How I Met Your Mother. "The Leap": Carter Bays Q&A

Because of all the time demands on me during Upfront Week, I won't be able to do a proper review of the "How I Met Your Mother" fourth season finale, "The Leap," save to say that I really enjoyed it, and that my opinion on the various romantic storylines (specifically, about the ongoing necessity, or lack thereof, to focus on the search for the Mother) is unchanged from previous episode reviews.

But in lieu of a review, I've got a Q&A I did last week with "HIMYM" co-creator Carter Bays, where we talk about all the big developments in the finale:

Let's start with by far the most important question raised by the finale: how did you decide that this would be the joke involving the goat? And what were the other goat ideas?

We always knew it was going to be a fight. That was set up very early on in the fight episode, when Ted sort of makes a reference to Ted fighting the goat. The other ideas were the degrees to which we would take the idea of Ted fighting the goat. And that was off us having ideas and our production staff saying, "No way." There were going to be wires at one point, "Matrix"-style special effects, and we negotiated it down to a puppet goat.

After all this time, do you feel like this was a satisfying resolution to that gag?

I think so. Nothing's going to ever satisfy. It's hard to build something up for that long, but it was certainly fun to shoot and be funny. I think we got away with it in terms of realism versus the fantastical.

I love that Ted goes through the rest of the episode with the goat's hoof print on his forehead.

Maybe the rest of the series, who knows?

So where do Robin and Barney stand now?

That's a good question. This episode, I think, kicks the door down for the barney and Robin romance. We have some ideas. Our big challenge as writers is "What would that be like?" We have some ideas of that would be like. Obviously, it won't be as easy as they're just boyfriend/girlfriend now.

Barney knew going into the season that he had feelings for Robin; what do you feel he and she had to go through this year to get to this point?

Robin's journey was a little more internal. We didn't explore it as much as Barney's. We've seen her in a relationship, she made the journey with Ted, going from the single person to someone who can open up to another person. It was kind of about Barney's side. It was like leaving it a mystery where Robin stands. That's what made it exciting, not knowing what the answer would be. We still kind of don't know what the answer is. I like the ambiguity of, "On what level is she saying that she doesn't want to be in a relationship or she does?" I like that we decided to give ourselves season five to explore that.

And what had to happen to Barney to get him to this point?

It's sort of a slow build over the series. Seeing his best friend get engaged, and seeing Marshall and Lily's relationship blossom. Over the course of the series, this has been something that's been simmering for Barney.

Well, there was that nice moment at the end of "Right Place Right Time" where he rips up the list of his 200 conquests and looked hopefully towards Robin, like he was finally ready for her.

That was definitely what that moment was about. It was a nice way to see Barney giving up something immature and move towards maturity. Not too close to it, though,

So does this mean that we've seen the last of Barney trying to seduce other women?

I'm sure that won't be the case. I think you sort of established where Barney stands with this in the first episode of the season. It's the scorpion and the toad. There will always be a part of him that's a flirt. It'll be about him trying to reconcile the two parts of himself.

Was there anything that had to be done differently with this storyline as Cobie's pregnancy advanced?

It didn't feel like it. I'm sure subconsciously there were things we were keeping ourselves from doing. The last few episodes, we definitely tried to go easy on her. She was getting along. It's pretty tough to go into work every day when you're tucking a baby in your belly.

While I'm sure it was a hassle to have to write around the pregnancies, and then around Alyson's absence, one of the nice things was seeing so much emphasis on the Marshall/Barney friendship. Is that something we'll be seeing more of in the future?

We've always loved getting those two together. They're very funny, just goofballs together. It always feels like the Three Stooges when those two are together. I think one of the wonderful things about our show, and we're excited to have Aly back, is that every two-person combination we've done has its own energy and can be equally fun and entertaining. Like, Marshall and Robin, we realized this year that we hadn't done any good Jason and Cobie stories, and we did two of them back to back, they were great together.

In terms of the mother, we know now that the mom is in Ted's architecture class. That gives you a lot of leeway; how aggressively do you intend to pursue this next season?

It's funny. We're hoping to take a long time with this story. That will be addressed in the first episode of the season. The mother is in the classroom, there's definitely no trickery there, but it's not going to be as easy.

So, is it a situation where he's going to be dating a lot of his students, or will we be on alert the first time he does that?

I'm not sure. We haven't figured it out yet. We want to be careful, don't want to string it out.

At this point, is the reveal of the mother's identity something you're going to save for the end of the series? Or has the show evolved enough that you could introduce her, have her be Ted's girlfriend or wife, and just keep telling stories about all these characters?

I'm always hesitant to answer that question, because if I give my personal preference, it's kind of a spoiler. But it's definitely evolved beyond that. It's definitely a show about these five friends. I don't think we need to focus on the framing device. It's funny, when we did the yellow umbrella last week, it was like, "Wow, we forgot all about this," and we had written it. I kind of like our lazy, rollicking pace, making it a really windy story.

Do you ever feel like the title is a hindrance in some way, like you're beholden to that part of the story?

I don't think I've experienced that. Often, we'll pretty easily forget the name of the show that we're writing and just tell good stories. It's hard to know how people are watching it. I know there are some people who come to the show every week with the hope, "Tell me how he met the mother," but we've created a big universe for ourselves, but that's just one element, and there's a lot of other stuff to explore.

Are we done with the umbrella? Has it served its purpose?

It still very much has a role. It's kind of in now way served its purpose. The fact that he was holding the yellow umbrella meeting Stella was kind of a red herring. We did want to signal in that scene that this is part of the story, and that's why we put it in that scene, but it will be tangibly involved in him meeting the mother. When he said two years ago that "the story of your mom's yellow umbrella is the story of how I met your mother," he meant it, and so did we.

There was that scene in the episode where Ted acquired the umbrella where he bumps into some random woman at the club on St. Patrick's Day, and the camera lingers on it longer than you'd expect for something so minor. A lot of fans are convinced that's because the random woman was, in fact, the mother. Are the people who keep talking about that like the "Sopranos" fans who kept waiting for the Russian to come back, or are they onto something?

I can't say one way or the other, whether that's the mom or not. It was artistically significant just to show Ted bump into a girl. Maybe one of these girls in the club could be the mom.

Or maybe that was it: maybe that was the Russian from "The Sopranos" after a sex change.

Can Barney drive?

Yes. It's hard to go back to this, but that scene took place in the past. In the Fiero episode, what we were seeing was a flashback to before that. We established that he had a BMW at the end of season one. Barney can drive. He was just a late learner. I'm sure if you put that (in this interview), someone will find a way to prove me wrong. We had that discussion, but it felt like it fits. We had stuff in (last week's) episode that we had to cut out for time where Barney talks about how he didn't start driving until late. So he was learning new things about driving like you can talk your way out of the speeding tickets.

