For a moment there, I thought it would be an impossible feat to completely break away from the old Doogie Howser, M.D. stereotype. But Neil Patrick Harris did manage to do so, and so much more.

In recent years, Neil Patrick Harris has come up with some very memorable characters. My personal favorites:

• As chronic womanizer, shady character, and metrosexual Barney Stinson, on the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother.
• As a parody of himself in Harold and Kumar Goes To White Castle (2004) and again in Harold and Kumar Escapes From Guantanamo Bay (2008).
• More recently as Dr. Horrible/Billy on the Joss Whedon internet musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog".

• While he might be an amateur magician, he's still a huge magic fan, and sits on the Board of Director's of Hollywood's Magic Castle. NPH has even performed magic tricks on Johnny Carson (The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson), Letterman (Late Show with David Letterman), Leno (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno) and Ellen (The Ellen DeGeneres Show).
• He and Freddie Prinze, Jr. attended the same high school.
• NPH is an accomplished theater actor. He's perfomed as Mark in Rent at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles to rave reviews, and made his Broadway debut in 2002 in Proof with Anne Heche. So, yes, he can really sing, as well as act.
• He's a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, or MST3K.
• Neil Patrick Harris also does cartoon voiceovers: he's voiced The Flash in the direct-to-DVD DC animated project Justice League: The New Frontier (2008), and as Peter Parker/Spider-man in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003).
  

Summer is right on top of us- with the last season's shows already wrapping up, and networks announcing their primetime lineups for the coming fall. Welcome to Renzie Reviews the 2008 Fall Lineup- in this post we cover CBS.


Returning Favorites on CBS

The only show on the lineup that really matters to me is "How I Met Your Mother", which is already on its fourth season. Maybe we'll actually get to meet her this time.

Also, all 3 CSI shows have been renewed, as well as "Cold Case", "Criminal Minds", "NCIS", "Numb3rs", "The Unit" and "Without a Trace". That's a whole lot of crime drama, wouldn't you agree? But it seems to work alright with CBS.

We'll also be seing new seasons of "The Amazing Race", "Ghost Whisperer", "The New Adventures of Old Christine" "Survivor", "Two and a Half Men", "The Big Bang Theory", "48 Hours" and "60 Minutes".

Cancelled Shows

It put up a good fight, thanks to fans- but "Jericho" wouldn't be coming back this time.

Also gone: "Kid Nation", "Cane" Power of 10", "Secret Talents of the Stars", "Shark", "Viva Laughlin", "welcome to the Captain", and the vampire drama "Moonlight".


New Shows

Only a few new shows have been added to the CBS lineup, and other than the new Jerry Bruckheimer sci-fi thriller "The Eleventh Hour", it seems that I haven't heard of the rest of CBS' new shows- at least for now.

Remember Ava- Alex Karev's new psycho girlfriend from the latest "Grey's Anatomy"? Well she's got her own comedy now on "The Ex List". CBS also has a new crime drama with "The Mentalist", the Jay Mohr sitcom "Project Gary" and "Worst Week", an American take on the British series "The Worst Week of My Life".

Keep track of your favorite shows for the coming fall season on my continuing coverage: Renzie Reviews the 2008 Fall Lineup- our next posts will be covering FOX. We've already covered NBC, ABC and The CW earlier on.

Cheers, everyone!

I found myself watching "How I Met Your Mother" from the very start- the beginning of Season One- the other day.

Star World (a cable channel that carries the show) has recently been airing those episodes everyday- which we could catch just right before American Idol or Life or whatever show they have on the primetime slot.

I gotta admit- I love watching "How I Met Your Mother". CBS was right on the money with this one. Some people compare it to "Friends"- but for me, it's like comparing apples and oranges: absolutely no comparison.

What "How I Met Your Mother" Is About

Based from the title, it's really rather straightforward: Ted Mosby (voiced by Bob Saget) has his son and daughter sitting on a couch (in the year 2030) listening to his stories leading to- eventually- how he met their mom.

Which brings us to the current year, where Ted (Josh Radnor) is hanging out with friends from college Marshall Eriksen (played by Jason Segel) and Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan of Buffy and the American Pie series). They are also joined by the modern-day Fonzie, Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser, MD) and Robin Scherbatsky (played by the oh-so-hot Cobie Smulders).

So you have the events leading to how Ted eventually hooks up with his future wife as the main story arc, with smaller story arcs within a season. An episode then has the "things-we-did-in-New-York-in-2008" which is all very funny, once you let the dynamics work out among the characters.

Currently, we're on Season Three. Right after the Writers' Strike, a few more episodes would be airing before this current season wraps up. Still, it would be great to get a copy of the DVD to check out the earlier seasons, or you could catch it on your local cable channel (like on Star World, in Asia).

