Hat. You thought of authentic Native American head-dress, before hat.

Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times

I can imagine that this might be a tricky selection for some people, but I'm someone who LOVES to reread and rewatch things. If something is good I always find myself getting something new out of it on repeated viewings/readings! I have seen the majority of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes at *least* five times. Same for all of Firefly and some Angel episodes. I also think that thanks to reruns there's definitely episodes of The Simpsons and Friends that meet this too. But I want to pick something that really stands out!

First my honourable mentions:

- The "Self-Esteem" ep of My So-Called Life. Aka Angela (Claire Danes) and Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) make out in the boiler room for most of the episode. Enough said.

- "Jump" from season 1 of Joan of Arcadia. This became the episode which I would show people to convince them that this is an amazing show. Everything is perfectly balanced in this ep: humour, sadness, real life issues that aren't resolved easily, the questioning of God and spirituality, and most of all hope and love.

- "Modern Warfare" from Community. Definitely the best episode from this season with its perfect homage to every action and survivalist movie.

And my official selection is.....

"Something Borrowed" (season 2, episode 21) of How I Met Your Mother


So why did I pick the wedding episode of a sitcom, you may be asking. Here's the thing: if there's one cliche that's been cliched-to-death on TV it's wedding episodes. There's always a 50-50 chance of either heartbreak or happy ending. For some reason, there's frequently someone who speaks up at the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part of the ceremony and always someone rushing to get there at the last minute. OR it's just hopelessly smultzy.

What How I Met Your Mother did was make a genuinely heartfelt wedding episode that's also hysterical. First of all, there was no doubt whether believably in-love Lily and Marshall would get married - of course they would! They're one of those few TV couples that are long-term and clearly functional and awesome together. Secondly, they went with the "every possible bad thing that could happen does" cliche and had fun with it. Lily is determined *not* to be the bride who freaks out because everything isn't perfect so even though disaster after disaster occurs she tries to keep it cool. Marshall gets the worst hairstyle ever (horrible blond tips) and proceeds to make it worse by shaving a strip off the top of his head. What follows is hysterical as Ted and Barney scramble to come up with something to cover Marshall's hair (they ponder a bad toupee and Native American head-dress but forget about hat!).



I recall watching another TV show's wedding episode and it just left such a bad taste in my mouth, that my partner and I were like "we need to watch the HIMYM wedding episode, that was a good one" and it still is! A romantic and funny wedding episode is not an easy thing to pull off and How I Met Your Mother did it!

Tomorrow's topic is: Favorite childhood show