This is two season finales in a row where someone's wound up in the hospital and Barney had an epiphany about Robin. Coincidence?

It is a coincidence, though we highlighted it by casting the same orderly both years. That's another thing we were going to do a joke about but we couldn't get around to. There's something nice about bookending Barney looking at Robin that way for the first time and actually kissing her and telling her he loves her in a hospital room. Sort of the way that Ted and Stella's first scene this season was them sitting in a driving game and their last scene was in a car together.

Last week's episode established that Tony's movie, "The Wedding Bride," will be coming out in May 2010. Should we be expecting an episode about that?

We have some preliminary ideas for it. We have a whole story built around it.

Ted was originally modeled on you, and Marshall on Craig. How far have those characters evolved from that? Do you ever sit around and say, "I wouldn't do that" or "We wouldn't do that to each other"?

Ted certainly isn't me anymore. I haven't been engaged, or had a lot of the other experiences he's had. It's more the characters have become themselves .We definitely do try to ask ourselves, "Would this happen to us? Would this happen to someone we know?" for all the characters. We try to keep them personal and real, but there's more overlap now. I relate to Marshall as much as I do to Ted.

Well, the reason I ask is because the writing has been more overt this year about how Ted can act like a douche sometimes, and I was wondering if that was something you were comfortable with.

I think I'm way more of a douche than Ted. No, I allow for that part of the show to be fictional.

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com Click here to read the full post

How I Met Your Mother, "As Fast as She Can": I can't drive 55

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I grow a handsome neck beard...

"I know you're tired of waiting. And you may have to wait a little while more, but she's on her way, Ted. And she's getting here as fast as she can." -Stella

I'm in no rush -- especially now that my suspicions from last week have been confirmed: Stella isn't the Mother.

"As Fast As She Can" was in many ways the flip side to "Right Place Right Time." Where last week's episode kept looking for every excuse it could find to spend time on comedy with the supporting cast while pushing Ted's story to the background, this one focused almost entirely on Ted, with a mix of comedy (Ted being asked to design a murder room) and angst (any scene with Ted and Stella). And while I don't hate Ted the way some fans have grown to, he's much less compelling, and funny, than any of Barney, Marshall, or Robin.(*) Add to that the way Stella quickly became the most unpleasant character in the show's history, and the way that they wrote Jason Jones as if they had cast Ed Helms instead (they're two different people, right?), and you have an episode that's not one of my favorites from this season. Like I said last week, I've really lost any interest in finding out who the Mother is and how Ted meets her, and I'd be fine if the show tabled it for the forseeable future, and/or if Ted met the Mother immediately (assuming the casting was good and the character was written to be more likable than Stella) and the show moved on to other pursuits. (Hey, if "Prison Break" could keep calling itself that for years after they broke out of Fox River, why can't "How I Met Your Mother" keep its name while changing its focus?)

(*) Once upon a time, I would have put Lily on that list, but it's been remarkable how little the show has missed her these last few weeks while Alyson Hannigan was on maternity leave. (In case you forgot, this week's final scene, and all of next week's finale, were all filmed out of sequence so the producers could do their finale before they lost Hannigan for the year.) I like Lily, but her absence has forced the writers to lean much more heavily on the Marshall/Barney team, and they've been (insert Barney Stinson superlative here) together.

Now, immediately after watching this one, I popped in a DVD screener of the season finale so I can interview Carter Bays for something that'll run next Monday night after it airs. Because of that, I don't want to say too much else about what this episode did or didn't reveal about Ted's quest for the actual Mother, but I'll tell you two things about the finale: 1)I really liked it, and 2)It features a certain oft-discussed barnyard animal, for real this time.

In the meantime, a few other thoughts on "As Fast as She Can":

• I want to ask Bays about Barney's confused driving history, but I don't remember all the details anymore, save that in one episode, he couldn't drive, and an episode or two later, he was hijacking Ted's moving van. Anybody want to fill in some gaps for me?

• I loved the way Neil Patrick Harris' voice got both high and Southern as Barney tried to tell the others that he could talk his way out of a ticket.

• Ted's ringtone is "Let's Go to the Mall." I like that the producers didn't put some canned laughter under that moment to highlight it, the way I imagine a number of other shows would have. Either you noticed it, or you didn't.

• Ordinarily, I try to play New Jersey expert whenever the show makes a geographic reference, but I have no idea how to even spell the name of the town where Barney got arrested.

• Late last year, the show promised that we'd find out about the goat by the end of this season. Here, we got a tease about Tony writing a movie called "The Wedding Bride," that will conveniently be released in May 2010.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Right Place Right Time": Hey glad girls

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as a clown predicts the weather...

Stella is not the Mother.

Of that, I feel confident -- as confident as I can about a show that, by design, has had to draw out the premise of its title for four years now with various head fakes and potential loves of Ted's life who turned out to be anything but.

My guess is that, as some people speculated last year, the Mother will turn out to be a friend of Stella's, with whom she went out with on the same St. Patrick's Day night when Ted stole the yellow umbrella(*). Ted and Stella will reconnect, she'll feel bad again about dumping him on their wedding day, and as a peace offering she'll fix him up with the eventual Mother. This is my assumption. I liked Sarah Chalke as Stella at first, but the writers didn't know what to do with her except have her and Ted get into fights about how they shouldn't be together, and the events of "Shelter Island" -- particularly the hypothetical flash-forward to a future where Stella was the mom, and Future Ted was telling the story to two different, blonde, kids -- would seem to make it clear that the show can't and won't try going down that path again.

(*) We saw Ted and Barney out on the town that night in "No Tomorrow," and Stella mentioned having gone out to a bar that night in "Ten Sessions."

But here's the thing: as I said in that "Shelter Island" review, the show has given us too many red herrings, and Ted's romantic life has proven to be one of the least interesting parts of the show, that I've largely lost interest in who the Mother is and when we get to meet her. Unless they have a terrific actress in mind -- someone who pops on the screen, and is funny, and has chemistry with Josh Radnor at least as good as Cobie Smulders or, say, Ashley Williams did -- then I'd rather the show not be going here now. If the casting and conecption of the Mother isn't perfect, I'd rather the show just wait till the end of its very last episode, have Ted bump into a woman at a party, and hear Saget go, "And that, kids, is how I met your mother. Good night."

Or, failing that, I'd like to see the show take the same approach it did in season two, where Ted was with Robin, and happy, and therefore the series was able to spend most of its time on other, funnier, more compelling storylines while Ted and Robin's couplehood was just taken for granted.

Because on a show where I was still invested in that kind of foundational story arc, I'd have been tearing my hair out each time the episode jumped away from Ted with the yellow umbrella to show yet another vignette explaining how he got there. Instead, I found myself enjoying the vignettes so much I kept forgetting the reason they were there.

