Life's Choices

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Robin (Cobie Smulders): You know, that was really cool what you did. When we all needed it, you got us back on the right path.

Ted (Josh Radnor): It's what I do.

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Five years ago tonight, How I Met Your Mother did one of the things it did best — it told a tale of how one character's life (o, in this case, two characters) could have ripple effects in the lives of those closest to him/her.

It was a 36 Hours in the Lives of Robin (Cobie Smulders), Ted (Josh Radnor) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) story, sparked by a positive home pregnancy test that Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) had. The news that they had conceived and were expecting a child made the other members of the group reflect on their lives and where they were going.

It was a story about doubts and hopes and fears and insecurities. Those forks in life's road that everyone encounters sooner or later. Hasn't there been a time in your life — at least one — when you faced a life–altering decision? Of course. Sometimes it has been a decision for which you believed (at first) that you were ready, but, upon further review (as they say in football games), you weren't really ready at all.

And that is one of life's lessons, too, isn't it? Life won't wait until you are ready for it. It happens when it happens. (One of my favorite quotes of all time is attributed to John Lennon: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.")

Robin, for example, was faced with a career decision. Should she take a lower paying, more demanding and less glamorous job as a behind–the–scenes researcher? Or should she take an easy on–camera job as a "coin flip bimbo" — think Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune — on a network game show?

Barney, who had been the recipient of an apparently huge Christmas bonus, had gotten a taste of the joy of philanthropy and, because of Lily and Marshall, he resolved to give even more.

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And Ted?

Well, Ted, was in a perpetual state of introspection, anyway.

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"Now, kids, when your friends have great news you're happy for them ... for, like, a millisecond. And then you start thinking about yourself."

Older Ted (Bob Saget)

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And both Robin and Barney were on the verge of making what would have been, for them (at those moments), really bad decisions (although their decisions wouldn't necessarily have been seen as bad by others) when they got texts from Marshall and Lily advising them that the pregnancy was a false alarm. The pregnancy test had been mistaken.

And both reversed course.

Through it all, Ted tried to act as the voice of reason. And, eventually, he did guide his friends back to where they probably should have been all along.

The thought that kept coming back to me — or, more accurately, the quote that kept coming back to me — was from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland."

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"Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked. 'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat. 'I don't know,' Alice answered. 'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.'"

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This episode of How I Met Your Mother showed how, when we are young, we see ourselves as invincible. Our decisions don't take long–term ramifications into consideration because they haven't been factors for us yet.

There was an exception to that — kinda — in this episode. Robin explained her career decision this way: "I just realized that I am about to have a little niece who looks up to me, and I don't want to be sad Aunt Robin the aging coin flip bimbo who gives her the creeps. I want to be cool Aunt Robin, the respected journalist who gives her beer."

That, of course, was when everyone thought Lily was pregnant. When they found out she wasn't, it changed everything for everyone.

When we get older, we think of the long–term consequences because we know they are inevitable. We're more deliberate in our actions as we get older — and, as a result, sometimes life passes us by while we're making our life decisions.

Whatever it is that one wants — Happiness? Love? Peace of mind? — to make a change, it is necessary to act. Clearly, that means choosing one thing over another. You really can't get around that.

Sometimes choices intersect with other things, other objectives — like Robin's desire to be a cool aunt instead of a sad aunt — which is probably more long term than most people in her age group tend to think.

Still, I thought it was a good, thought–provoking episode.

Have a Happy Blitzgiving

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"Life moves pretty fast, Barney. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you might miss it."

Marshall (Jason Segel)

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My guess is that it is difficult for TV writers to face the task of writing a truly creative holiday–themed episode.

In the scheme of things, television is still relatively new in the human experience, but its growth was so explosive, especially after the emergence of cable (which gave most people access to more than the traditional three broadcast networks), that it must have become even more daunting as the years have gone by to have to write a holiday episode that doesn't seem to be a rehash of something that has been done before — perhaps many times before.

On this night five years ago, I thought How I Met Your Mother's episode demonstrated genuine creativity in the episode "Blitzgiving."

It all began when Ted (Josh Radnor) decided to leave the bar early because he was to host his first Thanksgiving for the gang the next day, but he was told not to leave, lest he inherit the curse of The Blitz, so called because, as legend had it, it originated with a fellow whose last name was Blitz and was passed along over the years, finally ending up with a college friend named Steve (Jorge Garcia).

