Survivors' Guilt and Infinite Hope

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"One day, not today, not tomorrow, not this season, probably not next season, either, but one day, you and I are gonna wake up and suddenly we're gonna be like every other team in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing else matters. And when that day comes, well, that's, that's when we'll honor them."

Jack (Matthew McConaughey)

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The motion picture can inspire people in ways that no other medium can.

That may never have been illustrated as well as it was in "We Are Marshall," which premiered 10 years ago today. It told the story of a school and a town shaken by tragedy — and rising from the ashes. Literally. The airplane carrying nearly all of the Marshall University football team crashed just short of the airport as the team was returning to Huntington, West Virginia, from a game.

I remember when the Marshall football team was almost entirely wiped out by that plane crash in 1970.

I was a young boy in Arkansas, a follower of the Razorbacks, and they had played a school earlier that year that had a similar tragedy befall it. One of two planes carrying the members of the Wichita State University football team to a game in Utah crashed in Colorado. The upperclassmen and the head coach were among those killed.

Wichita State resumed playing with the players who survived by virtue of the fact that they were riding on the other plane, but they went on to lose all their games in 1970, including a 62–0 loss in Little Rock to the Razorbacks about three weeks after the crash. Frank Broyles, the Arkansas coach, tried not to let things get out of hand, bringing in the second– and third–stringers fairly early in the game — but try telling young guys not to do well when they get a rare opportunity to play.

About the only way to keep that score down would have been to invoke the mercy rule — except I'm not sure if that even existed in 1970.

Anyway, when that tragedy struck Marshall, I thought I was seeing history repeat itself.

And I was — only it was worse.

At least Wichita State had some of its players left. Quite a few, actually, although most lacked much in the way of playing time.

The Marshall football team, as I say, was nearly wiped out. The remainder of the 1970 season was canceled, and the program was nearly dropped.

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But the student body resisted — and insisted that the football program continue.

If you're a football fan, you have to understand that the Marshall football program of today bears little resemblance to the one in the early 1970s. Granted, Marshall did struggle this season and won't be playing in a bowl — but the team has been in bowl games in five of the last seven seasons.

In 1970, when the last couple of games were canceled, Marshall was 3–6 and had seldom won more than it lost in the previous seasons. In spite of this season's record, it can truthfully be said that the football team has risen from the ashes and is better than it was before.

Preserving the football team was not exactly an act of loyalty to a storied program at the time. For some, dropping the program was about redirecting funds to areas where they could be more productive. That is certainly a worthy goal for any college administrator, but there are other considerations.

David Strathairn, an actor whose work I have admired for many years, played the university's president who was initially inclined to suspend the program indefinitely. He had the best of intentions, not the least of which was the money that could be saved and redirected to other things.

But preserving the program was important to the students — and to the community. It wasn't about winning; for most, it was about moving on — but in an "we all move forward together" kind of way.

It was a long hard journey for Marshall, and it started with getting someone to accept the incredible challenge of taking over as the program's head coach and essentially building it from scratch. Yes, a long hard journey that was dramatized effectively in "We Are Marshall."

Everyone in Huntington was facing a challenge after that crash. The football players who survived the tragedy were dealing with plenty of issues. The father of one of the victims and his son's fiancee struggled to move on.

One of the few teammates to survive took it upon himself to carry the program forward on his shoulders. It was a burden he soon found to be impossible yet he felt a solemn duty to his deceased teammates. "They left it in my hands," he tearfully told his coach.

"No, they didn't," the coach replied. "They just left."

A surviving assistant coach (Matthew Fox) helped the new head coach (Matthew McConaughey) rebuild the team quickly, but the tragedy weighed heavily on him, and he wondered if they were disgracing the memory of his colleagues.

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But that's the thing. When you've been knocked to your knees, you have to endure some difficult moments to return to what you consider normal, and some people don't possess whatever you want to call it — courage comes to mind for me — needed to persevere.

It is that courage that is inspiring, but it can be so easily manipulated in the movies. It's enough to put a viewer on the defensive from the start, isn't it? I mean, you know when you sit down to watch a movie like "We Are Marshall" that you're going to be manipulated, and you kind of brace yourself for that, don't you? I know I do. I think it's some sort of defense mechanism.

But "We Are Marshall" got away with it in large part, I believe, because it was unquestionably and demonstrably true.

Oh, sure, I know there were some things that were made up for dramatic effect, but much of it was probably dialogue (and, being a writer myself, I have to tip my hat to whoever wrote some of those lines). The events were beyond dispute — and even though you knew there had to be a moment of triumph, a time when the football team would win a game for the first time since the crash, it was no less effective when it happened on the big screen.

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The sad truth about life is that not everyone who tries to rise from the ashes is successful. They don't make movies about those who, as Tennyson might have put it, are washed down by the gulfs, only about those who "touch the Happy Isles."

But, while not all who attempt to touch those Happy Isles succeed, all who try do so with the hope of success. "We must accept finite disappointment," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "but never lose infinite hope."

Anything that inspires people — a movie, a book, a song, a speech — appeals to that infinite hope, not acceptance of finite disappointment.

The story of Marshall University, its football team and the town of Huntington fed that hope by virtue of its truth.

It was not a Hollywood story strategically slated for a holiday premiere. It was the real thing.

'Rocky Balboa' Bookended the Tale of a Life

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"It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward."

Rocky (Sylvester Stallone)

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It was nearly 30 years ago to the day since "Rocky" premiered in U.S. theaters when "Rocky Balboa," ostensibly the final chapter in the "Rocky" story, made its theatrical debut.

I doubt that anyone who saw "Rocky" on the big screen in 1976 ever thought Sylvester Stallone would still be making movies about the Italian Stallion three decades later. Certainly I never dreamed I would be watching "Rocky" movies into the 21st century.

But I was, and I have to say I thought "Rocky Balboa," which premiered on this day in 2006, was a fitting finale for the movie series.

(And I say, with all sincerity, that I hoped it was the last movie in the series. It seemed to be — until "Creed" was in theaters a year ago, it had been almost 10 years since any additional films in the Rocky saga were in theaters. But that is another story.)

The first installment introduced audiences to a young Rocky Balboa, finally given the chance to succeed. Whether he succeeded depends upon one's definition of success, but there is no doubt the events in "Rocky" changed his life. The sequels that followed told the story of a life that often was swept along with the tide of human events. Seldom it seemed did Rocky ever have much control over the trajectory his life followed after his first fight with Apollo Creed.

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The cast wasn't entirely the same as the cast in that first movie. Burgess Meredith, of course, was dead. Talia Shire was not dead — well, her character was, but that was a decision Stallone made. It was not Shire's decision; in fact, Shire was complimentary of the movie's handling of the grief process.

See, Stallone had decided that being without Adrian would be devastating for Rocky so it was decided that Adrian would be deceased, a victim of (presumably) breast or ovarian cancer, and that did add a dramatic punch to the story. It reinforced that sensation that life, as John Lennon said, is something that happens (or stops happening) while we're busy making other plans.

I am inclined to agree with Burt Young, who played Paulie, Adrian's brother. Young said Adrian had a greater influence on the story in her absence from that 2006 movie than she ever would have had by being there.

Rocky 30 years later was no longer the young man we came to know in 1976. Stallone was 60 years old, and it is fair to assume that his screen persona would have been about the same age. At that point in one's life, perspectives are different than they were. One has accumulated a lifetime's worth of experiences — and knowledge gained from those experiences.

The first movie was necessary to tell the story of that time in Rocky's life. "Rocky Balboa" was necessary to gain some perspective on that life.