Heck, I even loved the return of the Intervention gag (from the episode of the same name, also written by Stephen Lloyd), when I disliked it the first time out. I guess it was one of those Letterman things where the sudden return of a joke I had quickly grown sick of somehow made it funny all over again. That, or it was just the surprise of it, and the complete lack of commentary, and the looks of disgust on Ted, Robin and Barney's faces, that made it work.

I was also amused that Marshall went to the trouble of computing Barney's success rate (foreshadowing of his pie chart addiction), because from the minute Barney announced he was about to reach the 200-woman number, I kept asking myself, "Isn't that too low?" My approach was a little different, in that I just divided 200 by the last decade (while he was sexually active before that, it wasn't that often) and came up with under two women a month. This would be a lot for most men, but for a blatant himbo like Barney, and one who prides himself on rarely bedding the same woman twice? Seemed low to me. So I'm glad Marshall did the math on it. (And, as an added bonus, he compared it to Jim Abbott's batting average, making "HIMYM" the second excellent comedy this spring to do a random Jim Abbott joke.)

Funny episode and an outstanding use of Guide By Voices' "Glad Girls." But I'm holding my breath on the Mother thing. Whether it's Stella, Stella's friend, or someone Stella will accidentally introduce Ted to, it looks like the show is finally going for it. And I really hope they get it right -- especially since the look on Barney's face when he ripped up his list and peered over at Robin had me a lot more excited than finding out who was under the blue umbrella.

Go big or go home on this one, I think.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "The Three Days Rule": OMG. FWIW, ROTFL.

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I tell my sister Lisa that I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda...

After last night's mega-epic "Chuck" finale, I was reluctant to watch any other television, worrying that everything else would suffer badly in comparison. Eventually, I put on "HIMYM," and while it didn't feature anything to remotely compare to Sam Kinison and an Indian lesbian performing "Mr. Roboto," it was still a very funny episode -- albeit one that, as my friend Rich points out, didn't quite know how to end.

As I've mentioned, the season finale was shot in advance so Alyson Hannigan could be in it before she and Cobie Smulders got too big, and so the show feels like it's in treading-water mode between now and when the finale airs. I'm not expecting anything particularly earth-shaking on any story arc fronts, just good jokes, which "The Three Days Rule" provided, early and often.

Barney's explanation of how Jesus invented the Three Days Rule (which CBS has kindly posted in its entirety to YouTube) was as hilarious as it was blasphemous, elevated, as always, by the boyish enthusiasm of Neil Patrick Harris, and then by the look of delight on Cobie Smulders' face as Barney kept going, and going, and going...

When we found out that Barney and Marshall were texting Ted as Holli-with-an-i, I started to worry that this would be a repeat of "Old King Clancy" where those two came up with some lamely convoluted scheme to trick Ted for his own good. But the combination of good intentions and malicious glee (Barney: "Or..."), coupled with the arrival of the always-delightful Kevin Michael Richardson(*) as poetry-quoting Barry White soundalike Stan, made it a vast improvement on the earlier take on this kind of story. Barney and Marshall's continuing subconscious desire to have text-sex with Ted was especially well-played by NPH and Jason Segel.

(*) Quoting Fienberg's Twitter feed: "I'd welcome Kevin Michael Richardson as a "How I Met Your Mother" cast regular. And not just for a little diversity."

Again, I don't think the ending was that great, and I also needed Robin to point out that Ted's "naked lady noise" sounds exactly like Butt-Head's laugh, but beyond that, good stuff.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Mosbius Designs": Sports Guy's world

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I listen to a building...

"A hot guy telling you when you can and can't pee? That's the dream." -Robin Scherbatzky

This was just a funny episode, from beginning (Lily disappears for four weeks, giving the show an easy out to deal with the final stages of Alyson Hannigan's pregnancy before the finale, which they shot earlier in the season) to end (Marshall and Barney running from ninjas), and lots of things in between.

I like that the show has embraced Ted's douchiness (I had written in my notes "Ted's being a douche" about a half-second before Robin told him the same thing). And while Cobie Smulder's belly is finally getting distracting (especially since she was drinking so much during the episode), she's so charming and amusing at playing Robin in a bad relationship that I was able to overlook it. The office vs. apartment, assistant vs. boyfriend storyline could have been stupid, but the writing embraced the silliness of it (Ted and PJ communicating on speaker phone from 10 feet away, the fired PJ immediately moving to the couch to watch TV) enough that it worked.

The real highlight, though, was the Barney/Marshall stuff. Making those two co-workers has created a lot of fertile storytelling ground, here with Barney helping Marshall decide what Guy he wanted to be. The scene where Barney shot down potential ideas like Monty Python Guy -- "We are the Knights who say... you're fired!" -- was maybe my favorite thing in the episode, and the interaction of the different Guys built beautifully until we got to Creepy Backrub Guy massaging Marshall's shoulders while demanding that a fantasy trade(*) go through.

(*) This episode, by the way, strengthened my resolve to make last fall's fantasy football season my one and only foray into that world. Too much time and mental energy consumed for too little reward.

And with Lily out of action, Marshall got to step in as Barney's confidante about his Robin-love, and to find a clever solution(**) to everyone's problem by hiring PJ as a paralegal/Assistant Sports Guy. The brilliance of Neil Patrick Harris at this point goes without saying, but moments like Barney declaring Robin "the greatest woman on the planet!" and then desperately trying to change the subject without changing his tone of voice are nice reminders.

(**) I can't help it: when Barney called the plan "pure evil," I had to immediately go to Hulu to watch the opening scene from the "NewsRadio" episode of the same name. Go. Enjoy. I'll be here when you get back.

The show's now going to be in reruns for a few weeks until we get to the season-ending May sweeps episodes, and I have to assume that we're finally going to stop waiting for it with Robin and Barney and getting around to the potentially legendary coupling.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Murtaugh": Guys like us don't die on toilets

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I make sure the bad guys have been de-kaffir-nated...

Murtaugh was an extremely silly, extremely broad episode, but it was also one that played so well to everyone's strengths that it worked very well. There have been better, richer, more quintessential-y "HIMYM"-y episodes this season, but few have made me laugh as much.

Barney's quest to do every item on Ted's "Murtaugh list" in a single weekend gave Neil Patrick Harris abundant opportunities for genius physical comedy(*), whether it was Barney simultaneously feeling pain in his ear and his back, or Barney struggling to do a shot without bending, or pretty much anything he did while dressed for the rave.

(*) Was discussing the episode with Fienberg, who suggested it might be NPH's Emmy episode. I countered that, while it's a very funny episode, he doesn't get to play any of the emotional stuff he's also so brilliant at, so maybe not. Not that it matters, given that the Emmy voters will just vote for stupid Jeremy Piven again. Sigh...