Whenever Steve left his circle of friends early, incredible things happened. On one occasion, a coed wearing nothing but a towel wandered into the dorm room, explained she had gone into the wrong room by mistake and promptly dropped her towel. On another occasion, when The Blitz left the bar, the tap broke and beer was free to everyone.

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Ted scoffed at the Curse of The Blitz — but he changed his tune when he woke up on Thanksgiving morning and found his apartment in a shambles. The whole gang was there, including Zoey (Jennifer Morrison), Ted's enemy, an activist who opposed the demolition of an historic building — a project for which Ted was responsible.

That was apparently the thing that upset Ted the most, that his friends would spend time with his enemy.

But it turned out that the worst part for Ted was that Steve the Blitz was there for the whole thing — and, consequently, passed the Curse of The Blitz to Ted, who was sleeping peacefully in his apartment.

"I'm finally free," Steve proclaimed. "You have no idea what I'ved missed all these years. ... Colors seem so bright now."

The whole gang got a bit free the night before and, at some point, wound up in Ted's apartment, where Robin (Cobie Smulders) tried to dance on Ted's stove but broke the oven door when trying to step up on top of the stove.

(I always wondered how Ted was able to sleep through that.)

Unable to use his stove, Ted and the gang went in search of another place where they could cook his culinary creation, a turkey stuffed with a smaller turkey. They didn't have much luck.

They finally decided to go to Zoey's — and discovered that Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) was no longer with the group. He was laughing in the back seat of another cab — until it dawned on him that leaving the group early made him the new Blitz.

In Barney's absence, the group had become part of the Thanksgiving Day parade. Robin related to Barney that Ted had been handed a microphone by Tony Bennett and had proceeded to sing "Twist and Shout."

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"Life moves pretty fast, Barney," Marshall (Jason Segel) observed. "If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you might miss it."

A worthwhile holiday observation in a world that seems to go faster with each passing day.

But How I Met Your Mother wasn't finished teaching a holiday lesson. Ted and Zoey had a lesson about friends becoming enemies, which I won't spoil for you if you haven't seen the episode. At a time when the world is fearful of terrorists, it probably depends on your political leanings whether you think the assertion that enemies can become friends is a valid one.

And don't worry about Barney. In typical Barney fashion, he was where something amazing happened, and Steve was not — and reacquired the curse.

I thought it was a clever holiday episode — and a welcome change from the episodes that did the obvious and incorporated Indians and pilgrims in one way or another.

In Spite of Shortcomings, 'Secretariat' Was a Winner

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"This is not about going back. This is about life being ahead of you, and you run at it! Because you never know how far you can run unless you run."

Penny Chenery (Diane Lane)

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Even now, more than 40 years later, the story of Secretariat seems like the sort of thing that could only happen in Hollywood, a fairy tale.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that a movie would be made about it, and that movie began showing in theaters across the country on this day in 2010. It had all the elements of an epic, beating–the–odds kind of story, a real feel–good triumph — even though it wasn't quite as much of a rags–to–riches tale as it might have appeared on the silver screen.

That does not mean it was not dramatic.

While I am sure there were parts of it that were dramatized — in fact, I know there were — "Secretariat" was the kind of history movie that I like — one that is basically true to the facts. The facts of Secretariat's story certainly were dramatic enough.

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Which is why I was sorry to see that the Disney studios thought it was necessary to whip up conflict that wasn't needed. In reality, Secretariat's chief rival was a horse called Sham, and the movie portrayed Sham's trainer unfavorably — and unfairly, according to no less an authority than jockey Ron Turcotte, who rode Secretariat to the 1973 Triple Crown.

"[Sham's trainer] Pancho [Martin] is a wonderful person, always was," Turcotte told the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union. "I loved him, he was great to me, and it hurt me to see the way he was portrayed."

Turcotte said John Malkovich's portrayal of Secretariat's trainer, Lucien Laurin, wasn't accurate, either. I don't think he had any complaints about Malkovich's acting, but Laurin was "a very conservative dresser," Turcotte said. He didn't wear the loud clothes that Malkovich wore in the movie.

Nor did Laurin play golf, as he was shown doing early in the movie. Turcotte said Laurin was a fisherman when he wasn't training horses.