And "Rocky Balboa" showed that Rocky really hadn't changed that much. He was still fundamentally the same guy we met in 1976, just three decades older and wiser and now widowed.

He had some issues with his son — which is the sort of thing that could be said of many fathers and sons — but they resolved them as Rocky prepared for an exhibition fight with the defending heavyweight champ.

Well, Rocky thought it was an exhibition — inspired by a televised computer simulation of a fight between Rocky and this reigning champ — but he discovered in the ring that the champ was taking it seriously. Folks who had been watching Rocky movies for 30 years must have instantly recognized the 180° difference between Rocky's fight with a disengaged Apollo Creed and a fully engaged Mason "The Line" Dixon.

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Technically, Rocky didn't win that first fight. He didn't win the last one, either.

But that wasn't the point for Rocky — either time. The point was going the distance, and he did.

And, as always, Adrian was his inspiration. At the end of "Rocky Balboa," Rocky could be seen at Adrian's grave, saying "Yo, Adrian. We did it."

How and When Things Happen

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Life does things when it does them. It doesn't consider the timing.

Besides, there are some events in life for which there are no convenient times. They always seem to happen at the most inconvenient times possible, though, don't they?

In the episode of How I Met Your Mother that aired on this night in 2006, Ted (Josh Radnor) had decided that he didn't want to spend the holidays with his mother and her boyfriend or with his father. Instead, he had opted to stay in New York with his "other family."

But the happy holidays ambiance was shattered when, while decorating the apartment, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) came across their old answering machine. She listened to the messages that were still on the machine — including one from Ted to Marshall (Jason Segel) while Marshall and Lily were apart.

In that message, Ted called Lily a "grinch." Well, he used a word that sounded like grinch, but it was really another word. As Ted's older self put it in his role as narrator, "a very, very bad word." The actual word was never specified. Just grinch. You fill in the blank with the word you think is most likely (two words come to mind for me, based on what I know of Ted and his speech patterns and word preferences).

Lily wanted to know why Ted would call her that, and he tried to explain he was being supportive of his friend. That probably is something that is difficult for many women to understand — while this may sound sexist, the truth is that males and females really do perceive and respond to many things differently, and that is simply a statement of fact — but I understand where Ted was coming from. I've been in his shoes — trying to be supportive of a broken–hearted friend — but, fortunately for me, there was no evidence with which the girl could confront me later.

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It doesn't take too much imagination to visualize what the discovery of the message did to the Christmas season for the gang. For one thing, Lily packed up all the decorations and carted them away — knowing that Marshall was expecting to see them when he returned from working on the final term paper that he had to turn in before he could conclude his work for the semester.

Marshall was such a sentimentalist. He loved the holidays so much that he went around the apartment with his eyes closed so he wouldn't see even a sliver of the "winter wonderland" that he said would be his reward for finishing his school responsibilities. Lily had to know he would be crushed when he came home to an apartment stripped of its festive appearance.

But things happen when they happen.

And when friends have a falling out like that, they make up (if they do) when they make up. I have known people who let years go by because of an argument they had, and I have known people who made up quickly and didn't let something like that stand in the way of their friendship.

Ted and Lily made up rather quickly — and under rather unexpected circumstances.

That's the way things happen in life.

The Path to Acceptance

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Barney (Neil Patrick Harris): OK, here's my thing — if gay guys start getting married, then suddenly the whole world's gonna be doing it. That's how it works: they start something, then six months later, everyone follows. Like now everyone gets manicures.

Ted (Josh Radnor): Yeah. I don't get manicures.

Barney: OK, then, like getting your chest waxed.

Lily (Alsyon Hannigan): You get your chest waxed?

Barney: You know what I mean! Gay marriage is going to cause single life as we know it to die out. Think of how the American family will be strengthened.

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The episode of How I Met Your Mother that first aired on this night in 2006, "Single Stamina," is the first time I can remember same–sex marriage being the topic of a sitcom episode.

For that matter I can't really remember anything on TV or in the movies prior to that time that dealt with gay marriage. I suppose there must have been, though. Same–sex marriage seemed (to me, at least) to surge from out of nowhere as an issue in the 2004 presidential election, and that was two full years before "Single Stamina" aired.

Something was its catalyst.

After years of observing the human condition, I have concluded that, like the stages of dying of which Elisabeth Kübler–Ross wrote, people go through stages of acceptance for social concepts that were previously alien to them.

I haven't evaluated this to the extent that Kübler–Ross evaluated her subject, so I don't have names for the stages, only general descriptions.

And those stages follow a recognizable trend line. I suppose the initial stage is a dramatic one roughly comparable to Kübler–Ross' anger and denial stages, a challenge to a long–held principle of the majority. And that, it seems to me, is a pretty good description of the mainstream reaction to the idea of gay marriage in 2004.

By the time the concept is one about which audiences can laugh openly, it seems to me that concept is well on its way to the final stage, acceptance.

Indeed, that appears to be the way things have turned out for gay marriage. Less than 10 years after this episode aired, gay marriage was legal in all states and most territories. It reached a level of social acceptance faster than probably was conceivable to most people a decade ago.

It took longer for the mainstream to accept unmarried couples living together or couples of different races marrying each other. Even today in some places and by some people such things are not taken in stride.

On the road to social acceptance, broadcasting plays a huge (in many ways unappreciated) role of catalyst. It is a mirror as well, reflecting where society stands on that road and sometimes providing perspective on how far society still must travel.

How I Met Your Mother didn't get on a social/political soapbox on this night in 2006 — well, there was one political reference but it was done in such an offhand way that it may not have been noticeable at the time, much less today when more context is necessary. I'll get back to that.

In the episode, Barney's (Neil Patrick Harris) black and gay half–brother (Wayne Brady) came to visit. It was at a rather difficult time in Barney's life. It was winter in New York, and the couples in Barney's circle — Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan), of course, and Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders), who had recently become a couple — were settling into hibernation mode, in which they didn't go out or do anything. It had been driving Barney nuts.

But Barney's half–brother changed all that. As Lily observed to Robin (who was the only member of the group who had never met Barney's half–brother before), he was just like Barney — except for being black and gay. Robin was only told about James being gay, though — not that he was black.

After his arrival, James told the couples they should go out and have fun while they were young so they all went out to a club, where the theory of single stamina was explained.

Essentially the theory held that one could always tell at a club or a party which people were single and which were in relationships mostly by observing their behavior and body language.

For example, singles stayed on their feet to permit them to move around easily. Couples found the nearest place to sit.

Anyway, the gang began to suspect that, unlike Barney, James was also part of a couple. Their suspicions were confirmed when they saw him apparently sending a text to someone.

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They felt they had no choice but to tell Barney that his half–brother was in a monogamous (the word was said in hushed tones around Barney) relationship. When Barney confronted James to find out the truth, James confessed that, yes, he was in a relationship. In fact, they were engaged — and he wanted Barney to be his best man.

Barney couldn't approve — not because it was a gay marriage, but because it was a marriage. And Barney was anti–marriage. He favored one–night stands.

But James convinced Barney to change his mind when he told Barney that he and his fiance were adopting a baby. The thought of being an uncle overjoyed Barney, and he toasted the couple at their wedding. He had come full circle.

I guess this episode was about acceptance — on many levels.

Oh, do you remember when I mentioned there was one political reference in this episode? Of course, you do. It was just a few paragraphs ago.

Anyway, the reference was made at James' wedding when Barney made a toast to the happy couple. Afterward, Lily observed that the toast made the father of James' fiance cry. Then she remarked, "He might have been doing that because he's a Republican."

