How I Met Your Mother, "Home Wreckers": The money pit

A quick review of tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I picture myself in something Spanish...

Because I was on quasi-vacation, I didn't write about last week's episode, which largely sacrificed emotional truth for the sake of elaborately setting up the (admittedly pretty funny) "King Kong" joke at the end of the episode. "Home Wreckers" was the opposite of that, in that it told a good Ted Mosby story but fell flat in most of its attempts to build laughs around his pain.

I liked the gang's enthusiasm for Marshall's invention of the Drunk Or Kid? game far more than the game itself, and any episode that involves a character falling through a ceiling without Future Ted saying he exaggerated for argument's sake is trying too hard. (Conversely, Future Ted saying "There was no guitar" in response to his stepdad's painting was one of the few strong jokes.)

But if "Home Wreckers" wasn't that successful as comedy, I did like its focus on Ted realizing his personal life has essentially been in neutral since the pilot. I figured we were heading towards the revelation that the awful house would one day be the setting for the longest story in the history of ever, but I still smiled at the time-lapse montage of the living room's transformation.

At the same time, finding out how Ted got the house that he and the Mother will live in takes us no closer to him meeting her than our glimpse of her foot in "Girls vs. Suits" did. I don't know that the show needs to get back to the quest full-time, but it does feel like something has been missing this season. And since the Robin/Barney storyline didn't turn into the big romance it seemed like it might be at the end of last season, perhaps some concentrated, more focused Mother time is necessary, and soon.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Say Cheese": Stroll down Skank Lane

A review of last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I compose a song for the evening...

After a long string of episodes that were primarily about Barney, "Say Cheese" turned the focus on the two most problematic members of the ensemble in Ted and Lily. Ted's the series lead, but his romantic impulsiveness, his occasional d-bag tendencies and the unending tease that is his search for the Mother sometimes makes "HIMYM" feel like a show that works in spite of its premise, rather than because of it. And while Lily makes a good comic/romantic partner for Marshall, stories that are primarily about her often make her come across as shrill, controlling and unlikable.

But by putting both characters in the middle of a vintage "HIMYM" trip through time, space and the series' own continuity, and by having each character confront the others' most annoying traits head-on, "Say Cheese" turned out to be one of the strongest episodes of what's been an uneven fifth season.

Yes, Ted's tendency to fall in love with every woman he meets drives everybody nuts, but he got called out on it, just as Lilly had to deal with everyone else's irritation at her control freak ways. The show has to do this now and again to keep both characters in line, and it was done here in the context of an episode that hung a lot of jokes on each character's flaws, whether it was Marshall's inability to take a good picture(*) or Ted's Random Skanks constantly ruining group get-togethers.

(*) I have to say, though, that the Marshall-with-his-eyes-closed running gag was funnier before the episode started calling attention to it.

While most of the short-lived exes were new, it was nice to see Laura Prepon again as the horrid Karen (and the use of whatever French hip-hop song that was really livened up Marshall's worst plane flight ever), and I had completely forgotten that Anne Dudek guest-starred in the series' fourth episode ever (even though that was one of the episodes I covered in my blog's eighth post ever). Dudek's not famous enough for that to qualify as a "Before They Were Famous" appearance; could we go with "Before They Were Cutthroat Bitch on 'House'"?

Also, I got to the episode late last night and therefore didn't have the energy to start Zapruder'ing the "One Year Later" scene to look for clues about the state of various relationships (specifically, Barn-Man and Robin) the way I have with previous flash-forwards, but I'm sure some of you did. Anything useful?

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Of Course": Butt, um

A review of last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I get on a stool so I can fall off it...

"Of Course" was frustrating me for a good chunk of its running time, then saved itself in the final minutes with a reminder that "HIMYM" can lean on its romantic side even when the comedy isn't quite working.

Jennifer Lopez was fine (far more lifelike and definitely more adept with comedy than Carrie Underwood) and worked well as a woman Barney would go to great lengths to bed.(*) But the comedy surrounding Barney's quest, and around Ted and Marshall recognizing how badly they'd treated Robin, was incredibly broad and/or weird. Even though the show's established that the gang for some reason cheers on Barney's slutty ways, I don't buy the guys actually singing a song about it, and going on and on with it in front of Robin.

(*) I'm not sure if everybody's commercial pattern was the same as in NY/NJ, but immediate after Barney threw up into the Stormtrooper helmet, we got an ad for J-Lo's awful-looking new movie, which began with her vomiting as well. They're puke kindred spirits!

