Not a ton to say about a funny, if slight, Thanksgiving episode of How I Met Your Mother, but I couldn’t really let the presence of Jorge Garcia and the Lost homage pass without noting it for Tuned Inland. Obviously the mere presence of Garcia—in the role of someone bearing a curse—was the biggest reference, but we also got the Numbers, a reference to “that island” and what looked suspiciously like a phantom of smoke passing from one character to another (accompanied by a dissonant note, though without the aid of a water-bottle ritual).
HIMYM is hardly the first other show to reference Lost, overtly or obliquely, but it’s one of the most appropriate. As I’ve said before, only half tongue-in-cheek, HIMYM is sort of the sitcom Lost: a show that uses flashbacks and flashforwards and unconventional narrative jumps in the interest of telling a serial story about an elusive quest. (Though I suppose if the parallel held, at the midpoint of the series Ted would get married and then discover that he must get divorced.)
For all the talk about whether there will be a “next Lost,” the show is carried on in small ways by a lot of shows like HIMYM that embrace its nonlinear narrative and other trademarks, and it’s nice to see HIMYM acknowledge the kinship. Though the repeated use of “Aw, man!”—a.k.a. Swiper’s catchphrase—gave me Dora the Explorer flashbacks I could have done without:
