consolation prizes and slanting floors

 

        Listening to a video on You Tube about the situation-comedy How I Met Your Mother, I thought to myself, "It sounds a lot like Friends."

        As I continued to listen, the video narrator mentioned that the couple makes love on the kitchen floor in the first episode.

        And I remembered, 'Hey, the couple in Mad About You did that, too.'

On Mad About You, I think it was in the first episode - or maybe somewhere in the first season, anyway....

Then a little further on, it said the young couple gets an apartment and the floor is uneven.

        That theme - mini-theme, if you will - was also in Mad About You.  The wife is convinced the floor slants and her husband tells her it's her imagination, the floor is fine.

As the video continued, I heard it say there was a plot-line where the wife leaves to pursue career goals and then she returns and the husband asks her, "Am I just your consolation prize?"

 

        And I remember that line from the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally.

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        There are several theories that say there are only so many plot structures for stories:  I found this example in a "short" video:

overcoming the monster

rags to riches

the quest

voyage and return

comedy

tragedy

re-birth (the protagonist goes through a transformation).

        But then I also thought, those components from When Harry Met Sally and Mad About You weren't plot structures, they were just - moments.  Phenomena.  A floor that slants.  People being intimate in their kitchen...

Those aren't plots or even stories, they're moments, components, punch-lines...

Friends was on from 1994 to 2004, ten seasons.

How I Met Your Mother, Google tells us, was on for nine seasons:  2005 - 2014.

        Right after Friends.

Doing this little bit of research and reflection reminded me of something I have observed before:  so many TV series are set in New York City!  

Friends

Seinfeld

How I Met Your Mother

Mad About You

Sex And The City

        When Harry Met Sally wasn't a TV series, it was a feature film, and it, too, happens in New York City.

(Hollywood writers:  "All people live in New York City.  No people live anyplace else."  haha)

When Harry Met Sally...

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