I have never been sure whether that was a reference to the 2006 midterms or not.

This episode aired a few weeks after Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. It was probably taped before the elections, but pre–election polls indicated that a sweep was coming. The outcome did not come as a surprise to anyone.

Also, since weddings are traditionally held in June (although they can and do occur in every month in the year), James' wedding may have been in June, possibly five months before the election, and Lily's comment may have been a reference to the difficulties Republicans had been having in all the areas that would come back to haunt them on election night.

And gay marriage was one of many issues in those midterms.

Of course Lily's remark could have been a reference to Republicans' reputation for conservatism.

Sharper Than a Scorpion's Sting

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I'm pretty sure I was grown when I read the fable of "The Scorpion and the Frog." Ostensibly a children's tale, it had an indisputably dark side that was really for adults, and I don't think my parents or anyone else read it to me when I was little.

I don't know if my parents made a conscious decision not to read that fable to my brother or me. If they did, I probably wouldn't have liked that when I was a child, but I would endorse that decision today. If I had any children (which I don't), that is the decision I would make.

In the fable a scorpion asked a frog to carry it across a river. The frog was wary because it feared being stung by the scorpion. But the scorpion assured the frog it would not do that because if it stung the frog, they would both drown. That persuaded the frog who agreed to take the scorpion across the river.

Halfway across the river, the scorpion did indeed sting the frog, sealing their fates. The frog asked the scorpion why, and the scorpion told the frog, "It is in my nature."

It was the perfect inspirational metaphor for the episode of How I Met Your Mother that first aired on this night in 2006. The episode was appropriately — for a couple of reasons — called "The Scorpion and the Toad."

If you are familiar with the early seasons of How I Met Your Mother, you know that, at the end of the first season, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) made the decision to break up with Marshall (Jason Segel) to go to San Francisco to pursue her dream of being an artist. Marshall was devastated but, at Barney's (Neil Patrick Harris) urging, decided — after three months of mourning the seemingly dead relationship — to start meeting new women when the second season began 10 years ago.

So Marshall and Barney started going out to meet women. Marshall, of course, was his usual sincere, honest (sometimes to a fault) self, and Barney, who was there supposedly to lend his support to Marshall, intervened each time and ended up bedding the women in whom Marshall had shown an interest.

Thus, the scorpion of the story was Barney, whose nature (to seduce women) overrode his intention to help his friend. Every time.

Well, actually, The Scorpion and the Toad was the name of a bar where Barney and Marshall went to meet young college women who, Barney assured Marshall, would be dazzled by Marshall's status as a third–year law student. Of course, Barney ended up seducing Marshall's interests there, too.

But a really good sitcom rarely depends on a single joke or story line to carry an episode, and How I Met Your Mother was a truly good sitcom. The other story line in this episode involved Lily.

Lily was back from San Francisco. No one knew until Robin (Cobie Smulders) encountered her and went apartment hunting with her. Robin was convinced that Lily was happy and had moved on with her life, but when she told Ted (Josh Radnor) he was equally convinced that Lily was miserable and wanted to be back with Marshall.

They made a bet on it, and Ted won when Lily reacted irrationally to the news that she had not gotten an apartment she wanted — and confessed that she missed Marshall and wanted to be back with him, just as Ted had said.

But Ted, who was always a much better friend to Marshall than Barney was, made sure that Lily knew how hurt Marshall had been when she left. He couldn't go through that again, Ted told Lily, so she needed to be absolutely certain that she wanted to be back with Marshall — or else leave him alone entirely.

Lily clearly wanted to be with Marshall, so much that she just happened to be on the street where she knew he would be, and they had a brief conversation. Lily told Marshall she wanted things to be the way they once were.

Marshall was hesitant to reunite with Lily, the memory of a painful summer still fresh in his mind. Longtime viewers of How I Met Your Mother know that not only did Marshall and Lily reconcile, they wound up getting married and having a baby. On this night, however, such an outcome was far from certain.

Lily seemed eager to try, though. She and Marshall sat down on some steps and had a long talk, and at one point she told Marshall that if there was anything she could do to make things up to him, she would do it. And Marshall told her there was one thing she could do — but she could never ask him why.

The next thing the viewers knew, Lily was in the bar confronting Barney, who had been not so subtly working the word "menage" into his conversation with twins. Lily accused Barney of giving her chlamydia, threw a drink in his face and stormed out. She returned a few minutes later, accused him of giving her twin sister chlamydia and threw another drink in his face. That was enough for the twins, who left Barney sitting there with the drinks trickling down his face.

And that is how Lily started making amends with Marshall — by throwing drinks in Barney's face as the Scorpion was seducing young twins, one of whom had been an interest of Marshall's.

And, thus, the Scorpion was stung.

Re-creating the 9-11 Attacks

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"We prepared for everything. Not for this. Not for something this size. There's no plan."

John (Nicolas Cage)

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No one who lived through Sept. 11, 2001, will ever forget it. Most of us didn't experience the life–or–death struggle that some did, but that doesn't mean that most of us weren't affected by what happened that day.

That, I suppose, was what I liked about Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," which premiered on this day in 2006. In the first few years after those infamous attacks, there was a real effort to make sure people didn't forget what had happened. Only a few years after those terrorist attacks, we were already seeing movies about them. There was a made–for–TV movie that essentially dramatized all the now–familiar recordings from that day.

Then there was "United 93," which premiered nearly 3½ months before "World Trade Center," and it basically told the tale of the passengers whose revolt led to the crashing of their plane in a Pennsylvania field instead of the White House or Capitol building.

I can't help wondering if those movies took the edge off that experience. Did the movies contribute to a perception that the attacks of 9/11 didn't really happen, that they were dramatizations for our collective entertainment?

How incredible it is to think that many of the most painful lessons we thought we learned on Sept. 11, 2001 have been all but forgotten by our country's leadership less than 15 years later.

"World Trade Center" told the mostly unknown story of how the families of the victims reacted to what was happening.

For those on the ground, that may have been the most traumatic image that played in their minds that day — how the families of the victims had to watch helplessly while the drama played out. In the office where I was working on that day, I heard many people speaking of the horror they imagined the passengers on the plane experiencing. In the absence of the actual horrific images of that morning — there was no TV in the office at that time — nothing else so moved them to emotional displays as that mental image.

At the time I found it easier to function if I did not think about things like that. But you couldn't ignore it forever, and movies have always been powerful providers of provocative images. Combine that with Stone's directorial skills, and you have an impressive force.

It was also an heroic tale.

The movie, critic Roger Ebert wrote, "is about two men who, against all odds, survived the collapse of the Twin Towers."

Clearly, that is a compelling story line, and ostensibly it was a true story; many parts of it undoubtedly were true, but some parts apparently were exaggerated.

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And some parts were not given adequate treatment — in the eyes of some. There were some widows of victims of the attacks who were critical of the involvement of family members of other victims, producing what they thought was a slanted treatment of the subject.

The treatment was a little heavy handed at times, too.

For example, at one point, a closeup of an open Bible could be seen. It was open to a passage in Revelation and was followed by a shot of a cross, which was "piling it on a bit thick," Ebert observed.

Ebert also pointed out that Stone "Christianize[d]" the story "in ways that go beyond the beliefs of his characters."