Josh Radnor, meanwhile, got to offer up a new flavor or Ted's d-bagginess by becoming a prematurely old man, Jason Segel got to let out plenty of primal screams as Angry Marshall (Angry Marshall is never not funny; or maybe it's just Angry Segel that's never not funny), and Alyson Hannigan got to offer a brief taste of Angry Lily (though the best part of that was when she was off camera and Lily threw the chair at Marshall).

Cobie Smulders didn't get to do as much, other than say "Gentlemen's agreement!" and tell some Canadian jokes, but the Canadian jokes are always gold, and these were part of an episode with some of the series' most inspired pop culture gags. Simply doing an entire episode built around the Roger Murtaugh character from the "Lethal Weapon" movies was clever enough, but to then combine it with references to the Canadian predecessor to those movies, and with Bunny Colvin from "The Wire" as the stereotypical Angry Black Laser Tag Captain, and then to top that all off with a completely random appearance by Teen Wolf(**)? '80s movie heaven, my friends. '80s movie heaven.

(**) Yes, the ads during the NCAA Tournament gave away "Teen Wolf," but I'm okay with it for two reasons: 1)Hopefully, it got the show a few new Bill Simmons-type viewers for what was a very funny episode; and 2)The commercials didn't give away the fact that the scene featured a score that was a soundalike to the actual "Teen Wolf" music.

Some other thoughts:

• So, I think this is as appropriate a place as any to talk about the "Lethal Weapon" movies -- specifically, whether the increasing goofiness of the sequels, and their gradual defanging of Riggs from psycho Vietnam vet to wacky guy who's just mad about his dead wife, diminish the brilliance of the first movie. Discuss.

• Segel's Danny Glover impression was awfully good, but maybe not as good as my impression of Teen Wolf asking for a keg of beer. I spent a sad amount of time in college practicing that one.

• I know some have complained about the hiding of the two pregnancies, but I'm starting to get amused by it, particularly the one moment where they had to hide Hannigan's belly behind a box of orange slices and a dozen basketballs. On the other hand, am I the only one who gets disturbed watching Cobie pretend to drink beer?

• Are the weird Russian beers remnants from Marshall and Lily's airport tradition?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Old King Clancy": Northwest Passage

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I renounce my Canadian half-citizenship...

"Canada, you did it again. You even found a way to ruin this. Why? Why do we let you be a country?" -Barney

Today was not a good day at The Star-Ledger. We're certainly not alone in taking a beating in this economy, but the events of today had me really, really, really hoping for some big laughs from tonight's "HIMYM," particularly after the last two episodes had been so strong. Instead, unfortunately, we got a fairly iffy outing saved by some always-reliable Canadian comedy.

Now, admittedly, today's news at the paper may well have made it impossible for me to enjoy a storyline about fake jobs, Ted being on the verge of getting fired, a room designed for firing people, etc., but I don't think so. The biggest laugh I had at the episode was the security cam montage of Barney firing people -- specifically, the shot of him having sex under the table and then firing the woman he had sex with, which is completely despicable and yet completely Barney. (This is how good the writers and Neil Patrick Harris have been at creating this character: I love it when he's doing horrible things even when he's appearing in grainy footage with the sound off so I can't even see or hear anything from NPH.)

No, I just think it was a lame story, as sitcom plots about elaborate lies tend to be. Other than "HIMYM"-y touches like the aforementioned video montage, or the '70s-style caper movie title cards for each member of the conspiracy (including the chipmunk!), it was forgettable and not all that funny.

Lily playing a guessing game with Robin about Canadian sex acts -- with help from yet another classic fake website from the "HIMYM" folks (this time with appearances from an actual Canadian celebrity) -- was an amusing B-plot, and a reminder that clever euphemisms (invented or not) are often funnier than more sexually explicit punchlines, and it had a nice payoff at the end when we found out what really happened with The Frozen Snowshoe. I just wish it was in service to a better A-story.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "The Front Porch": A Bridge game too far

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I put on my sleeping cravat...

"Did you at least Tivo it?" -Robin Scherbatzky

That's two extremely strong episodes in a row, and if "The Front Porch" wasn't quite as legendary as last week's "Sorry, Bro," it still gives me hope that we're headed for a season-ending run as good as what we got last year after the strike.

Once you get past the plausibility issue of why the gang didn't simply DVR an episode to watch it at a more reasonable hour -- my wife thought it was because the networks don't want to mention ad-skipping technology, but Robin's line near the end makes it clear that they could have -- the background gag of Robin having the most eventful day in morning show host history took an already funny episode and kicked it up a level. My favorite bit was probably the first one, with Robin weeping as she delivered a testimonial to the friends at home who were too distracted to even notice, but all of it was funny (and funny only because it was happening in the background, on mute, and no one was paying attention). Well-done.

Barney slowly converting to Marshall's sleepwear philosophy was even better. The moment where Barney first spotted Marshall in the nightshirt and was so excited he had to check his pulse, then had to go on a long solo run of nightshirt jokes ("Something about Scrooge!") would have been enough to carry a lesser episode. Here, it was just one very hilarious thing among many, including Barney's porn fantasy of how the pajama suit might come in handy (which paid off in the tag), Marshall (and then Marshall and Barney) re-enacting the flying dream sequence from "The Big Lebowski," and the sweet scene of Barney asking Marshall to tell him all the wonderful things about marriage. It's a testament to Neil Patrick Harris that he could seem so innocent and pure in that scene, and so sleazy in the porn scene, and have it all work as one character, because Barney is at heart an overgrown kid. (He's just much better at operating in the real world than fellow arrested development case Michael Scott.)

The writers continued to find amusing ways to make Karen be awful in her second and final appearance (the "2000 chiantis" pillow fight made my skin crawl, as it should have), but they also used her presence to comment on how a group of close-knit friends like this would respond to one member dating someone they can't stand. Lily's behind-the-scenes manipulations also let the show toy with time and perspective again, as we see how Lily played an important role in scenes we know from the season two finale.

All that, plus Lily turning into Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, another glimpse of Marshall's Chewbacca impression, and the gag with Marshall's Creed CD add up to a terrific episode.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Sorry, Bro": I'm Alan, and I approved of this episode

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I alert the sommelier...

Wow. I've been enjoying "HIMYM" for the most part this year, but an episode like "Sorry, Bro" -- both the funniest and most uniquely "HIMYM" episode dating back to at least "The Naked Man," if not to last season's "Ten Sessions"/"The Bracket" double-header -- makes me realize how much I've been making allowances for some of the episodes of late. Because there are so many moving parts (the interlocking stories, the playing with time and perspective, Saget's narration, sweet moments mixed with crude ones, etc.), it's hard for "HIMYM" to live up to its potential every week. There have only been a handful of real Pantheon episodes like "Slap Bet," after all. But when I see an episode as good as this one, it makes me wish the show could reach this level all the time, even as I understand how difficult that is.