While I'm on the topic of historical discrepancies, the movie made it seem that Sham beat Secretariat in the Wood Memorial, a Kentucky Derby prep race held two weeks before the Derby; in reality, though, a horse named Angle Light won the Wood Memorial. Sham finished second that day and Secretariat, who was found to have an abscess under his lip, finished third.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Actually, in spite of those shortcomings, I thought the movie was very good. I remember the real–life story of Secretariat's Triple Crown run being the subject of conversations in movie theater lines and at restaurants — everyone was talking about it, people knew Secretariat's name even if they didn't know anything else about horse racing — or sports, for that matter. But few knew the story of how Penny Chenery (played by Diane Lane in the movie) came to own Secretariat.

She won the rights to him on the toss of a coin, which she lost but wound up winning in the end because she got Secretariat, possibly the greatest racehorse who ever lived. But Chenery's personal story was just as inspiring as Secretariat's. Taking charge of her father's horse farm after her mother's death, Chenery found herself competing in an almost exclusively male business. She did so successfully with the help of Laurin and another horse owner and breeder played by Fred Thompson.

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One of the things I have observed in my life is that the stories of legends are often glossed over to the point where observers think the subject must have lived a charmed life and never had to overcome anything en route to becoming the best at whatever he or she did. That usually isn't true, of course, and it certainly wasn't true of Secretariat.

Nor was it true of Penny Chenery. But both did overcome, and the movie told that story well.

In the current political climate, it is worth taking the time to remember women who truly were pioneers, not opportunists. Pioneers have to be tough, as the nation's first black president has been learning, and they aren't apt to win many popularity contests in their chosen fields — although history does tend to look favorably upon them.

It also did a pretty good job of re–creating the Triple Crown races that put Secretariat's name firmly in the annals of horse racing. The first and third races — the Kentucky Derby in early May and the Belmont in early June — showed Penny Chenery's reaction in the stands. The Preakness, in mid–May, showed her family watching on TV from their home.

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The family was with Mrs. Chenery for the '73 Belmont, which has taken on a life of its own in the last four decades, largely because of the unexpected ease with which Secretariat won the third and final jewel of the 1973 Triple Crown.

On that day, Secretariat left the field in the dust and won by an astonishing 31 lengths.

As Lane and Malkovich watched the race, there was no suspense about the winner. All Malkovich could do was shout to the jockey, "Don't fall off!"

No other advice was needed.

Untraditional Family Values

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If there is a lesson to be taken from "The Kids Are All Right" — and, no, I am not speaking of the movie featuring the rock group The Who — it is that life is complicated.

There are three ways, Roger Ebert wrote five years ago, to interpret the title of "The Kids Are All Right," which premiered on this day in 2010: "Kids in general are all right, these particular kids are all right, and it is all right for lesbians to form a family and raise them."

(Actually, "The Kids Are All Right" got a positive response at the Sundance Film Festival in early July 2010, which accelerated plans to show it commercially. It opened a limited theatrical release on this day; a nationwide release followed three weeks later.)

All three ways are appropriate — often simultaneously — in "The Kids Are All Right." In other words, life really is complicated, and it is hard to imagine a family that could be more complicated than this one (although, in this culture, we are apt to find one that is more complicated before long). Annette Bening and Julianne Moore played married lesbians, both of whom had a child from the same sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) — none of whom seemed to be aware of each other's existence until the offspring (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) got involved, investigating to learn about their biological father.

And they went through all the same awkward moments that are probably familiar to most anonymous sperm donors and their children if they meet.

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But there were all sorts of side issues to contend with as well, most of them the kinds of family issues that probably any family, not just those headed by same–sex couples, must address.

For example, Bening was the family conscience, endlessly nagging the children to write thank–you notes.

And what I found intriguing about the movie was how similar the same–sex parents' handling of things was to what I would expect from a traditional heterosexual couple. (In fact, there was a certain sameness to the roles in the relationships. Bening played a doctor, the family bread–winner, clearly the head of the household. Moore was more domestic, a stay–at–home parent, mainly because she never really found her professional niche).

Bening and Moore played a classic modern liberal couple, supportive of their children's desire to seek out their biological father. They approved the concept; in practice, though, they found it troubling — especially since he came to represent a threat to the life they had known.

