When Friends met HIMYM.

I’ve gotta admit I have not seen Friends end to end season to season. Conversations like..remember that episode where Ross and Rachel…generally make me wonder ‘how come I never saw that show end to end despite liking it a lot, lot, lot?’ I watch Friends practically everyday on TV. It shows on 2 channels..I have no clue which season/which episode what! All I know is that I can watch Friends from any season, any episode onwards and never get bored.

Flashback just a tad bit back to my supremely awesome hostel life, where I finished season after season of ‘How I met your Mother’ within days..watching episodes till 4:00 am in the morning, laughing away alone while my roomies tried to catch up on sleep. Now that show is just another sitcom. I just got addicted. Well that’s what they’re made for. These sitcoms. Anyway, so today I was watching yet another episode of Friends and I realized that there are so many similarities between the character sketches of the lead actors. Almost like there has to be "one of those kinds" which "that particular audience group" has to identify with.

Take for example Barney from HIMYM and Joey from Friends. They could be brothers. Funny, crude, chick lovers. Have the best one liners in the show. Or take Rachel from Friends and Robin from HIMYM. Both dress well, both are slightly blonde but try to portray themselves as smart woman and strive hard to achieve the career woman tag. Rachel chucks her rich monies to work in a coffee shop, Robin moves from Canada to USA to work as a TV show host and get successful. Chandler-Monica the couple from Friends could well be Marshal-Lily from HIMYM. Ross from Friends and Ted from HIMYM are both the quintessential sweet, hardworking, i-want-to-get-married – have a big house – kids and a dog kinda guys.

Are these role models for Americans? I wonder how Americans don’t get too bored of looking at exact prototypes of themselves though. For the rest of the world, its probably aspirational. Would a Ted ever start his own business, or a Rachel decide to get married to a rich snoot for money, or a Barney volunteer or something? Probably wouldn’t work in the script. Would be interesting to know what would happen if characters from one show like HIMYM suddenly get transferred to a Lost or a Greys Anatomy or something. The audiences of both these shows would have a major disconnect I’m guessing. How come nobody carries on such experiments?! Too risky, money wise maybe 😐

Anyways I wish there were more Phoebes in the world though. The girl who sings ‘Smelly Cat’, agrees to carry triplets in her womb, cracks jokes at the wrong time..but doesn’t mean no bad. Ah. Eccentric. That’s another type the scriptwriters know attract some attention and has a limited but strong fan following. But there should be more Phoebes in the world. Would make life amusing.

Shtraightt from theh heart.

Haven’t written anything constructive in such a long time, I almost feel that I’ve forgotten how to type long paragraphs. For some strange reason, I feel quite taken aback when people ask me about "my writing". There was no major writing, was there? I mean writing was an much as what IcyNidhi would write, or GB (whatever is ur latest nickname) would, or Mnaz, or anyone else would write. Couple of paragraphs, some thoughts, some humor, an incident, an occasional tag, but mostly – personal opinions.

I used to a very vocal person, pretty much blunt. Still am. Impatience and short temper follow me around too (mostly in my head, the former spills out more often though). With time I realized that its not a smart thing to be very vocal about your personal opinions. One has to fine tune it based on the situation. Slowly that feeling crept on while I was writing as well. I became conscious of the fact that people would be reading me and judging me on the basis of what I wrote. That started preventing me from writing stuff on my mind. It never occurred to me that maybe I can fine tune what I write. I mostly read my own post twice before posting, the last for minor spelling errors or the sort. I’ve somehow always never preferred blanketing things or sugar coating them. Write it as it is, Click it as it is. If its fine tuned, made politically correct, reworked upon,  photoshopped around or post processed around then its not how its meant to be. Not straight from the heart. Not raw and true. 

Yeah. Silly I know. Because some people take pride, and have mastered layering things well. Presenting them. Working upon them. Dedicatedly. Maybe I’d do it too someday, maybe I still do it without realizing it. I’m still not comfortable having everybody read this blog. Half of my friends don’t have access to it/don’t know about it. Make that more than half. Maybe I’m still not ready to extend my comfort zone, or be what I am and be known for it. Mighty slow a process in my case I guess. Almost 5-6 yr old blog. It still matters to me in some ways. Yes there have been months where I haven’t written anything that matters, but somehow I’ve always checked up on it once in a week or so. And I shall continue to do so.

Afterall, Spaces is technically one of my first web babies. The other is a bsnl website i created when I was 15..and well..i cant seem to find the link for it now 😦