There were so many funny things going in "Sorry, Bro" that this could easily degenerate into one of those "30 Rock" episode reviews where all I do is list jokes that made me laugh. So instead I want to try to break down the things that elevated it over just a very good episode:

1. Marshall and Lily got angry. Their relationship is based on Craig Thomas' marriage, and from what little I know of Craig, he seems like a very nice and friendly guy, and I can imagine him and Mrs. Thomas getting very schmoopie together. And Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan certainly play that note well -- just not nearly as well as they play blind comic fury. Segel is rarely better than when he's exploding into a rage over some perceived slight, and Hannigan is never better, so an episode built entirely around someone they both despise was right in their wheelhouse. Excellent work from both, so much so that I barely even noticed the various pregnancy-hiding tricks this week.

2. Everyone's either had a Karen or known a Karen. The specifics of her awfulness don't really matter, though her ceaseless pretensions were certainly funny. But there's a universality to the Karen experience -- of either being unable to resist dating someone who is always bad news, or else having a friend who does it -- that meant they could have given her almost any personality and it still would have been funny. (And this one was well-played by Laura Prepon.) Some "HIMYM" stories are great because they're so unique, but lots of others work because they somehow manage to capture an emotion, or an experience, or a person that we're all familiar with in some way. This was one of the latter.

3. The jokes were relentless. I think in some weeks, the writers might have been content to build a whole episode around Barney's four reasons for having lunch with your ex, or about Robin having trouble adjusting to her new schedule (and sleep-eating ribs!), or even about Barney waging an elaborate prank on Marshall at the office. Instead, all of those gags -- and Robin's snub-nose revolver, and Robin and Lily both quoting "The Wire," and Marshall and Lily dressed up as, respectively, The Ultimate Warrior and Hacksaw Jim Duggan, or any of the other jokes I would list if I were throwing up my hands and taking the "30 Rock" approach -- came fast and furious in the same episode. I had to pause the show a few times just to catch my breath, and/or so I could jump back and catch another joke I almost missed. (Did you notice, for instance, that Ted and Karen's waiter is Lily's ex-boyfriend Scooter, who fulfilled his promise to her to become a waiter because he thought that's what she wanted?)

4. The interlocking of the pants story (boma-ye!(*)) and the Karen story made each one funnier than if they had been told in linear fashion. This, as always, is the big "HIMYM" signature, the way that familiar stories are told in new ways, bending time and perspective to fit the needs of the jokes and/or the characters. Here, the recounting of Ted's reunion with Karen played out the way an actual 1:45 a.m. bull session at a bar might go, with the topic bouncing back and forth between Karen's return and Marshall's stolen pants, and with Barney deliberately needling Marshall (and raising the hilarity quotient) by wavering on who should tell the punchline to the pants story.

(*) Adapted from "Ali, boma-ye!," meaning "Ali, kill him!" which the crowds in Zaire chanted as Muhammad Ali trained for the Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman.

Damn, that was good. I want to see Summer Glau on "Big Bang Theory" (and no talk about that one until I do a separate post tomorrow), but I'm really tempted to just put "Sorry, Bro" on again. Bravo, bros.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "The Stinsons": Get him a body bag!

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I give myself a catchphrase...

"And so ended one of the strangest afternoons of our lives." -Future Ted

And so ended one of the strangest "HIMYM"s of our lives -- and, I'm guessing, one of the most polarizing.

The theme of half my reviews of this show tends to revolve around the eternal struggle of "HIMYM" vs. Sitcom(*). Ordinarily, I view any episode that gets too close to Sitcom territory to be a very bad thing, but "The Stinsons" so gleefully embraced its Sitcom-ness at the same time it was inverting it that it was like watching a car turn into a skid. It doesn't make any sense that this is the best, safest way to survive, and yet it is. With "The Stinsons" -- featuring wacky and unnecessary lies, a cute kid with a (lame) catchphrase, and random musical stings(**) -- I was willing to turn into the skid right along with the show, but I can see how other people might not.

(*) Insert boilerplate disclaimer about how, of course "HIMYM" is a sitcom, but that the capital S implies a bad sitcom, one where consistent characterization is sacrificed for the sake of one lame punchline after another.

(**) Am I nuts, or was the sting right after Barney's meta joke about '80s child actors supposed to be a snippet of the "Doogie Howser" score?

I think what made it work is that it was a Barney Stinson version of a dumb sitcom plot. They couldn't have done this episode with any other character, but Barney's always been allowed to operate on a different frequency from the others, and his attempt to model his life after characters and stories from pop culture only adds to his appeal. The running gag about Barney cheering for the villains of '80s movies (which gives me another excuse to link to both the original "sweep the leg" scene and to the Wiliam Zabka-directed "Sweep the Leg" music video worked nicely into the larger plot about Barney lying to his mom about having a family. In Barney's worldview, the villains are the heroes for what seem like obvious reasons (Zabka was better at karate than Ralph Macchio, Hans Gruber was the one who died hard, etc.), just as coming up with this elaborate, expensive, years-long lie to his mother makes perfect sense to him. In Barney-world, not only is all of this possible, it's damn near probable.

It helped that Frances Conroy was so funny -- and so unlike Ruth Fisher -- as Mrs. Stinson. She doesn't sound anything like Megan Mullally (who voiced Barney's mom in previous flashbacks), but she played the character in a way that fit the previous info we had. Her monologue about eight minutes in a gas station bathroom was as funny as it was horrifying, and it makes sense that this is the woman who would have created the Barney Stinson we know. (NPH's very childlike and hurt delivery of "Mommy?" after she told him about her stint with Grand Funk Railroad was lovely.) And yet she was just human enough that the climax, where she unwittingly nudged Barney towards making another play for Robin, felt like something real even in the midst of all the wackiness.

Of the bits of business for the rest of the cast, I enjoyed watching Ted the pretentious theater geek and wannabe actor, as well as Robin bonding with Barney's "son," but Lily and Marshall's conflict felt too broad and dumb even within the context of an episode about Barney inventing a fake family to impress his mom. Again, it's about what one character can get away with that another can't.

But overall, this worked, in a way it probably shouldn't have, because "HIMYM" Carter Bays and Craig Thomas (on script duty this week) were able to embrace Barney's more extreme qualities and hang some good jokes around them.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "The Possimpible": Everybody loves Sniglets

Brief spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I check my lottery numbers...

"The Possimpible" -- alternately known as "Barney Stinson: That Guy's Awesome" -- was missing one very obvious, potentially legendary piece: the video resume Barney made for Robin. Because we didn't get to see it, it felt like the episode climaxed -- comedically, anyway -- with the footage of Barney's own video (which you can catch, of course, at the real BarneysVideoResume.com). Everything after that was sort of interesting from a character/relatability standpoint -- we all have things we used to be able to do in our teens or early twenties that we don't want to let go of as we get older -- but I'm surprised they missed such an easy opportunity for additional laughs. Barney's idea of how to sell Robin to TV news organizations would have been at least as funny as his own awesome video.