What I Like About The Show

It's fun, it's witty, it's so cleverly written. I care about the characters: what kind of misadventure Barney is getting himself into this time, or how cute Lily and Marshall are together as a couple, or what role Robin would be playing in Ted's future.

Even the recurring characters are a hoot, or the occasional surprise cameo appearance. The show's got a good hold on pop culture, and it's great that they work it so well into the script. Basically you have a lot of catch-phrases in just about any episode.

The theme song? A 15-second edit of "Hey Beautiful" by The Solids. Never fails to cheer me up, no matter how stressed out or crappy I feel. Check it out here on my channel on YouTube.

Finally, Jericho fans will be getting what they paid for in truckloads of nuts! A new episode comes out on Feb 12. So if you feel like doing some homework just before the new season premiere, you still have time to do some surfing or even watching the last few episodes all over again- which is what I'll probably be doing.

While we do have some shows to tide us over for now- The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Project Runway, The Apprentice and Lost, I'd sure like to get some resolution done for the whole lot of shows left midway through their respective seasons.

So here I am, still keeping tabs on the shows I usually watch. There are actually a lot of people asking me if a certain show has new episodes out, or if I know when a new show is coming back- so I thought I'd do everyone a service by posting a quick update on some of our favorite shows right here.

• 30 Rock last aired Episode 10 of Season 2 last Jan 10. It's been weeks since we got anything new.
  
• Bionic Woman aired Episode 8 "Do Not Disturb" last Nov 28- still no news on when we're getting more Jamie Sommers.
  
• Battlestar Galactica comes back with a fresh new season on April 4. Time to watch the earlier 1970s series?
• Chuck has already come back from Christmas break, airing two new episodes on January 24, but hasn't come up with new ones since then. We have 13 Chuck episodes so far.
  
• Gossip Girl came back on January 2, but hasn't aired another episode since January 9. We're also at 13 episodes for Gossip Girl for now.
  

• Grey's Anatomy came back with "Lay Your Hands On Me" last January 10- but that was it. Nothing new from the guys since then.
• No word from Heroes yet. Their last episode was last Dec 3, "Powerless".
• Nothing new from the guys of "How I Met Your Mother" since the last December 10 show, "The Platinum Rule".
• Earl and the gang of My Name Is Earl came back last January 10 with "Bad Earl"; we have yet to hear from them after that.
• We have word from the boys of Reaper- they'll be out with a brand new episode on March 6.

• Scrubs last went on with "My #1 Doctor" last December 6. No word yet when the guys will be out with a new episode.
• Smallville already came back with 3 new episodes since the break: "Persona" last Jan 31, "Siren" last Feb 7 and "Fracture" out this week.
• So far so good for Supernatural- they've come back from the holiday hiatus, with last week's "Dream a Little Dream of Me", and "Mystery Spot" out this week for Valentines' Day.
• I miss the guys from The Office- the last episode we saw from them was last November's "The Deposition".

Look, I'm a huge fan of TV themes. I've been collecting the themes to my favorite shows as soon as I found out they could be collected.

With the internet, Wikipedia, YouTube and other great sites out there, you can easily build up your collection of TV tunes, plug in, and bombard your eardrums with the opening themes of your favorite programs.

Most are pretty easy enough to find- say, all of the CSI shows make use of songs from The Who. Or shows like Scrubs, Smallville and Battlestar Galactica have been gracious enough to put together OST albums for schmucks like myself.

Lately, my girlfriend and I have finished Season 2 of CBS' How I Met Your Mother (great stuff, btw, if you haven't seen it yet!). Yes, we've been huge fans since the first few episodes of the previous season. It's an awesome show. Not just awesome- it's legendary! Anyway, we decided to find a copy of the theme and maybe load it on our mobile phones as a ringtone or something- coz that would just be incredibly cool. Running a search on the usual sites: TV.com, Wikipedia, Imdb.com all point to the theme song being done by The Solids (half of which turns out to be the creators of the show: Carter Bays and Craig Thomas!). It's a song called "Hey Beautiful", which you can listen to in its entirety on The Solids' page on MySpace (which you could check out here).

While the song in itself is an incredible piece of work, those of us looking for that recognizable little hook from the opening theme of the show won't be treated to the happy "puh-pa-pa-pah, puh-pa-pa-pah puh-pa-ra-ruh ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ruh" hook we've all grown to love. Hey, while on their MySpace page, do check out their other songs- great stuff right there too.

Anyway, I've noticed a whole bunch of fans looking for the short version of the song. Couldn't find a copy of it a month ago- so I decided to get my own using Moviemaker. Right now, I've loaded it onto my phone and my girlfriend's. So when we get a text message, we get treated to a 12-second slice of ear-candy: never fails to brighten up an otherwise crappy day.

Oh, you can get a copy of the theme song right here: Enjoy!