"The problem with movies about individuals in such extreme situations," Ebert wrote, "(perhaps especially those that try to hew closely to the accounts of the survivors who lived the events depicted) is that they are stripped of some of their individuality. They are, by necessity, reduced to human essentials, and that doesn't always make for good movie drama. Yes, anyone in this situation would think, and probably say, something like, 'Tell my wife and children that I love them.' But since we don't know much about who these guys were before 9/11 (presented here as a hazy day rather than the crystal clear fall morning we remember — where's CGI when you need it?), some moments in 'WTC' feel more generic than personal or universal."

I think a big problem with dramatizing events that most if not all of your viewers are likely to remember is that people remember things through the prisms of their own experiences. What they saw meshes with what they were thinking and what they were doing.

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And the families are bound to have the most vivid memories of all. Pleasing them must be a nearly impossible objective to achieve.

So I don't fault Stone for failing to live up to their expectations. They want others to feel what they felt, and that is not possible. Only approximations are possible. But isn't that, ultimately, a filmmaker's mission — to make the audiences experience what the characters in the movie experienced?

I'm glad that filmmakers took on the topic of 9/11 quickly. But as I suggested earlier, perhaps they acted too quickly.

Of course, even when Stone has taken on events that were decades removed — "JFK" comes to mind — he has encountered resistance. Even so, there is something to be said for not dramatizing something until a couple of generations have passed.

But I guess that depends on the director, the subject matter and how it is handled. While there were many complaints about Stone's "Nixon," I heard from many people who shared my assessment of Anthony Hopkins' performance in the title role — and we were all old enough to remember Nixon. Hopkins didn't look like Nixon, and he didn't sound like Nixon, but he captured Nixon's persona perfectly.

The characters in "World Trade Center" were not familiar to audiences, only to those who knew the originals, so perhaps the two movies aren't really comparable.

Then again, perhaps Ebert was on to something when he observed that, since the audience was not familiar with the characters, some of the movie's moments felt "more generic than personal or universal."

Is that the fault of the cast or the director? The cast can only work with what it is given in terms of a script and directorial guidance.

Neither Purely History Nor Purely Mystery

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"Nobody hates history. They hate their own histories."

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks)

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I kind of had an unfair advantage over many people who saw "The Da Vinci Code" after it premiered on this day in 2006.

Less than two months earlier, I was laid up for a couple of weeks after shoulder surgery. That's kind of a long story, and I really only mention it because, during my convalescence, I read Dan Brown's "preposterous" (in Roger Ebert's words) novel on which the movie was based.

The novel was published three years earlier, which is probably when most people read it — it was outsold only by the latest in the Harry Potter series — but I didn't read it then. I was busy with other things. Then, when I found myself with time on my hands in early 2006, I read a secondhand paperback copy of that novel.

That worked in my favor when the movie came out, though, because the plot was fresh in my mind. The people I knew who read it when the book was a best–seller in hardback had forgotten some of the finer points of the story, and I am sure they weren't alone.

(I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that it was considerably more challenging for moviegoers to follow the plot if they hadn't read the book. I mean, you at least had to be aware of about 2,000 years' worth of religious rumor and innuendo — as well as history. Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte [N.C.] Observer wrote that "unlike most Hollywood blockbusters, this one assumes audience members will be smart." I worked for newspapers long enough to know that was probably a mistake.)

But I was fortunate to have the father I had. Dad was a religion professor when I was growing up so I got a lot of exposure to things about which most of my friends knew little, if anything — at least when it came to religion. Dad was a great resource for me when I was reading Brown's novel.

But he was a good resource in another way. Dad has always been an avid fan of mystery novels. As such, he was invaluable in helping me to differentiate between elements of genuine religious and historical significance and elements of good mystery writing. In such a novel, they are bound to overlap; without his help, it would have been easy for me to confuse the two.

On top of that, I saw the movie with Dad. We saw it on Father's Day that year — about a month after its premiere. We figured the crowds wouldn't be as great after a month. Boy, were we wrong. Around the time we saw it, "The Da Vinci Code" became the second film of 2006 to exceed $200 million in the United States.

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It was still packing 'em in.

Ron Howard's movies always pack 'em in, though, and they are almost always good so that was understandable. What's more he had two–time Oscar winner Tom Hanks in the leading role and two–time Oscar nominee Ian McKellen in a supporting role. French actress Audrey Tatou, who was largely unfamiliar to American movie audiences at the time, co–starred with Hanks. How could Howard go wrong?

Well, apparently, he did.

The response to the movie was, at best, mixed. I think most people recognized the controversial nature of the subject matter — as well as the fact that considerable resistance could be expected from the Roman Catholic Church. More than a dozen countries censored the film — if they didn't ban it outright.

So there were some headwinds facing the movie when it made its debut. But that didn't seem to dampen audience enthusiasm. As mentioned earlier, it was the second–highest grossing film that year. Anyone looking for evidence that critical endorsements' have little effect on consumer behavior need look no further than "The Da Vinci Code."

Still, the critics could be harsh, and Howard said he found their responses "frustrating."

And I guess they were.

But that is to be expected, I suppose, when a movie challenges people's religious beliefs, and that is precisely what "The Da Vinci Code" did. How could anyone think otherwise? Hanks' character was a professor of religious iconography and symbology involved in a quest for the Holy Grail.

What was not expected — at least, by me — was the negative reaction to Howard. After all, who didn't like Opie? Or, depending on your age, Richie Cunningham? Getting rough with Ron Howard is like getting rough with the Easter bunny.

Ebert wrote that the movie was "preposterously entertaining." That was probably a good way to put it.

I agreed with his assertion that the book on which the movie was based was "preposterous" — and with that stuff about the movie being preposterously entertaining.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, I encourage you to do so.

Just remember that it is neither purely history nor purely mystery. Perhaps a little of both.

A Decade Without the West Wing

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Bartlet (Martin Sheen): How's the speech?

Santos (Jimmy Smits): It's OK. A couple of good lines. There's no 'Ask not what your country can do for you ...'

Bartlet: JFK really screwed us with that one, didn't he?

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There are some milestones that seem to be about right, and some milestones that don't seem right.

Tonight is the 10th anniversary of the final episode of the West Wing. In my mind, that event ranks as one of the latter. I can't believe it has been a decade since that show went off the air.

For a long time, it was the only TV show that I watched regularly — and I do mean regularly. I almost never missed it.

And the episode that aired on this night in 2006 was a lot like the ones that preceded it. It told what would have been a linear story — if it was telling an actual story. It was the last chapter in the story of the Bartlet administration, the perfect way to finish the series.

As I mentioned last week, I would have liked for there to have been one more season, kind of a postscript to the story that told the viewers what each of the characters had been doing.

That was not done, but there were a few surprises in store for viewers. Toby (Richard Schiff) received a presidential pardon — I think most West Wing viewers suspected that would happen, but the outgoing president (Martin Sheen) dragged out his decision.

And the incoming president picked a one–time rival for the party nomination to be his vice president since his running mate in the series (John Spencer) died of a heart attack on Election Day.

Before the curtain fell on the series, though, the West Wing audience was treated to one last round of the show's snappy dialogue.

One of my favorite exchanges came about midway through when the president–elect (Jimmy Smits) and his wife (Teri Polo) were on their way to the inaugural festivities.

"Nine inaugural balls," the soon–to–be first lady said. "You think I'm supposed to wear nine gowns?"

"Do you have nine gowns?" the soon–to–be president asked.

"No," she replied.

"Well, then, probably not," he said.

(Actually, it seems to me that Inaugural Day is a little late to be sweating that kind of detail.)

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I always liked the snappy dialogue, but, I must admit, I wondered something when I heard Mr. and Mrs. Santos speaking in the West Wing manner. Had they really morphed into President and Mrs. Bartlet?