And speaking of songs, Ted's ode to the Super-Date was just bizarre. "Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit" worked in the context of the show because Barney's a larger-than-life character, and also because the number took place entirely in Barney's head. But Ted's supposed to be more down to earth, and he was doing it in the middle of the bar, even though the rapidly shifting settings suggested we were supposed to view it as another kind of fantasy. I was amused briefly, but tonally, it didn't work.(**)

(**) And I know you can wave off either song as being a product of Future Ted the unreliable narrator, but I think there comes a point where that becomes a crutch for the writers and/or the fans to excuse anything that shouldn't fit - particularly when we don't hear Saget talking about how this isn't really what happened, but how he'd like to remember it.

There were still some funny moments here and there - the casual return of Robin's "But, um" catchphrase, Anita putting poor Mike the cameraman on her hook (only an episode after Robin allegedly let him off hers), Barney discussing the tininess and softness of his fiber - but "Of Course" really didn't start to work until we got the scenes from previous episodes intercut with new scenes of Robin being upset about Barney.

Robin's seeming ease with seeing her ex-boyfriend turn into the biggest himbo in Manhattan has stuck out like a sore thumb since the break-up episode, and it needed to be dealt with. Beyond that, the closing scenes of "Of Course" gave Barney back some necessary depth and humanity for the first time since he and Robin split. I'd like to think this is all greasing the wheels for a Barney/Robin reunion - that the break-up, and then all the talk by the producers that they missed telling stories about Barney seducing random women, were actually a fake-out before a Barn-man & Robin 2.0 turns out to be a much more successful and fun relationship - but even if it doesn't, Barney as two-dimensional character gets old after a while, even when played by NPH.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Hooked": The midwest pharma's daughter

A review of tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I get an in at the roller rink...

On the last day of winter press tour, the TCA got to watch the "HIMYM" cast(*) perform the table read of the script for "Hooked." On the plus side: I laughed a bunch at the table read. On the minus side: I didn't laugh very much when I got to see the final versions of the same jokes.

(*) The regular cast plus Bob Saget, who doesn't usually attend, and guest star Catherine Reitman (Henrietta), but not plus Carrie Underwood; based on the number of magazine covers I see her on these days, I'm guessing she had too much else on her plate. But given how Future Ted spends so much of the episode being judgmental of Present Ted, it was nice to have Saget there to deliver the insults.

Now, I generally avoid reading comedy pilot scripts to avoid having the punchlines ruined (and the scripts themselves are never as funny as hearing the actors deliver the material), so I can't say for sure how much I would have liked "Hooked" had I come to it with virgin ears. But I think in this case my issues were less with my familiarity with the material than the final execution of it.

Having been on a woman's hook or three in my pre-marital life, I could very much relate to the episode's premise, both at the table read and in the final episode. But most of the material in the final version was incredibly broad, whether Scooter's pathetic teacup pig eyes or the frantic desperation of every scene at Henrietta's apartment.

Not helping matters was the casting of Carrie Underwood as the woman with Ted on her hook. Stunt-casting is one of those deal-with-the-devil situations. Britney Spears' appearance in "Ten Sessions" helped give the show one of its biggest audiences to that point, and the writers were able to work around her and focus the episode largely on Ted meeting Stella. But her next appearance in "Everything Must Go" was one of that season's weakest episodes, and too much reliance on Spears was a big reason why.

And Spears at least had experience doing a kind of sketch comedy, where for Underwood it's a triumph just to come across as a flesh-and-blood human being while the cameras roll. Her screen/stage presence has improved massively since her lox-like days on "Idol," but comedy is still a foreign language to her. So all she could do was the bare minimum that the role required, which was to look pretty and be immune to the charms of Ted Evelyn Mosby. With a less limited actress/comedienne, the writers could have had more fun with what's life from the perspective of the hooker (as Robin put it), rather than the hookee.

But I don't want to be too hard on "Hooked." Again, I laughed a bunch at the table read (though there's always the phenomenon of things seeming much funnier in person than they tend to on TV), and it's entirely possible that most (but not all) of my problems stem from knowing the jokes ahead of time. But Barney's history of hot professions was funny both times.

So I'll clam up and ask... what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

How I Met Your Mother, "Rabbit or Duck": Pants!

A quick review of last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as you call me Allie Westside...

