift - from Sheldon, in the form of a hug. It's little moments like this that make a long-running show so enjoyable to watch; May we see more of them in future. The finale felt like a step backwards (I'm fine with exploring Leonard and Penny's relationship, but only if it's actually going somewhere), but otherwise this is the comedy I've been most invested in this year, and I can't wait to see more.
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