I mean, I always thought that one of the benefits of democracy was getting different personalities with a change of administrations.

Still, I would recommend watching this episode before the next president takes the oath of office in January. The West Wing did an excellent job of showing viewers what happens on Inaugural Day — the behind–the–scenes stuff. While the new president is taking the oath and delivering the Inaugural Address — and then watching the Inaugural Parade — an army of workers descends upon the White House and moves the first family's belongings out and the new first family's belongings in.

I've heard that their work is so thorough that, when the new first family returns to the White House later on Inaugural Day, it is as if all their possessions had been magically transported to precisely where they were expected to be in the residence portion of the White House. That is especially important if the new president has children, who will want to easily find their favorite toys when they return to their new residence.

I guess the thinking is that a new first family's lives will be disrupted enough by their new positions in American life. Their private lives should offer some continuity and sanctuary from the outside world.

The two people between whom Americans will likely have to select the next president have no young children who would be moving in to the White House with them. They do have grandchildren — those grandchildren most likely would not be moving in with them, but they could be expected to be visitors from time to time.

How frequently they would visit might determine whether those workers would need to prepare special rooms for them.

A gentle reminder that, when Americans elect a president, they get that president's family in the bargain.

An Administrative Change of Life

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On this night 10 years ago, the West Wing was winding down its seven–year run. A new president was about to take over, and Martin Sheen's crew was making post–administration plans, both personal and professional.

I was in the midst of my own transition, as most West Wing fans were, I suppose. I was wondering what I would do with myself after the series went off the air. What I saw on this night in 2006 made me wish there was going to be another season so I could see what happened with those characters after they finished what C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) called "the first line of my obituary."

We sort of got a peek into that in the final episode — but I will write about that next Saturday on the 10th anniversary of the West Wing's series finale.

The viewers were getting set up for that with the episode that aired 10 years ago tonight, "Institutional Memory." As I say, everyone in Martin Sheen's administration was preparing to vacate for Jimmy Smits' incoming administration.

But not entirely. Some folks from the Bartlet (Sheen) administration were being asked to stay on — chief among them being C.J., who started the series as press secretary and ended it as chief of staff. Now the Santos (Smits) administration wanted to make use of her experience.

The trouble was so did a wealthy mogul — a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates sort of character — who wanted to use his wealth to benefit people and offered to give C.J. $10 billion to "fix" whatever she thought was the greatest problem of her time.

That was the offer that appealed to her, but Smits had given her the "your president needs you" speech — OK, it was a Reader's Digest condensed version, but that took away none of its impact — especially on the relationship between C.J. and Danny the reporter (Timothy Busfield), whose intriguing interaction through the run of the series was finally beginning to blossom in the final episodes.

Understandably, though, C.J. was conflicted by her professional life, and Danny had to make her understand that he would be supportive of whatever she wanted to do. He just wanted to be part of the conversation.

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Of course, as a presidential administration winds down, there are many conversations going on, not the least of which concerns the subject of presidential pardons.

Being the history buff that I am, one of the things I always liked about the West Wing was the way it educated its viewers while entertaining them. Sometimes the education was rather blunt, but it was subtle in this episode of the West Wing. Outgoing presidents routinely issue pardons, and the subject of a pardon for former White House speechwriter Toby (Richard Schiff), who was fired after he leaked classified information to save the lives of some astronauts, was the subject of conversation. Toby's ex–wife Andie (Kathleen York) was one of those who lobbied C.J. for a pardon.

When he discussed the subject of pardons with C.J. — and after confirming that Toby's name did not appear on the list of applicants for presidential pardons — Charlie (Dule Hill) casually remarked that the president "could do whatever he wants to in this area," including adding his own names to the list of pardons.

Sometimes in our modern political climate it is hard to remember just how prescient the West Wing often was. Toby's national defense leak was only one example. More than one writer has observed how closely the election that put Barack Obama in the White House mirrored the election of Jed Bartlet's successor in the series' final season.

C.J. went to visit Toby, who confirmed in a rather awkward exchange that he had not applied for a pardon, and then they had the kind of conversation that flows easily between friends — and, as Andie pointed out to C.J., they had been friends for a long time, long before the leak.

C.J. and Danny were friends before they were lovers. The challenge they faced in the episode that aired a decade ago tonight suggested, as the final credits began to roll, that they taking tentative steps toward being a mutually supportive couple.

Maybe one day the West Wing will have a reunion show, and we can find out more about what became of those characters after the next week's season finale.

Auditioning a Wedding Band

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Ted (Josh Radnor): Lily, you're being a wee bit intense about this band thing.

Lily (Alyson Hannigan): Intense? I have a wedding to plan in nine weeks for 200 people! Even if a dinosaur should poke his head out of my butt and consume this coffee table, I need you to roll with it! OK?

Ted: Wow.

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I have never been married, but most of my friends have been married — and I have had the experience of being around some of them when they were planning their weddings.

It wasn't pretty.

If you have never been subjected to that, you could get a pretty good idea what it is like if you have ever seen even one of the "Father of the Bride" movies — either the Spencer Tracy original or the Steve Martin remake.

Or you could watch the episode of How I Met Your Mother that first aired on this night in 2006. Lily (Alyson Hannigan) was working on the arrangements for her upcoming wedding to Marshall (Jason Segel) — and driving everyone around her crazy — in an episode titled "Best Prom Ever."

The episode began with the tale of how they had snagged the place where they wanted to have the ceremony, which was usually booked up, but it was briefly available in two months. Wedding preparations went into overdrive — if such a thing is possible.

Even when preparations aren't shifting into high gear, as they did in this episode, it seems there is always one detail that the happy couple — at least the bride (who may drag the groom with her just to have some company) — must freak out about. In Lily's case, it was the band. She didn't have one lined up.

Marshall said he had lined up the band that played at his law review party, but Lily wasn't familiar with the band. She didn't know if the band could play their song, a Violent Femmes piece called "Good Feeling," and said the band would have to audition. But Marshall said the band didn't audition. Besides, the date for the perfect place was only being held for a few days.

So Lily figured she could go listen to the band play sometime during the weekend. Marshall discovered, by checking the band's website, the band was playing at a prom in New Jersey. Lily decided she would go there and listen to the band play — but it turned out that she couldn't do that. Only high school students and their dates were allowed inside.

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So Lily hatched a plan to sneak into the prom, and Robin (Cobie Smulders) volunteered to go with her. She never went to her own prom; she said she was always competing in Canadian national field hockey playoffs in the spring.

They opted not to bring any of the guys along, figuring that a large group would just raise suspicions so Ted (Josh Radnor) and Marshall decided to have a guys' night out. Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), after belittling them, told them to call him and they would meet up.

The girls dressed in their finest clothes — and Barney told them they would stick out like sore thumbs. "Have you seen how the kids are dressing these days, with the Ashlee and the Lindsay and the Paris?" he asked. "They all dress like strippers. It's so ho or go home."

So Lily and Robin tried to find slutty clothes to wear — and, as they searched the closets, Lily discovered the dress she had worn to her actual prom 10 years earlier.

And, in a flashback, the How I Met Your Mother audience first met Scooter (David Burtka), Lily's high–school boyfriend who was obsessed with her and made periodic appearances during the show's run as the guy Lily kept "on the hook." Eventually, he married her doppelganger, "Stripper Lily."

But on this night his character was merely a memory for Lily — and most of his appeal to Lily at the time appeared to be his modest resemblance to Kurt Cobain.

