Ahh, welcome to Television's real premiere week!I feel like we've been sitting through three weeks of warm-up acts and I'm more than ready for the bands I came to see take the stage.
The Hour of Power returns tonight with the season premieres of "The Big Bang Theory" (8PM, CBS) and "How I Met Your Mother" (8:30PM, CBS) and "The Office" kicks off with an hour-long premiere on Thursday (9PM, NBC).
Just like last year, I will have recaps of all of those shows the day after (and I really try to do more with my recaps than just repeat exactly what we all saw); and I'm always interested in hearing from you and your thoughts on the episodes and my thoughts, so please feel free to comment.
So to kick the week off right, I am proud to feature an exclusive interview with a very special guest.
Last week we posted a link to a video on one of our new favorite websites, have-you-met-ted.com, which focuses on all things related to "How I Met Your Mother". I was so impressed with HYMT.com that I actually dropped a line to Justin Dickinson (the guy who runs the site) just to introduce myself and say much I liked what he had built up.
I didn't expect to ever hear anything back, but he quickly responded and we started sending e-mails back and forth about the show and our sites. He was even gracious enough to answer a few questions about himself and how he got HYMT.com off the ground.
Enjoy getting to know Justin below, definitely check out his site throughout this highly anticipated fourth season of the show, and tune in tomorrow for my Hour of Power recap.
THE MAN
POP & CULTURE: Thanks for joining us Justin! Where are you from and where do you live now?
Justin Dickinson: I am from a small town in Western Massachusetts originally, but I now live in Brooklyn, NY by way of Rochester where I went to school.
P&C: What else do you do besides run HYMT.com?
JD: I'm a web designer/developer for a startup in NYC.
P&C: Do you have any other hobbies/interests?
JD: Outside of making things that go on the Internet and writing about my favorite TV show, I love to cook and check out all the great restaurants here in the city. I'm also really into all the social media tools out there. I'm on Twitter all the time and I have a personal blog, all that stuff.
THE SHOW
P&C: How did you find "How I Met Your Mother"?
JD: It's funny, when “HIMYM” started I wasn't watching any TV at all. I heard a few people recommend the show and I was interested since Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris were stars. The first episode I watched was “A Taste of Liberty”. From there I checked out the beginning of season one and sometime around “The Pineapple Incident” I was totally, completely hooked.
P&C: What kept you coming back?
JD: I really loved how realistically drawn all the characters are. I normally shy away from sitcoms as I feel that they either play to the lowest common denominator of comedy or write characters that are just vehicles for jokes. I really need to identify with characters and see some serialized progress to get into a show and "HIMYM" has that in spades.
P&C: What's been your favorite episode/story line so far?
JD: The subplot I find myself going back to time and time again is the sequence that starts with “Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M.” (which is one of the perfect “HIMYM” episodes) all the way through the second season. The season one finale is so emotionally effective; every time "This Modern Love" comes in I get as excited as I did the first time. Another favorite episode of mine is "First Time in New York" for its authentic character development of Robin.
P&C: What did you think of the season three cliffhanger with Ted and Stella?
JD: I thought it wasn't quite as natural as previous seasons. I know they couldn't get Sarah Chalke for too many appearances but I really wished we could've seen more of her. The whole Ted/Barney break up wasn't doing it for me either so I think I was a little removed going into the finale. I'm excited to see how it plays out though at the start of this season.
P&C: How do you feel about Barney and Robin hooking up?
JD: I was a staunch opponent of this idea for a long time while it was kicking around on the web. I thought that it would defang Barney and hurt his character. Now that I see how they executed it, I'm on board. I think it was played exactly right, and felt realistic within each character's personality. It's the thing I'm most excited to see play out this season.
P&C: What is your take on that mysterious yellow umbrella?
JD: I think it's a genius red herring that (series creators Carter) Bays and (Craig) Thomas have created for us to over-analyze all the details. But I love over analyzing details, so no complaints here. That or Ted grows up to be the caretaker for Curious George.
