Actors

With the amount of TV I watch it makes sense that there is a lot of actor overlap and I will see the same person star or guest star in multiple shows. I fond it especially amusing when I wind up watching these different shows on the same day. For awhile I was watching reruns of “Doogie Howser M.D.” and “How I Met Your Mother” back to back and it was kind of a head trip especially when I got to the point in the “Doogie Howser” run where Neil Patrick Harris’ voice changes and Doogie starts to sound more like Barney from “How I Met Your Mother”. That is not the only example from “How I Met Your Mother” I can also watch a rerun of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and compare Alyson Hannigan as Willow and Lilly who have more in common personality wise then Barney and Doogie. I recently watched the “Buffy” episode Beer Bad in this episode Willow confronts Parker, who had a one night stand with Buffy the interaction in the scene reminded me of Lilly because Parker was behaving like Barney and Willow was judging him as Lilly would. I also look for “Buffy” references in most episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” they are probably not intentional but I make them fit its especially funny when Alexis Denisof who is married to Alyson in real life and was Wesley on “Buffy” and “Angel” guest stars.
Another thing I noticed was how when you watch something more recent and then an older show the common actor looks young by comparison even if they are a Golden Girl. Last night I watched the season finale of “Hot in Cleveland” and then just an hour later I was watching “The Golden Girls” and thinking Rose looked young. I thought it was ironic to think a Golden Girl looked young but just like my recent observation on Alex Trebek, Betty White is at least 20 years older now then she was when that Golden Girls episode was made so of course Elka looks older then Rose.
These actor commonalities happen with guest stars as well I remember watching and episode of “Star Trek the Next Generation” where Counselor Troi was dating a guy who seemed familiar. I knew I had seen the episode before but thought I knew him from something I had re-watched more recently. By the end of the episode I had placed him as someone who had dated Fran on “The Nanny”. He was the funeral director that decided to become a clown instead. TV fate decided to mess with me that night because I saw that very episode later on.
Its fun to recognize people and compare the different characters the same actors play its also a good idea to have IMDB on standby to figure out who they are when you just cant remember what you know them from.