A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

IT WILL BE LEGEN . . . WAIT FOR THE NEXT PART, AND I HOPE YOU AREN'T LACTOSE INTOLERANT . . . DARY: It's amazing how skipping town for one week in the middle of the fall TV season screws up one's viewing habits. I've been watching most shows (except Lost, of course) a week or more behind schedule. But I'm now (more or less) caught up, and ready to offer up a few selected thoughts on a few selected shows.

• Alias. I'm not as depressed as so many others seem to be. The last couple seasons have been marked by a whole lot of set-up for a supposed payoff that comes 2/3-ish of the way through the season. Season 5 isn't so very much different than seasons 3 and 4 in that regard. Am I a bit disgruntled to see that JJ and the Gang, while having learned their lesson about following through on plot threads on that other little TV show they do, never really figured out how to do it on Alias? Yes indeed. That's really the core problem with Alias -- the writers seem to have ADD, which leads them to blow off perfectly perfect premises in favor of the new new thing. But that doesn't make the show unenjoyable -- the casino maneuver-with-two-narratives last week was nicely done, and Rachel Nichols is doing an admirable job as Sydney-if-Sydney-were-Marshall. (The other newbies haven't been given a whole lot to do yet, so I can't really comment on them except to say that the way Balthazar Getty's Tom Grace talks reminds me of Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn.) Alias is certainly not the show it was during its seasons 1 and 2 glory days, but it doesn't suck.
• America's Next Top Model. Without forcing anyone to listen to me wax rhapsodic about So You Think You Can Dance again, let me just say that I like SYTYCD and ANTM for the same basic reason. I really don't give a whit about the aspiring models' bitchy behind-the-scenes arguments, eating disorders, or drunken shenanigans. What is interesting to me is observing how some of the girls are able to blossom in front of the camera while other, often prettier, girls just don't have it. Lisa? Not pretty. At all. But she has an ability to transform herself into a stunning creature on film that is astonishing to watch. Her deodorant commercial last week reduced Tyra to tears and warmed my own heart in an unexpected fashion, given that I find her to be a fairly reprehensible human being. It's an inside look into why modeling isn't just something that any pretty girl can do.
• How I Met Your Mother. Mr. Cosmopolitan is ready to throttle me if I tell him this one more time, so I'll say it to all of you instead: How I Met Your Mother could be the new Friends. It's quotable, each and every character is likeable, and it's quirky without being nothing but quirks. (Prime example of the nothing-but-quirks genre: Arrested Development. Love it though I do, there's no underlying narrative.) My own favorite character tic, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, belongs to Marshall rather than Barney: it's his tendency to set every subconscious thought he's having into song. If the writing stays as punchy as it was during last week's clubbing episode, this show could be around for a long time.