It had been on that night that Scooter and Lily had broken up. Scooter had resisted, but Lily insisted that there were things she still wanted to do before she settled down — travel, be an artist overseas, "maybe have a lesbian relationship." Scooter continued to obsess over Lily, going so far as to give up his dream of going to umpire school and work in the lunchroom at the school where Lily taught kindergarten.

(Kind of reminds me of my prom.)

But that was still in the future.

The subject of the future came up on the dance floor as Lily and Robin were honoring their promises of a dance to the two high school seniors who agreed to take them in to the prom. Lily, still feeling considerable stress over her wedding plans, asked her date what his plans were, then proceeded to tell him his plans would never come to pass because everything would be different than he imagined.

And Robin's date threw up on her when, after he asked her if he was getting lucky that night, she started to say, "You're a nice guy, but ..."

That led to a great exchange between Robin and Lily in the ladies' room.

"I can't believe I unloaded on a high school senior like that," Lily said.

"I can't believe a high school senior unloaded like that on me," Robin replied.

Then Robin asked Lily a question that How I Met Your Mother viewers would have considerable reason to recall in coming episodes: "Are you having second thoughts?"

And Lily acknowledged that, yes, she was. "But not about Marshall," Lily insisted. "About me." She said she kept thinking about the girl she had been at the time of her actual prom and wondering what happened to her.

I suppose that is the question most of us ask ourselves at some point. After all, the lives of few if any of the people from my senior class turned out the way they expected. I'm sure there are exceptions to that rule — but not many.

Robin pointed out that Lily could still travel and paint, just as she had hoped to do.

"And as far as your lesbian experience ..."

With that, Robin kissed Lily.

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Back on the dance floor, Lily and Marshall agreed that the band was playing their song quite well and could be the band for their wedding.

By the way Burtka is Harris' real–life husband. Well, I know they are married now. Ten years ago, they may have been domestic partners, given the fact that homosexual marriage has only been legal in recent years.

The Flight That Lives in Infamy

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"The war on terror begins with 40 ordinary people."

Tagline

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Anyone old enough to remember the tragic day of Sept. 11, 2001 — and that must mean anyone who is at least 23 or 24 now — will never forget anything about it.

For many people, it was the first time they had given much thought to terrorism, its practitioners and its purpose. Prior to 2001, most folks gave terrorism superficial attention at times and at best — after the jumbo jet was blown from the sky over Lockerbie or the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center was made or the successful attempt to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City occurred.

But terrorism really came to America in 2001 when the al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes and flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The fourth airplane, United 93, slammed into a field in Southwestern Pennsylvania, killing all on board but failing to reach its apparent target, the Capitol or the White House. The exact target is not known.

There are many things about that flight that are not known. Oh, sure, there are some things that are known. We know about the telephone calls that passengers made to loved ones. We know about Todd Beamer's conversation with an airphone supervisor on the ground. We know about recordings that were made on the plane that day, including the events just before the plane crashed when some of the passengers tried to storm the cockpit.

But many of the details that we believe we know are myths that sprang up almost immediately — like the notion that the plane was filled with modern–day patriots who heroically and unselfishly sacrificed themselves in the first battle in the war on terrorism.

That brings me to the part that I liked the most about "United 93," a movie about that flight that had its first–ever showing (at New York's Tribeca Film Festival) on this day in 2006. It opened across the nation two days later.

What did I like best about it? I liked the fact that the movie showed the plane's passengers and crew as the humans they were. Based on what we have heard from recordings, there clearly were those on board who refused to go down without a fight. But there must also have been those who huddled in the back of the plane.

It is tempting, from our perspective, to criticize those who may have remained in the back, clinging to the hope that the flight would not end the way it did. They were only minutes from their deaths, we might say to ourselves. What did they have to lose?

We have the advantage of knowing how it all turned out, but no one on board the plane that day knew what was going to happen. It seems entirely plausible to me that, given the way children have been raised in America for generations, some of the passengers did as they were told in the futile belief that they could save themselves by cooperating.

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I always knew that the events of Sept. 11 would be dramatized in at least one feature film, but "United 93" — which was the first full–length big–screen dramatization about that day — came along even earlier than I expected. It had been fewer than five years since the hijackings, after all.

A deliberate decision was made not to use well–known actors and actresses in the film — so as not to detract from the story. Probably the only person viewers might have recognized — and they really would have had to search their memories to place her — was Rebecca Schull, whose greatest claim to fame probably was as the ticket agent on the TV sitcom Wings. (I don't think she had any lines in the movie and relatively few on–screen moments.)

You might have seen one or two others, but they almost certainly played small parts in those movies or TV shows, and you would probably never remember in what you had seen them. It was best not to dwell on such things too much, anyway — at least while you were watching "United 93" — even though we all know the story.

As I say, there are many myths that continue to swirl around that flight. One is that the passengers were heroic to the end — and, human nature being what it is, I find it hard to believe that some of the passengers didn't become hysterical or burst into tears. No one on that flight spoke of the big picture or a war on terrorism that had not begun — at least as far as Americans were concerned.

The passengers were, as the tagline said, "40 ordinary people," and that is precisely what "United 93" sought to convey through its casting. Unlike the hijackers, they boarded that plane with no political agendas, and they died not knowing if anyone outside their families and circles of friends would know who they had been.

"It is not too soon for 'United 93' because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11," wrote Roger Ebert. "The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims."

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I agree with that.

And I think the decision to go with largely unknown actors was the right one. With a few exceptions, the victims on Sept. 11 were unknown, too. That is what made their deaths so compelling. They could have been any one of us. The victims had been people who casually boarded airplanes to fly across the country, either for work or for pleasure, and people who casually went to work as usual. Just a normal day. Normal people.

It wasn't many years before those terrorist attacks that I was flying fairly frequently as part of my job. I wrote for a trade magazine and often had to cover trade shows in other parts of the country. On Sept. 11, I definitely had a sense of there but for the grace of God go I.

(I had a similar sensation several years earlier — after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. I was teaching at the University of Oklahoma in those days, and I often did research at the Oklahoma City library, which wasn't far from the federal building. In fact, I walked past the federal building on am untold number of occasions.)

Of course, knowing what we know now about the terrorists' plan, the odds would have been strongly against my being on a hijacked plane. The hijackers were looking for planes that were carrying enough fuel for a cross–country flight, and the flights originated on the East Coast so the hijacker pilots wouldn't have far to fly to reach their targets in New York and Washington.

My base of operations was here in Dallas. I flew to both coasts in the course of my work, but I always started in Dallas, in the middle of the country. Such a flight would not be a candidate for participation in such a plot. Still, I didn't know that on Sept. 11.

(As for the bombing in Oklahoma City, I wouldn't have been a likely victim of that one, either. The bombing occurred about 30 minutes before I was supposed to teach a class. I wouldn't have been in Oklahoma City that morning. But I had been there on other mornings.)

U.S. intelligence personnel may have known more details on the night of Sept. 11 than most folks in the general public did, but the movie managed to capture the sense of bewilderment that I and most of the people around me experienced that morning. I have no doubt it reflected the atmosphere in most places across the United States. Perhaps also in some corners of the intelligence community.

Most of the people with whom I worked fit Ebert's description of what movie viewers knew in the context of "United 93." There was no TV in my office at that time, and we got updates from friends and relatives who called the office to report what was happening.

No one in our office understood what was happening — or why it was happening. Few of them, frankly, knew anything about Osama bin Laden, and no one knew anything about al Qaeda — until George W. Bush mentioned it in his speech to a joint session of Congress more than a week later.

