Day 12 - Downtown Train
Rod Stewart
1991
Disclaimer: All perspectives, opinions, and memories in this entry are mine and mine alone. Some content is rugged, raw, and - sometimes - NSFW, but it's all authentic and included with purpose.
Why It’s On The List:
After the success of our college sketch comedy show, my girlfriend at the time filled out an application for me to intern with “The Late Show with David Letterman” as a joke. The laugh was on me as I actually got the gig.
While I was there, I connected with two of the younger writers on the staff, Craig Thomas and Carter Bays. They were barely older than the interns and would invite us to watch their band, The Solids, play at dive bars on the weekends.
Fast forward a few years later and I’m reading about the new TV shows about to premiere that fall. I see this one series called, “How I Met Your Mother” and turns out it was written and produced by Carter and Craig. I checked it out because of knowing them and immediately fell in love.
TV shows jump all over through time now but that wasn’t happening before "HIMYM." It was the first sitcom that was completely connected. No random continuity errors. Everything had been meticulously planned out as if it were in the will of God.
I started dating Summer and she fell in love with the show. A bunch of our close friends discovered it and they all enjoyed it as well - so much so that we started getting a group of us together on Monday nights to watch it (Viva La TV Group!).
For nine seasons, we debated, dissected, and digested every plot point of that series.
After I moved to Denver, my buddy Paul and I had a standing Tuesday morning phone call to analyze every moment of the previous night’s episode.
***SPOILER ALERT - if you do not want to know the end of the series, skip down below***
Our biggest frustration each season about eventually meeting the mom: the show on a week to week, season to season basis WAS about Ted and Robin. We didn’t care about the mother. It was only going to be some ho that came in and stood between Ted and Robin. It was always off-kilter to us that Ted was going to wind up with anyone other than Robin.
Sum and I watched the final episode while on the phone with Paul, so imagine the screams of joy with how the series ended. That WAS the show week-in and week-out for nine seasons. It ended perfectly.
***SPOILER ALERT OVER****
So where does “Downtown Train” come into all of this? I have always loved the Rod Stewart version but was blown away when "HIMYM" used a stripped down, gorgeous rendition of the song during the scene where Ted meets the mother (go to the 2:05 minute mark of the video if you want to avoid spoilers).
For nine seasons we had heard that they met at a train station. There was no other song that they could use there. But somehow it still surprised me. It still caught me off guard. I love when movies or shows do that. They use the most obvious choice but it is still surprising and gives you goosebumps.
"HIMYM" had its highlights and lowlights. For every three crappy episodes in a row, they would submit a "Greatest Episode in Television History" entry and bring you all the way back. I know that I still compare every new series to that experience and I'm aware that's dumb because it will never happen again.
Dead serious, not joking - the show went off the air in 2014 and there hasn’t been a Monday afternoon yet where I haven’t consciously wished there was a new episode on that evening. I promise you that I will feel that again tonight.
Listen to "Downtown Train" here:
Favorite Line:
While I was there, I connected with two of the younger writers on the staff, Craig Thomas and Carter Bays. They were barely older than the interns and would invite us to watch their band, The Solids, play at dive bars on the weekends.
Fast forward a few years later and I’m reading about the new TV shows about to premiere that fall. I see this one series called, “How I Met Your Mother” and turns out it was written and produced by Carter and Craig. I checked it out because of knowing them and immediately fell in love.
TV shows jump all over through time now but that wasn’t happening before "HIMYM." It was the first sitcom that was completely connected. No random continuity errors. Everything had been meticulously planned out as if it were in the will of God.
I started dating Summer and she fell in love with the show. A bunch of our close friends discovered it and they all enjoyed it as well - so much so that we started getting a group of us together on Monday nights to watch it (Viva La TV Group!).
For nine seasons, we debated, dissected, and digested every plot point of that series.
After I moved to Denver, my buddy Paul and I had a standing Tuesday morning phone call to analyze every moment of the previous night’s episode.
***SPOILER ALERT - if you do not want to know the end of the series, skip down below***
Our biggest frustration each season about eventually meeting the mom: the show on a week to week, season to season basis WAS about Ted and Robin. We didn’t care about the mother. It was only going to be some ho that came in and stood between Ted and Robin. It was always off-kilter to us that Ted was going to wind up with anyone other than Robin.
Sum and I watched the final episode while on the phone with Paul, so imagine the screams of joy with how the series ended. That WAS the show week-in and week-out for nine seasons. It ended perfectly.
***SPOILER ALERT OVER****
So where does “Downtown Train” come into all of this? I have always loved the Rod Stewart version but was blown away when "HIMYM" used a stripped down, gorgeous rendition of the song during the scene where Ted meets the mother (go to the 2:05 minute mark of the video if you want to avoid spoilers).
For nine seasons we had heard that they met at a train station. There was no other song that they could use there. But somehow it still surprised me. It still caught me off guard. I love when movies or shows do that. They use the most obvious choice but it is still surprising and gives you goosebumps.