The father turned out to be a former hippie who dropped out of school and was running his own organic restaurant serving food grown in his organic garden. He vaguely remembered donating some sperm nearly 20 years earlier and agreed to meet his children, apparently more out of curiosity than anything else.

They hit it off — well, he and his daughter more than he and his son — and he was invited over for dinner to meet the moms.

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In the course of the dinner, proud mama Bening told Ruffalo about their daughter's recent graduation speech, then suggested that the daughter retrieve the text of the speech from her room and recite it right there on the spot for her father.

If ever there was anything guaranteed to evoke a rolling–of–the–eyes oh–Mom! moment, that was it. Seems gay parents and straight parents are pretty much the same once you get past that bedroom stuff.

Speaking of which, the gay parents apparently shared something else in common with at least some of their straight counterparts. They liked to watch porn while engaging in their preferred sexual activity.

Only Bening and Moore apparently liked watching male homosexuals. That was a little hard to explain — and more than a little difficult for Moore's son to understand.

Anyway, the free–spirited sperm donor learned that Moore was at loose ends professionally and trying to make a career of landscape architecture so he asked her if she would do some work on his home property. She agreed to do so, and that led to yet another complication. While they were going over the landscaping plans, they kind of, you know, fell into bed together.

Bening put two and two together and confronted Moore about the affair — and asked the kind of questions that straight partners undoubtedly would ask each other if the shoes were on the other feet.

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As I was saying, life is complicated.

In the end, it seemed to me to come down to none other than the cliched label, "family values." In many ways, they are exactly what you think they are — and, in many ways, they aren't.

These days, both sides of the gay marriage debate would have you believe that same–sex couples are so different in every way from straight couples — when really the only difference is how they make love. In "The Kids Are All Right," the household was headed by a same–sex couple whose experiences probably mirrored those of their straight friends in many ways. Both had issues in their relationships with their significant others. Both had issues with their children — well, after all, the children in this family were teenagers.

"The Kids Are All Right" received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (Bening), Best Supporting Actor (Ruffalo) and Best Original Screenplay.

A Place Called Hope

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Future Ted (Bob Saget): I didn't give up on my dream house because that's the thing about stupid decisions; we all make them, but time is funny and sometimes a little magical. It can take a stupid decision and turn it into something else entirely. Because, kids, as you know, that house ... is this house.

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How I Met Your Mother was one of those TV shows that I got in on late — very late.

It premiered in 2005, but I didn't watch it until five years ago tonight, when the episode "Home Wreckers" first aired. Not watching it until the fifth season was a mistake. Anyway, I started watching it, occasionally at first, then more regularly. And, thanks to syndication and Netflix, I have managed to see most of the episodes I missed the first time around — but there are still some episodes I haven't seen yet.

In hindsight, I guess it's amazing that I ever watched another episode after watching the one that was on five years ago tonight. It wasn't a bad episode; I just don't think it was anything really special. Certainly, I have seen better episodes of How I Met Your Mother. But you gotta start somewhere.

The best episodes of any sitcom — at least as far as I am concerned — are the ones that deal with relationships, and the episode of How I Met Your Mother took on several kinds of relationships, a tall order for a half–hour program. Yes, it was an ambitious undertaking, but How I Met Your Mother managed to pull it off — satisfactorily if not spectacularly.

Things began with Ted (Josh Radnor) learning that his mother (Cristine Rose) had accepted a marriage proposal from her slacker boyfriend Clint (Harry Groener), who seemed to have no problem telling Ted what an erotic mother he had.

"Please don't," Ted would say when Clint started to relate such tales to him. I thought it was funny. The eccentric sense of humor of the series appealed to me.

I haven't seen the episodes often enough now to put them into context. I'm not sure if Clint was a character in episodes prior to this one. I guess he must have been because the next thing I knew, Clint and Ted's mother were getting married, and Clint was singing some godawful song he had composed for the occasion.

It really was terrible, with some kind of closing refrain about Mahatma Gandhi and pancakes and a dragon — which fueled a subplot in which either Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) or Robin (Cobie Smulders) had been moved to tears by it. I say either because it was increasingly unclear which one had been crying.