For that matter, how do you do a subplot about Marshall dancing, and not let Jason Segel shake his groove thing? (Cue the obligatory "Freaks and Geeks" disco clip -- jump ahead to around the 2:30 mark if you just want the dancing without the Nick/Lindsay angst.) The hot dog-eating part of that story gave the show an excuse to work in Alyson Hannigan's baby bump, but why couldn't they let the big man dance?

Couple of other random thoughts:

• Note that Barney keeps taking off his glasses in various shots of the video. No doubt he's studied closely from Alec Baldwin's lessons on being a handsome actor.

• If you freeze-frame Ted's resume after he deletes the "Doctor X" stuff, the last item involves him being a lifeguard, which isn't really applicable to an architecture career, either.

• The bitchy, whispering lottery guys -- "I don't even understand what she's doing" -- were an unexpected highlight.

• I'm too tired to create my own words, ala Barney, but have at it if you must.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Three Days of Snow": Five words I won't regret

Spoilers for the latest "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I open my moon roof...

When my wife and I started dating, we lived in a city with a disproportionate number of VW Beetles, and because we're both basically 12-year-olds at heart, we began to play the magical game that is Punch Buggy. And as dating turned into co-habitation, then engagement, then marriage, we kept right on playing. But every now and then, one of us would ask the other, "What happens when we stop playing? Does that mean all the romance is gone? Does it mean we're just bored with each other?"

Eventually, we wound up moving out to suburbia, where people drive SUVs instead of cute little German imports, and so the choice was kind of made for us. Now, on those rare occasions when we drive past a punch buggy, we look at each other, confused, and sometimes one of us will rap the other in the leg, and sometimes not. And I tell myself that the romance isn't gone -- I just bruise more easily these days.

Now, a running game of Punch Buggy isn't quite on the level of Marshall and Lily's airport ritual involving a chauffeur's cap and local microbrews, but what real-life couple can hope to stack up to that amount of schmoopy? The point is, I get where that story was coming from, because I've lived it on my own immature level, and the conflict felt real to me.

Unfortunately, it was the only part of "Three Days of Snow" that did. Barney and Ted with the bar may be the single dumbest "HIMYM" plot I've ever seen -- and that includes the infamous "We're Not From Here." At the very least, if the writers felt compelled to do a "Cocktail" homage/spoof, they could have at least remembered that Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown did their famous drink-juggling act to the tune of"Hippy Hippy Shake,", not "Kokomo" (that was part of the drippy love story with Elisabeth Shue). If you're gonna reference a cheesey '80s movie, get the details right, or don't do it. Next thing you know, they'll be doing a joke about Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in "Over the Top."

And glad as I was to see Ranjit for the first time this season, the moment where he ditched his passenger at the airport to help Lily complete the ritual rang almost as false as the Ted/Barney plot. This is what I'm talking about when I complain that a "HIMYM" episode feels too sitcommy: behavior that has no basis in reality, and that makes absolutely no sense except in service to a joke that isn't very funny in the first place. There was a lot of that in this episode, enough that even the sweet climax with the marching band wasn't enough to compensate.

Ah, well. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Benefits": Steinfeld did it again!

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I steal Feely the Share Bear...

Given that "Seinfeld" went off the air a decade ago, and that many of today's young comedy writers grew up watching that show, you would think that a little "Seinfeld" flavor would leak into today's comedy scripts. But I guess everyone realizes that the lifts would be too recognizable, or that they can't pull off the same material the way that Seinfeld and David did. Or maybe it's just that there aren't that many sitcoms left to steal from Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer.

"HIMYM" previously did one "Seinfeld"-flavored episode, last year's "We're Not From Here," which is probably the "HIMYM" low point to date. So when I began to realize that "Benefits" was borrowing from not one, but two different "Seinfeld"s -- "The Deal," where Jerry and Elaine try to have sex again with no strings attached, and, of course, "The Contest," which made primetime safe for masturbation jokes (or vice versa) -- I braced myself for another stinker.

But this time, it worked for the most part. I never forgot that "Seinfeld" had done similar stories before, but this time, they felt more "HIMYM"-appropriate.

Part of that is that, unlike the deliberately-soulless "Seinfeld," "HIMYM" is a show that embraces the idea of hugs, and characters talking about their emotions, and all that other heartwarming junk the kids are so into today. And with the added wrinkle that Barney is secretly in love with Robin, the "Benefits" A-story became its own thing, which was largely a showcase for the awf-someness of Neil Patrick Harris as Barney tried to mask his jealousy. At this point, NPH's genius goes without saying, but it takes some real talent to be able to make a line like "Awesome, we're still talking about this?" both really funny and really poignant.

Beyond Barney's pathos, there were a bunch of other uniquely "HIMYM"-y wrinkles to the story, like Barney's hilarious side trip to comparison shop for a TV to smash, or the rapid-fire montage of TEd, Robin and Barney going through the cycle all over again.

As for Marshall's story, "HIMYM" has its own long history of coming up with euphemisms for taboo subjects -- "Eating a sandwich," most notably -- and even if Bays and Thomas lifted that concept from "Seinfeld,"(*) it's become such a part of the show that it worked.

(*) UPDATE: It appears that I really, really misread this storyline. See the comments for more. Sigh...

And really, beyond the subject matter and the euphemisms, it was telling a different story than "The Contest." And I give them points to using all those fame whore guest stars as minimally as possible, and in a story about masturbation. Seems about right for those folks.

Some other thoughts on "Benefits":

• Where was Ted's inner corrector at when Robin -- who earlier in the episode had mocked him for dropping a 20-year-old "Revenge of the Nerds" reference -- compared herself to The Fonz? I suppose he was in a good mood at the time, post-coitus.

• Has a character on the show ever broken the fourth wall the way that Marshall did when he raised his eyebrow at the camera after finding out about the abandoned 8th floor?

• Scenes in Lily's kindergarten class are really hit-and-miss, in part because the kid actors come across like kid actors. I don't know that the gag about LIly telling one student about his parents' divorce would have worked even with a young Haley Joel Osment, but in this case, it felt cheap.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Little Minnesota": Who's afraid of the dark?

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I bang my fist against the table in memory of the Giants' 1997 playoff loss to the Vikings...

In the spirit of the holiday season, I'm tempted to just point out that Marshall karaoke'd "Let's Go to the Mall" and call it a day. Any episode with such an unexpected, hilarious, and completely plot-appropriate callback to the greatest "HIMYM" moment of all time -- not to mention a running gag (Canadians' alleged fear of the dark) that started off deliberately juvenile and then paid off brilliantly (turns out they are afraid of the dark) -- and assorted other Canadian references must be an all-timer, right?