"HIMYM" had its highlights and lowlights. For every three crappy episodes in a row, they would submit a "Greatest Episode in Television History" entry and bring you all the way back. I know that I still compare every new series to that experience and I'm aware that's dumb because it will never happen again.
Dead serious, not joking - the show went off the air in 2014 and there hasn’t been a Monday afternoon yet where I haven’t consciously wished there was a new episode on that evening. I promise you that I will feel that again tonight.
Listen to "Downtown Train" here:
Favorite Line:
After the musical interlude, Rod climbs to a next level to belt out a “Will I see you tonight?” Just a blazing song.
While We’re Here:
While We’re Here:
Good time to list my all time favorite sitcoms. I’ve divided them by Single Camera and Multi-Camera. I know that Single Camera is the preferred presentation for most people but to me there’s nothing better than when a multi-cam show, filmed before a live studio audience, lands a moment. You can get the pace and speed of a theatrical play that includes the authentic immediate reaction from an audience. I agree that a cheesy, sloppy multi-cam show with canned laughter is the absolute worst. But when it hits, it hits big.
Single Camera:
Single Camera:
5. The League - I still can't believe FX did seven seasons of a show about fantasy football. The friends in that show felt like your friends. The arguments and debates felt like your debates. We even got our dog's name, "Ruxin," from one of the greatest characters ever (or was he the worst?).
4. The Andy Griffith Show - Side splitting funny and so American wholesome. I still watch "AGS" eps on a Sunday afternoon during the summertime when I'm trying to truly relax and unwind.
3. Scrubs - The main character, JD, and I were close in age so it was the perfect show to parallel my journey into my 20's.
2. Parks & Rec - The best article I ever read about Parks & Rec nailed what I had always been thinking but could never articulate. The show was based out of the characters being naturally happy and positive people. I always felt "good" while watching this show. Plus, Ron Swanson is one of the greatest characters in television history.
1. The Office - I will never forget the day of the pilot episode. I was at the house of a girl I was seeing at the time and knew "The Office" was debuting that night so I asked if we could stay in to watch. I was instantly hooked. It became weekly appointment viewing for me and my dad (until I moved to Colorado) for those first few seasons and I still feel uncertain as to how the Season 3 finale is going to end even though I've seen it 1000 times. The show was so amazing those first three seasons because it amplified the boredom and tediousness of American work life. After that all the characters became silly caricatures and the premises started getting zany and wacky. But those first three seasons? Man. Multi-Cam:
5. Friends - The first watercooler show of my life in which I got to participate. We talked about Ross saying Rachel’s name all summer long that year. The first four seasons were above average as a well written, well crafted series. Season 5-6 began to run solely on the show’s own popularity and then seasons 7-10 were certified silly.
4. The Mary Tyler Moore Show - Beyond the progress that the series made for professional women in the 70’s, this show is the beginning of the greatest run of shows in sitcom history. A batch of MTM writers left to go do Taxi and then went to do Cheers and then went to do Frasier and then went to do Modern Family. How’s that for a sitcom family tree?
3. Cheers - If I could combine seasons 6-11 of Cheers and seasons 1-7 of Frasier, you would have the greatest show ever produced. I never cared for the Sam & Diane focus of seasons 1-5. Really enjoyed the series when it becomes more about the ensemble in the later years. This show is WHY we have our Thursday night bar crew (While we are here, I also have to mention another great NBC show set in a bar, the short-lived "Undatable." It only ran from 2014-2016 but was hilarious. I still laugh out loud regularly while rewatching the series. Maybe I just love bar shows?).
2. How I Met Your Mother - For all the reasons listed above, but there were just too many horrendous episodes/story lines throughout to claim the top spot. It was one of the final shows to be produced during the "churn out 22 episodes every season" era. If it was made today, they could have crushed five to six seasons (instead of NINE) with only 10-13 episodes per season. We could have avoided Zoe, and Stella, and Jeanette, and Zoe (her arc was so awful I had to list her twice) completely.
1. Frasier - The infamous Cheers spinoff. I have to admit that seasons 8-11 fall off the rails but the show produced more epic moments and episodes in the first seven seasons to more than make up for the drop off at the end. Witty and urbane. The play on words was always otherworldly and my brain still can't comprehend the chicken and the egg joke writing brilliance that they would regularly pull off. I've had many conversations with friends about what would come first: the premise of a joke or the punchline because the dotted line from one to the other was not always obvious on "Frasier." There would be some seemingly benign setup that would land a few moments later with a thunderous punchline and I can't imagine working in that writers' room to see how they got there. The other perfect thing about the series - they were never afraid of quiet moments. A lot of sitcoms are loud and obnoxious at all times (as they adhere to the old sitcom rule that there has to be at least one joke every minute). "Frasier" allowed its characters to absorb news, lament loss, and contemplate change. Always appreciated that.
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