Ted, however, was unable to take any more of the wedding so he left without offering a toast to the newlyweds. He didn't resurface for three days, which had everyone worried about his whereabouts. When he did, he told his friends he was "on top of the world" and wanted to show them something. So they all got in his car and drove to see his "dream house," on which he had just closed the deal.

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His mother's wedding, you see, had been something of a wakeup call for him. He realized that all the things he had thought he would have — like a wife and children and a home — he didn't have.

Lily (Alyson Hannigan), ever the voice of reason in the group, observed that it would take years "and a small fortune" to restore the house, but Ted was undeterred. The wife and kids part was taking longer than he expected, but he could take care of the house part. That was something he could control.

"I'm an architect," he protested. "I'll find a way. And if I start right now, hopefully it'll be ready by the time me and the wifey are ready to move in."

"Is she in the room with us right now, Ted?" Barney asked.

The general consensus of the group was that Ted had done a stupid thing, but Marshall (Jason Segel) defended him — opening up yet another subplot. We've all done stupid things, Marshall contended, offering himself as an example. There was a time, he said, when he dropped some bottle rockets in the toilet and then tried to dry them out in the microwave.

Robin thought Marshall must have been drunk when he did that, but Barney said he had to have been a kid, which inspired Marshall to create a new game in which he related stupid things he had done throughout his life, and his friends had to guess whether he had been drunk or a kid when he did them. It was the kind of free association that I liked about the series. But there was much more to it than that.

At that point, Ted showed the gang the back porch, where he planned to have cookouts every weekend.

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Turned out there were a lot of problems with the house. It had structural issues not to mention a variety of creatures who had found shelter under the house's roof.

And Ted conceded there were problems with the house, but he insisted that "I see this house for what it can be."

Eventually, Ted concluded that "Sometimes our best decisions are the ones that don't make any sense at all." He returned to his new house and found Marshall cooking some hot dogs on the back porch — and Marshall offered a keen observation about Ted. "Your heart is both drunk and a kid," he said.

Ted showed Marshall the ideas he had for the house as the sound of "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young played in the background. And the audience learned that the house had, indeed, been the future home for Ted and the mother of his children.

I don't remember now why I decided to watch it, but there were enough things about it that I found intriguing that I felt compelled to watch it again and again. I'm glad I did. I thought it was a rewarding series — excellent writing, great acting, superb entertainment — and the best part, for me, is that, because I didn't see many of the episodes when they first aired, it is a series that continues to be new for me. The stories behind mysterious references to things that the audience already knew are revealed to me whenever I see an episode I have never seen before. And then I want to see other episodes again, armed with the knowledge of what those mysterious references meant.

It's the kind of quality television that one doesn't see very often.

Tribute

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I don't watch the Academy Awards as much as I did earlier in my life.

One thing I always enjoyed watching on the Oscars broadcast was the annual video tribute to the people in the entertainment industry who have died in the previous year — but I was extremely disappointed last spring when the Oscars left Farrah Fawcett off the segment honoring those who died in 2009.

I don't know why she was omitted. I have my suspicions. And, as a result, I don't think I will watch the Oscars next spring — or in the foreseeable future.

However, I will continue to watch the annual video tributes that are put together by Turner Classic Movies. They are typically brief, understated and complete.

I've only seen the latest tribute (attached to the top of this post) online, but I look forward to seeing it on a bigger screen.

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It certainly seems a worthy successor to other TCM tributes, like the one that aired at the end of 2008.

The song, in case you're interested, is called "God Only Knows." The performer is Joe Henry.

That's a trademark, I guess, of TCM's annual tributes. The music that is used tends to be from someone who hasn't received a lot of attention from the mainstream listeners.

Sometimes, I suppose, that exposure provides a bit of a boost to their careers.

The 2010 tribute is done to the song "Headlight" by Sophie Hunger, a Swiss–born folk singer who is slated to release an album for the North American market in April.

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The 2007 version was set to the song "Promise" by Badly Drawn Boy.

In fact, you can see a certain continuity in the musical style, even though the performers change from year to year.

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I don't know who did the music for the 2006 video.

But it was effective, don't you think?

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Nor do I know who did the music for the 2005 video. But I think it also was effective.

There is a suitably melancholy strain that runs through the TCM videos.

And almost no one gets left out.

Watch for the latest if you are watching TCM this holiday season.