Well, no. If the episode had been entirely about Marshall taking Robin into the bowels of Little Minnesota, it would be. Even if it had predominantly been about that with a little sprinkling of Barney's attempted seduction of Ted's sister -- renting a swivel chair was a distinctly Barney touch, I thought, and the dirty Christmas and Chanukah carols have forever ruined those songs for me(*) -- it would have been great.

(*) In much the same way, this scene from "The Naked Gun" has ruined the National Anthem for me, to the point where me and my friend Mike are incapable of attending a sporting event without slipping in Frank Drebin lyrics like "bunch of bombs in the air!" under our breath. Every now and then, somebody will notice and glare at us, but we can't help ourselves.

But I really, really didn't like most of the interaction between Ted and his sister, and the way that story had such a pat ending, and I felt like Lily's inability to keep a holiday secret was too broad by at least half.

But the Minnesota/Canada stuff was marvelous, and, dammit, Marshall sang "Let's Go To The Mall" and got the entire Hoser Hut to sing it along with him! What the hell: totally awesome!

What did everybody else think, eh? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "The Fight": That's my mama!

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I call timesies...

Ain't nothin' deep going on in "The Fight," but that's okay, because I laughed harder at the revelation of what Marshall's fights with his brothers really looked like than I have at the rest of this season combined. This was a fundamentally silly outing, and a well-executed one. Among the highlights:

• Barney's ability to fake conversation while citing the titles of '70s/'80s black sitcoms, and somehow always choosing the appropriate one ("What's Happening Now?");

• The guys imagining what fight night at the Ericson household must have been like, complete with cocoa breaks;

• Robin's pathological attraction to guys who get in fights -- complete with the filthy "I'm surprised to see you had it in me" -- well-played by Cobie Smulders and one of the funnier iterations of the Robin-as-Canadian joke;

• The run of Marshall-as-a-girl jokes, especially Marshall demanding a spoiler alert after the "Sex and the City" put-down;

• Mahatma Panda and Martin Luther Koala;

• The return, however brief, of Barney's lesbian get-up during the "Forest Gump" insertion of Doug into old scenes;

• Barney's girlish scream-and-run when Doug threatened to beat them both up;

• Ted having played the hammer dulcimer in college;

• Marshall with the light saber;

• Did I mention the heavy metal-scored glimpse of the real Ericson fight club?

Not deep, but damned funny. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "The Naked Man": Look! Down on the couch!

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I floss...

There's a running theme of "HIMYM vs. Sitcom" in these reviews, which occasionally prompts people to ask, "But isn't HIMYM a sitcom? How can calling a plot sitcom-y be an insult?" Two answers to that. First, when I say "sitcom-y," I'm referring to bad, hackneyed sitcoms ("According to Jim" instead of "Cheers"). Second, though "HIMYM" has the form and style of a traditional sitcom, it's always at its best when it's telling stories in its own unique way, whether that's playing with the narrative structure (interlocking flashbacks, skewed perception) or just the kinds of topics that the characters get into.

"The Naked Man" was funny, but it was also very "HIMYM." A commenter on another post called it the show's best episode since "Slap Bet," and while I wouldn't go nearly that far, it still felt like the purest concentrated dose of "HIMYM" that we've gotten in quite some time.

The very concept of The Naked Man -- that simply stripping down in the middle of a date leads to sex two out of three times -- was wonderful, as was the gang's fascination with it. As we've established in the past, Barney's often more interested in proving or disproving new social theories than he is in being successful (see also his joy at getting dumped according to the Lemon Law), so his obsession with getting Ted to try out The Naked Man with him rang very true, and very funny. I also got a kick out of Barney and Ted getting caught up in finding the perfect pose with which to introduce The Naked Man to their dates. (Barney should've stuck with the Burt Reynolds -- link probably NSFW.)

While Marshall "calling slut" on Robin seemed a little harsh for such a sexually active (albeit monogamous and schmoopy) character, it did lead to the introduction of dozens of great new excuses -- Paratrooping (or, as Robin called it, Banging For Roof), Condom's About To Expire, Wingman Diving On The Friend Grenade and, of course, Nothing Good On Television -- plus Barney's long and passionate monologue about the 7' woman in the denim skirt.

Mitch's own level of self-awareness was a nice touch. I don't think the joke would have worked nearly as well if he didn't realize what a big loser he is. (Five fantasy football teams? Wow. I only have two and even that's at least one too many.) And Barney and Ted's awe of the guy led to one of my favorite Ted moments of all-time: his superhero-style narration as The Naked Man walked out into a dark and scary night.

Good stuff all around.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Woooo!": The tears of a slutty clown

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I get on this conference call...

For a show that started out exploring the advantages and disadvantages of couplehood (as represented by Lily and Marshall) vs. singlehood (as represented by Barney and Robin) through the eyes of a guy who wanted to leave the latter group to join the former, "HIMYM" has taken a decided pro-couplehood turn the last few episodes. Last week, we saw hardcore anti-childists Robin and Barney both overwhelmed by the power of "Sock!" and last night we had Robin explaining to Lily that the Woo Girls only Woo'ed to conceal their profound loneliness and envy of people like Lily.

Now, I'm firmly entrenched in the world of marriage, kids, suburbia, etc., and yet I miss the way the show tended to show both sides of the equation, like in that first season episode where Marshall really wanted to dance at the club instead of hang around with other couples on Game Night. It's one thing to suggest that some of the Woo Girls would rather be home for Game Night, but don't some people just like to party?

I also thought the Woo joke -- and the Dr. Seuss-style dialogue between Robin and Lily that accompanied it -- got repetitive after a little while before being re-energized at the very end by the Woo subtitles (particularly when Ted joined in on the action). Usually, "HIMYM" gives at least three spins on a joke, and here we only got two, with the second coming very late in the episode.

But the stuff with Barney and Sven: The Swedish Architecture Collective? Legen... well, you know the rest.

I know Barney wants to be Ted's best friend and all, but who wouldn't be lured in by the prospect of working inside the brain of a fire-breathing T-Rex, particularly one with a strip club in the N on top? Europeans and their weird affectations have been an easy punchline in America for years (see also Dieter on "SNL," or the nihilists from "The Big Lebowski"), but they're also a good punchline, and seeing Barney briefly think he'd found his kindred Swedish spirits was almost as terrific as the unexpected "Mad Men" shout-out during one of Barney and Marshall's rooftop "conference calls."

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Not a Father's Day": Socks to be him

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I shoot some cans on the roof...

It's weird: we complain all the time about how we'd like to see more of Marshall and Lily (especially as compared to Ted), and yet the episodes that focus on one or both of them are rarely the most memorable. "Not a Father's Day" was a solid episode with some good laughs, but not much more than that. Even though it was stronger from start to finish than last week's "Happily Ever After," the five minutes or so of "Happily Ever After" that worked (Robin's flashback through the pumped-up cab ride) were significantly better than anything here. In fact, most of my favorite Marshall moments tend to be in other people's episodes, rather than his own.