In that way, and in every other, "United 93" was true to the moment in time that it sought to recapture. And that is what I look for in movies about historical events. I'm willing to give a movie some wiggle room in its portrayal of an event or series of events — if it needs it and if it doesn't contradict the facts.

Some events need no embellishment. Sept. 11 was such an event. And I saw nothing that seemed to be an attempt to embellish the dramatization of that day.

We know there was some kind of revolt on Flight 93. Beyond that, so much — what was said, what was done and by whom — is largely speculation.

The speculation in "United 93" was reasonable. The passengers didn't mount a counterattack with patriotic music swelling in the background. "The passengers are a terrified planeload of strangers," Ebert observed. Some of the passengers wept, some prayed, some joined in the revolt.

Put any three dozen or so people together in such a situation and you will have that kind of mix. Some people succumb to fear. Others overcome it. You never know how you will react to a situation until you find yourself in it. And, looking back on it, it is inevitable, I suppose, that some things will seem hackneyed and cliched the more they have been retold — and re–spun.

"There has been much discussion of the movie's trailer," Ebert wrote, "and no wonder. It pieces together moments from 'United 93' to make it seem more conventional, more like a thriller. Dialogue that seems absolutely realistic in context sounds, in the trailer, like sound bites and punch lines. To watch the trailer is to sense the movie that [director Paul] Greengrass did not make. To watch 'United 93' is to be confronted with the grim chaotic reality of that September day in 2001."

Yes, it was a grim day. Yes, it was chaotic — on the ground, I know, and I'm sure it was even more chaotic in the air.

It is a story that should never be forgotten — and "United 93" did its best to make sure it isn't.

Something About Mary the Paralegal

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Ted (Josh Radnor): Did you and Barney ever ...

Mary (Erinn Bartlett): There's not enough money in the world.

Ted: Oh, thank God!

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The situation that was portrayed in the episode of How I Met Your Mother that aired 10 years ago tonight, "Mary the Paralegal," did not ring true for me. It simply did not describe a situation like any in which I have found myself. But that doesn't mean I didn't find it amusing.

I guess that is what sitcoms are about — the comedy of the situation is derived from exaggerated circumstances. After all, the funniest jokes involve one thing that is way out of proportion to everything else.

As I observed recently, a previous episode of How I Met Your Mother dealt with Ted (Josh Radnor) and his decision to break up with his long–distance girlfriend, Victoria, a decision that was accelerated by the opportunity to sleep with Robin (Cobie Smulders). It all backfired on him as he alienated both girls.

Victoria was in the other hemisphere so Ted knew he wouldn't interact with her on a regular — or even semi–regular — basis. Robin was different. She was still in New York — and still had the same circle of friends Ted had.

And, on this occasion, Robin had been nominated for a local broadcasting award. Actually, she had been nominated a few months earlier, and she had asked her friends to come to the awards banquet in a show of support, and they had agreed. Ted told her he would be bringing a date — at that time, presumably, Victoria, but they broke up, you see. So Ted wondered if he should bring a date.

Because of the lateness of the hour — the awards ceremony was in two hours — Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) suggested going with an "escort," which Ted interpreted to mean prostitute, and he rejected the idea. Nevertheless, Barney showed up with a beautiful blonde named Mary. He identified her as a paralegal from his building — and introduced her to Ted in his classic "H-a-a-ave you met Ted?" fashion. Ted continued to reject the idea — until Robin came in with her date, a local TV news guy named Sandy Rivers.

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That was when Ted decided to bring Mary as his date after all — in spite of his misgivings about prostitution.

The awards banquet was about what you would expect from a Local Area Media Award, as it was called — or "LAMA," pronounced lame–uh by Lily (Alyson Hannigan).

The emcee was a fellow known only as Vampire Lou, the host of the Saturday afternoon kung fu movie.

As Vampire Lou went through the awards, Ted and Mary flirted with each other and got to know each other better. Ted concluded that he really liked her, in spite of what he believed that she did for a living. Lo and behold, Barney had arranged for a room in the hotel for the two of them, and once again Ted found himself faced a moral dilemma.

Ted was weighing whether to take Mary to the room and spend the night with her when Robin's category came up. This wasn't like Ted Baxter in the Mary Tyler Moore Show, who always had a broadcasting awards acceptance speech ready but lost nearly every time. Robin won for her story on Pickles the Singing Dog, and her acceptance speech was basically a confession that winning was a surprise to her. She thanked her friends for being there — deliberately naming everyone but Ted, who decided at that point that he would take Mary to the hotel room after all.

After they left, Barney announced that, "in keeping with tonight's award show motif," he was recruiting Vampire Lou to read the contents of an envelope that Barney produced containing the evening's surprise twist ending.

Mary, Vampire Lou announced, was not a prostitute.

Mary really was a paralegal from Barney's building. And Ted, Barney told the group, had no idea she wasn't a hooker. They all stared at him. "If you don't laugh," Barney said, "it just seems mean."

In the end, Ted couldn't go through with it. As they stood in the hall in front of the room, Ted told Mary he couldn't sleep with her because she was a hooker. She protested that she was a paralegal. They went back and forth that way until Ted finally realized she was telling the truth. By that time, however, she had decided she wanted nothing more to do with him.

As Ted was telling Barney and Marshall (Jason Segel) about his experience with Mary, Barney giggled uncontrollably, then tried to defend what he had done. Believing that Ted was in a slump, he told them had arranged for the date because it would restore Ted's confidence.

But the twist ending turned out to be that Ted went ahead and took the room for the night — the expensive one that Barney had put on his credit card for Ted and Mary. "Never checked out," he told Barney.

"You know what's super fun?" he asked Barney. "Pouring Dom Perignon down a bathtub drain." Then he announced that he had a massage appointment and left.

Marshall looked at the stunned Barney and delivered the punch line. "Come on. If you don't laugh, it just seems mean."

Listen to Your Mother!

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"In one night I managed to hurt two people I cared about — and none of it would have happened if I had listened to my mom."

Ted (Josh Radnor)

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When one is young, one is apt to think that one's elders are being killjoys when they try to pass along the cautionary wisdom they have gained the hard way.

Don't bother to deny it. We've all been there — well, there are exceptions, but they are so rare as to be statistically inconsequential.

On this night 10 years ago, How I Met Your Mother dramatically illustrated the truth of the adage "Nothing good happens after 2 a.m." or whatever the equivalent was that your parents/grandparents/teachers/whoever told you. Some folks will say midnight or 10 p.m., whatever they have selected as the curfew.

The episode was called, appropriately enough, "Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M."

Now, as I observed a few weeks ago, Ted (Josh Radnor) had begun a relationship with a girl named Victoria he met at a wedding. She was a baker who had made the wedding cake. Not long into their relationship, she accepted a cooking fellowship in Germany. Ted tried to carry on a long–distance relationship but found it unsatisfying, as people inevitably do.

Victoria wrote Ted a letter telling him she would call at a certain time on a certain day, and Ted was convinced she was going to break up with him.

Which bring us to the episode that aired 10 years ago tonight.

Robin (Cobie Smulders) called Ted at 2 a.m. and asked if he wanted to come over.

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"Go home, Ted," everyone advised him — well, not everyone. Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) advised him to go home, but Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) did not. And Lily inadvertently lit a fire under Ted when she spilled the beans about Robin being attracted to him.

Of course, Ted went to Robin's. He still hadn't heard from Victoria, although his subconscious kept seeing her everywhere — in the taxi, on the steps in front of Robin's apartment. And when Robin asked him how the conversation with his girlfriend had gone, he lied. He told her they had broken up, which hadn't happened yet, but he was sure it would. He showed Robin his new phone. It was exactly like hers.