P&C: Would you rather meet the "mother" now and get to know her or do you think we won't meet her until the series finale someday?
JD: I go back and forth on this. If Bays and Thomas introduced the mother and wanted to keep the show going I'd have no complaint. I love the show for the characters, not the search for the mother. As long as it felt realistic and authentic I'd have no qualms. I kind of like the MacGuffin nature of the search for the mother and I do like Ted best when he's eye-in-the-sky romantic. If they find an actress that has chemistry with (Josh) Radnor as good as (Cobie) Smulders is, it'll be all good.
P&C: What are some of your other favorite TV shows?
JD: “Lost” definitely competes for "favorite show ever." As I said, I really enjoy shows that are serialized and have a depth of content. I like having to do a little work with a show, remember call backs to past episodes, etc. and “Lost” takes that to the extreme. I think it's pretty close to perfection. Other than those two I like anything with Alton Brown, Jaime Oliver, or Bobby Flay. I like “The Office”, “30 Rock”, “Mad Men”, “Psych”, and “Chuck”; and “Pushing Daisies” was my favorite new show last year. I also hold “Deadwood” in very high esteem although I don't run across too many people who agree with me.
THE SITE
P&C: What inspired you to create have-you-met-ted.com?
JD: I spend a lot of time online discussing “Lost” and reading analysis of the show's details. I found myself without any friends who were also fans of “HIMYM” so I figured I'd find an online community to discuss the show. I was truly surprised when there really wasn't anything online, save a few fan sites that mostly just rehashed each episode. I wanted a different level of discussion and since it wasn't there already I figured I'd build it myself.
P&C: How did you go about getting it off the ground?
JD: Being a web developer certainly helped. I was familiar with Wordpress, on which HYMT runs, so I created a template and wrote a few posts. The whole process took me about 8-10 hours, during which I re-watched the first season of “HIMYM” while designing and writing.
P&C: What's been the best part of running the site?
JD: Getting to meet the cast and creators was obviously fantastic. That was a really exciting night. More so than that though has to be all the people I've met through the site. Finding people who love the show as much as I do has been so rewarding. The people who regularly participate on the site are intelligent, funny, amazing people from all over the world. It's nice to find something that can connect artists in Canada with families in the US with soldiers in Iraq. It points out the side of pop culture that I love—the unification of like minded people from around the world.
P&C: You got to meet the cast?? How did that go down?
JD: That was a pretty serendipitous experience. I had added Carter Bays and Charlene Amoia (who plays Wendy the Waitress and is one of the nicest people I've ever known) as friends on Facebook. I sent Charlene a message letting her know how popular she was with my readers. She replied back letting me know about a “HIMYM” party in New York that was coming up and wondered if I wanted to attend. Of course I said yes. It was kind of a surreal experience since the event took place in the bar that Bays and Thomas used to visit earlier in their career, the bar that inspired MacLaren's on the show. They showed the episode "How I Met Everyone Else" on all the TVs in the bar. So there I found myself, watching Barney demonstrate the Hot/Crazy scale, with Neil Patrick Harris himself not ten feet away watching the episode on the same screen. After the Q&A I got a chance to talk with the cast who were all incredibly approachable and nice and totally down to earth. My only regret was that Jason Segel couldn't be there since he was off filming a movie.
P&C: How much time do you devote to the site?
JD: I check my Google Alerts every few days, less so now since if there's a good article one of my readers or one of my link partners will send it to me. I spend a few hours each Monday night after a new episode airs re-watching the episode and editing the recap before I post it. I also read all the comments as they come in. It's no where near a full time job but I love writing for the site and wish I had some more time to devote.
P&C: Any future plans for the site you can tell us about?
JD: Not right now. I launched the forum earlier this year which has gone well. This season I'd like to grow the site's viewership and maybe establish relationships with a few new link partners and other similar sites. I plan to keep the discussion going this year and hope to expand my audience even more. You can never meet too many HIMYM fans.
- Josh Mahler
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