Drunk Lily as baby substitute was a cute idea, and well-played by Alyson Hannigan, and the dueling flashbacks with Lily and Marshall's new neighbor -- Marshall sees only the cute stuff, Lily sees only the sleep-deprived horror show -- was one of the show's better uses of perspective in a while. And the hypnotic sway of the little sock was a good running joke.

And for the "HIMYM" continuity nerds among us (you know who you are), this episode firmly placed Lily and Marshall into the Dowisetrepla apartment, and explained how Robin wound up moving in with Ted (as we were told about in last season's "The Goat"). So it had that going for it.

But for some reason, the only part that I imagine is going to stay with me is Barney's cheerleader/sorority girl/Spice Girl theorem about how women look hotter in packs. Of course, just as clamoring for more Lily and Marshall doesn't always work out as well as we would hope, we probably shouldn't push for more Barney than we already get. NPH is superb, but that way lies Fonzification, or its sad latter-day equivalent, Urkelization.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Happily Ever After": Ted has fear! A thousand times no!

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I translate my life into hockey terminology...

Huh. "Happily Ever After" started off as a flat episode (the gang being annoyed at Ted's non-reaction to being dumped by Stella), then took a turn so stupid and bad sitcommy (hiding under a table?!?!?) that even all the dialogue about how stupid it was couldn't save it -- and then the flashbacks started and it took a marked turn for the better.

Lily and Barney's flashbacks were one-joke, but each joke was a good one, and the scenes ended before they got old. (Also, Alyson Hannigan still looks convincing as a ninth grader.) And Robin's flashback to her gender-bending Canadian upbringing was both funny and sad. (Though the soap opera music joke -- Robin's dad was played by daytime drama vet Eric Braeden -- fell a little flat.)

But where "Happily Ever After" really started to click was in the cab ride. Marshall's burning need to see Ted lose his temper finally let Jason Segel unleash his inner whackjob in a way that the show almost never does, even in episodes where Marshall is supposed to be wigging out, and I can't remember the last time I liked Josh Radnor as much as I did as Ted exploded about Stella moving to New York for Tony. (See? It wasn't necessarily Ted's stupid anti-Jersey bigotry I objected to; it's that they didn't do anything funny with it last time.)

This cleans the slate on Stella once and for all, and I'm hopeful the show moves away from Relationship Ted for a while.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

HIMYM, "Shelter Island": A Mother one bites the dust

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I work out a problem on my whiteboard...

Okay, now what?

We can strike Stella from the list of potential Mothers, along with Robin. And that's fine, I suppose. I really like Sarah Chalke, and thought she and Josh Radnor were terrific together way back when in "Ten Sessions," but ever since then, Stella's been a frustrating character. I have to assume that Thomas and Bays knew all along that she wouldn't be the Mother, but that she and Ted would be together for a while -- only they didn't know what to do with her between the get-together and the break-up. I know Sarah Chalke wasn't very available last year, but "Scrubs" wrapped production in August, and I think if we could have seen an episode or two where Stella was just Ted's girlfriend hanging out with the others in the middle of a non-relationship storyline, it would have been easier to buy into the idea of her as the woman of Future Ted's past. At the very least, it would have made me miss her more after she left.

But Ted and Stella spent most of their episodes together having various fights designed to warn us that they weren't right together, and so the point was... what? Just another red herring? Something to fill time for parts of two seasons? Or will Stella somehow play a role in the meeting of the actual Mother?

All of which brings me back to a fundamental question about "How I Met Your Mother" which is this: at this point, early in the fourth season, how much do any of us really care about who the Mother is and how Ted met her?

What we have here is a very funny show, one that can be really clever and creative and even romantic, one that features one sublime comic character (Barney), three very good ones (Marshall, Robin and Lily) and one who can be funny or extremely annoying depending on the week (Ted) -- and who happens to be our main character.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we all think of season two as the strongest to date. It was the only one where Ted was in a relationship -- with a woman we know he wouldn't marry -- for virtually all of it, and which therefore allowed the writers to focus on other, more interesting, much funnier things than the guessing game about the Mother's true identity.

And with Stella now mostly out of the way (I've heard vague things about Sarah Chalke being in at least one more episode, possibly to sort out the aftermath of Stella running out on the wedding), I'd like to see the search put off for a very long time. In fact, there's a part of me that wishes that the very final scene of the series is Ted bumping into a woman with a yellow umbrella, followed by Saget saying, "Oh, yeah kids, and that's how I met your mother," followed by the producer credit.

I don't want this to sound like a screed. Still love the show, and in fact liked a lot of things about this episode (most of which I'll get to in the bullet points). But they've been doing this a while now and it should be pretty clear that the hunt for the mom is sill getting so much prominence only because it's in the title. I didn't feel bad when Stella ran off with her baby daddy, nor did I feel relieved, or any other strong emotion. My only thought was, "Okay, so how many more times do we have to go through this before the real mom shows up?"

Now, for some specific thoughts on "Shelter Island":

• The episode itself didn't try to hide how it was going to end. And in case all of Future Ted's narrative hints weren't enough, we got that funny alternate future of some blonde children and Stella (whose dark roots were showing way too much given the joke) urging Future Ted to shut up already.

• I'm not sure what the point of putting Jason Jones into a karate gi was other than as a sight gag, but Jason Jones in a gi was, in fact, funny.

• My wife took Robin's speech to Ted as a sign that the show would return to Robin pursuing Ted, but I don't think so. For one thing, there's still the large matter of Barney's crush on Robin to deal with. For another, the speech didn't play to me as "Don't get married because I'm still in love with you." I think Robin and Ted still are in love with each other on some level. They didn't break up because of that; they broke up because they realized they wanted different things, and that's not going to change. Robin was just saying that, given her feelings for him, it stunk for her to have to be there -- and, given how well she knew Ted, she suspected this wasn't the right match for him.

• I like that both Barney and Lily were right about Barney's plan: he knew that getting Robin drunk at the wedding would get her in bed with him, and Lily knew that Barney would screw it up by not being able to resist temptation. I did like the added wrinkle that the naked woman tied to Barney's bed wasn't Stella's sister -- and that sis didn't object when she arrived.

• The song playing whenever we see characters driving to or from Shelter Island is "Monday" by Mikey and the Gypsys, and I have not been able to get the damn thing out of my head for days now.

• It's too bad Sarah Chalke wasn't available for last week's Super-Canadian moment from Robin. Judging by the way Stella said she didn't feel comfortable "aboot" Robin coming to the wedding, I think Stella and Robin could've had quite the Canuck throwdown.

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