Tuned In

The Morning After: Horton Hears a Woo!

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Spoilers for How I Met Your Mother coming up after the jump:

OK, I’ll just say it. I just do not get Jamie-Lynn Sigler. For six seasons of The Sopranos, I was willing to overlook it. (Sometimes the miscasting of her and Robert Iler even worked, in a perverse way, because the show required them to be vapid cretins a lot of the time.) But with her on Entourage and HIMYM in the same week—well, she’s kind of putting it in our face, isn’t she? It must be addressed. 

The standard insult would be to say that Sigler can’t act. But that would be misleading. That implies that someone acts poorly. What it is, is: Sigler doesn’t act. You see her, and it’s just: Oh, look. There is Jamie-Lynn Sigler reading some lines on How I Met Your Mother. And look: There is Jamie-Lynn Sigler pretending to be herself on Entourage. And it’s not that she’s such a huge celebrity that her presence is distracting. She just. Isn’t. Acting. 

OK, with that out of the way, “Woooo!” (I haven’t actually checked the proper number of O’s) was a solid enough HIMYM. It wasn’t that moving or profound and didn’t advance any story in any meaningful way; it was just funny. Funny enough that I overlooked the fact that Ted’s GNB design was, in fact, an ugly-ass building. That the Swedish architecture collective Sven were actually German, and played by Mike Myers in 1992. And that, truth be told, post 9/11 downtown Manhattan needs a fire-breathing T-Rex. 

“Woooooo!” (I am using a different amount of O’s, just to cover myself) just worked in the little ways. Marshall’s “talk-blocking” Robin and his ability to intuit her bowdlerized conversations with Lily. (“You still got that yeast infection, huh?” [grimace]) The Mad Men reference. The Dr. Seuss talk. And the very idea of the “Wooooo!” girls and their place in the economy. (“The body glitter industry and the stretch-limo industry would collapse. Tiny cowboy hats would only be worn by tiny cowboys.”) 

Agree? Or are you a self-hating Woo?