That gave him a chance to tell a metaphor–loaded story about how he liked that old phone, but the new phone just felt right.

Then he got a phone call from the gang and went into the hallway to take it. They implored him to go home; he implied that he would, but he didn't.

He started to do the right thing and leave — but he found himself in an embrace with Robin. The next thing the audience knew, they were making out on the couch and agreed to move things to the bedroom, but, before they did, Ted made a dash for the bathroom and grabbed a phone. The wrong phone.

He found that out after having a conversation with subconscious Victoria in the bathroom. Turned out Robin was having a conversation with the real Victoria out in the living room. The phone rang, and thinking it was hers, Robin answered.

She told Ted that Victoria had called and that he ought to call her back. Then Robin went to the bedroom. Alone.

A pretty vivid example of how nothing good happens after 2 a.m.

Except ...

The first time I saw this episode I remembered the night Jimmy Carter was elected president. He rolled up a big lead in the popular vote with huge margins in most of the Southern states, but the race was still a cliffhanger in the Electoral College late into the evening.

Finally, around 3 a.m., the networks called Mississippi for Carter, putting him over the top.

So, I would say, from Jimmy Carter's perspective, something good did happen after 2 a.m. At least once.

Although given the way his presidency turned out — maybe it wasn't so good in the long run.

Anyway, what was the moral of the story, my millennial readers?

Simply put, it is this: Your elders aren't trying to deprive you of anything when they tell you not to do something. See, they had to learn it the hard way. They love you, and they want to help you avoid something that most of us simply have to learn for ourselves. The hard way.

And I suppose most of us just have to learn this the hard way: When it is 2 in the morning, you are better off just going home and going to bed. Alone.

A Mini Romantic Movie

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"The best part of any first kiss is the leadup to it. The moment right before the lips touch. It's like a big drumroll. So how about tonight we just stick with the drumroll?"

Victoria (Ashley Williams)

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OK, I'll grant you that the first part of the two–part episode of How I Met Your Mother that debuted two weeks ago in 2006 wasn't great. But I did think the second part, "Drumroll, Please," which premiered on this day in 2006, was kind of special.

It was certainly different.

As I mentioned on the anniversary of that first part, Ted (Josh Radnor) was going to a wedding and planned to take Robin (Cobie Smulders), but she was called in to anchor the news at the last minute. Ted was disappointed because he felt that the wedding was intended to be the occasion when he and Robin finally embarked on a relationship; instead, he wound up sitting with Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and watching other couples dance.

And then it happened — he saw a girl across the room (played by Ashley Williams) and struck up a conversation with her. They hit it off, but the girl explained that she never hooked up at weddings. However, she did have a proposal — so to speak. She suggested that she and Ted spend the evening together — but they wouldn't kiss, they wouldn't sleep together, they wouldn't even share their real names. They would choose aliases.

And when the evening was over, they would part company and never see each other again.

Ted was OK with that — until Barney came running up to him with one of the bridesmaids on his arm and kept repeating Ted's name, then ran off with the bridesmaid. Thus, the cat was out of the bag. "I'm Ted," he confessed.

"Victoria," she replied.

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So Ted and Victoria went off on a playful evening that included Ted playing ragtime on the piano while Victoria tap danced.

Then she confessed that she didn't really know how to tap dance. It was a darn good imitation.

That was the way the evening progressed, and the next day, when Ted was telling Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) about his evening, he kept saying it was "amazing." Marshall and Lily had been at the wedding, too, and they kept ranting about the cake.

(Keep that in mind. It's important.)

After Ted had told them about his evening, he said he was fine with not ever seeing Victoria again. Then, after what has long been called a pregnant pause in the theater, he told them that he had to see Victoria again. But he knew nothing about her except her first name.

Lily had the idea to call the bride from the wedding and ask her for info on Victoria. But Claudia (the bride) was on her honeymoon. Lily advised Ted to wait a couple of weeks, then call Claudia and ask her for info. But Ted was impatient and called Claudia that day. Claudia told Ted that she knew the guest list backwards and forwards — and there had been no Victoria at her wedding.

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And the mystery surrounding Victoria grew murkier.

Lily's theory was that Victoria had used another alias. Marshall thought she might be a ghost.

After exploring about every option he had, Ted decided it was fate that he should not be permitted to see Victoria again. And he and the gang resumed their lives as they had been before Victoria and the wedding interrupted.

But fate, as it turned out, had other ideas.

Robin came by to see Lily and tell her about her experience as a substitute anchor. She had done so well, she told Lily, that she was now the official weekend substitute anchor. The one regret she had was standing up Ted. Lily told her not to be concerned, and then she told Robin all about Ted and Victoria.

A stunned Robin told Lily, "I know who she is."

Apparently, after her work as the anchor ended, she had gone to the wedding, hoping to tell Ted all about it — and she stumbled on them alone and seemingly on the verge of a kiss. In fact, it had been Victoria's suggestion that they not kiss — but, instead, come close so as to preserve the drumroll buildup that accompanies a first kiss.

Robin, of course, did not know that. She left almost immediately — and without being seen by either Ted or Victoria — and went to the ladies' room, where she sat in one of the stalls and cried.

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Victoria came in to the ladies' room, heard Robin crying and offered her shoulder, but Robin declined.

She did, however, ask Victoria if she was a friend of the bride or the groom. Neither, Victoria replied. "I made the cake."

With that knowledge, Ted was off to find Victoria's bakery, which they did.

But when they got there, Ted began to think about it. The evening had been perfect, and it was a memory that would always be good, would never change no matter what. He was about to leave it as it was, but then he went in. First, he looked through the bakery window — and saw Victoria spreading icing on a cupcake. He went in, ringing the bell on the door as he did, and Victoria turned and saw him. She ran to him — the way lovers always do in all those romantic movies you see on television — and said, "Thank God," before they finally kissed.

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OK, it was an episode that probably would have been better if shown around Valentine's Day, which certainly could have been done. In fact, if it had aired three weeks later, it would have been the night before Valentine's Day.

So I guess that would be my main — if not only — complaint about the episode. And when you think about it, if the most you can criticize about a TV episode is the timing of the broadcast, that speaks pretty well of the quality of the episode. I do have a few other remarks to make, but I'll leave it you to decide whether they qualify as complaints. I think they are more along the line of observations, neither good nor bad.

Now, romantic movies really are women's domain. And I mentioned romantic movies earlier because this episode was like a mini romantic movie, a romantic movie packed into a half–hour sitcom episode (well, two half–hour episodes, counting that first one, which really was essential for everything in the second episode to make sense).

Thus, it really wasn't surprising that so much of the story was told from women's perspectives. Ted's character was compliant enough that he could easily fit the part he was required to play. This story was about women and love and dreams and fantasies and the weird kind of sexual logic that always seems to guide relationships in their formative days.

It also seemed to me that there was a kind of assumption made that all men are like Barney — sexual predators. That is a false assumption that arises from that sexual logic I mentioned.

I thought the story was well written, and it may have been the best of the series' first season. But the male characters were, for the most part, reduced to props that reinforced negative stereotypes.

(I am reminded of a period in my life when I worked in an office where we were divided up into small teams. My team was nearly all female. In fact, I think I was the only male in the group. And all day, every day, I heard them telling each other about their experiences with men. Needless to say, I never had anything to contribute to the conversation.)

I'm not saying the story would have been better if the males had been allowed to be three–dimensional as the females were, only that it was clear to me that the story was written from a female's perspective. I knew that even before I knew that a woman wrote the script, and another woman directed the episode.