You're Still No Vegas

Another TV trend has caught my eye this week. After seeing no mention of Atlantic City in anything I watched for longer than I can remember--perhaps since Seinfeld--suddenly two shows in two days have used the shifty gambling town as a plot device.

First How I Met Your Mother took the gang to the boardwalk to try to get newly back together couple Marshall and Lily hitched. The writers took several potshots at AC, including one character exclaiming that half a dead whale was rotting on the beach and, when learning that they were about to board a boat, asking, "Is that what the wooden thing between all the garbage in the water is?"

Then last night's House saw House and Wilson embark on a road trip with guest star John Larroquette, who insisted that he'd find the world's best hoagie somewhere among all the old people smoking.

Based on the two shows, here is what I have learned. Atlantic City is:

• A good place to not get married
• A good place to kill yourself so your son can have your heart
• Filled with smoking old people
• Staffed by whiny voiced old people
• Incapable of providing the proper ingredients for a sandwich
• Close enough to Princeton that you can drive a just-dead body home and still use the organs

I am sure the city fathers are very proud.