What a bizarre but ultimately funny episode of "HIMYM." "Rabbit or Duck" pushed into some incredibly broad territory, not just for the cartoonish-by-design Barney, but for the other characters. Both the rabbit/duck escalating argument and then Marshall and Lily's last-minute campaign to find a wife for Ted seemed wildly off-tone - Barney's escalating cell phone nightmare was surreal, too, but in a typically Stinson way - yet every time it seemed like the show was skipping off the atmosphere, we'd get a nice, small, "HIMYM"-y moment like Ted asking for Marshall's permission to lawyer Robin, or Ted and Robin sitting together-but-alone in the apartment on Valentine's Day(*), or Don's apology to Robin at the station.

(*) Said scene reminding me, once again, how good Josh Radnor and Cobie Smulders are together, and to lament the "Aunt Robin" thing, even as I buy the ultimate reason for why they broke up.

And NPH had himself a lot of fun dealing with the cursed phone, plus we got the return of both Ranjit and The Naked Man (which Don apparently read about on Barney's blog), so I would say that ultimately, my laughter outweighed my "what the hell is going on?" reactions.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "The Perfect Week": We want a Swisher, not a belly itcher!

A review of "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I take a swat at the Hamburglar...

"The Perfect Week" featured plenty of elements that should have made me an absolute sucker for it. It was loaded with baseball jokes, from Ted playing pitching coach to Barney (while accompanied by the score from the original "Major League"(*), to Jim Nantz kicking his chair over at the idea that Marshall would invoke the jinx again, to the cameo by Nick Swisher, who has already vaulted his way into becoming my second-favorite Yankee(**). It had sops to "HIMYM" continuity, like the first mention of Victoria I can recall since the first season and Marshall's ongoing Sasquatch fixation, and meta jokes like Future Ted acknowledging he's a bad dad for telling his kids stories like this one. And much of the episode leaned on the show's most reliable source of humor: Barney's success with the ladies.

(*) It gets overlooked in some circles because it came out the year after "Bull Durham" and ripped off a bunch of elements from that movie (washed-up but wily catcher, pitcher with million dollar arm and no control, voodoo-practicing player, etc.), but it's still one of my favorite Underdog Sports Movies. You can hear a sample of the score here, and keep watching at least until you get to the end of the American Express commercial, which is the moment when I knew the guy playing Willy Mays Hays was gonna be a big star. Shame he forgot how to be funny (and when to pay his taxes).

(**) What can I say? The guy's just an endearing goofball who can hit a little. Of course, the gap between him and first-favorite Yankee Mariano Rivera is insurmountable, but watching Swisher (with more than a little help from CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett) completely reinvent the clubhouse dynamics of what had been a stultifying roster for a long, long time was a joy to behold. Plus, his haircuts are all stupid, including the one he wore tonight.

Yet the baseball jokes got repetitive after a while (though some later ones like Nantz's tantrum were funny anyway), and a lot of the gags sprinkled around it didn't work. Robin's Dale fixation in particular was one of the most annoying things Cobie Smulders has ever been asked to play (and it also feels like the show's done a lot of "Robin gets indignant that people don't realize how hot she is" gags of late), and the initial scene where Ted made his unfortunately-named student cry was Ross Gellar bad, even if some of the follow-up jokes made by the gang made my inner 9-year-old chuckle. And like "The Playbook" from earlier in the season, the Barney jokes began to feel like a crutch after a while.

Lot of strong elements, but not one of the season's stronger episodes.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Jenkins": But, um, bum

The last day of press tour began with a visit to the set of "How I Met Your Mother" where we got to watch the cast do a table read of an upcoming script ("Hooked, the episode that'll feature Carrie Underwood) and it's close to ending with me packing for Jersey - which means I don't have time or the brain capacity to formulate thoughts on Amanda Peet's drunken sluttiness, whether Robin and Ted fairly assessed Lily and Marshall's relationship, and whether "But, um" is a conversational tic of Cobie Smulders' that the writers worked into an episode, or just something they thought would be funny to saddle Robin with.

So I leave it to you guys. What did you think? Click here to read the full post

'How I Met Your Mother' turns 100 - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I look at the "How I Met Your Mother" 100th episode musical extravaganza:

The 100th episode of "How I Met Your Mother" showcases many of the things that's made it one of the most entertaining sitcoms of recent years. But it also showcases why it can be really frustrating, too.

You can read the full "How I Met Your Mother" review here.

Near the end, I strongly hint at a development that gets mentioned within the episode's first five minutes, but there's a warning before that if you want to go in pristine. (I would just also advise you to avoid the comments here.)

Since I don't have a lot to say about "Girls vs. Suits" beyond what's expressed in the column (and since I'm too occupied at press tour to double dip), I'm going to bump this post up tonight around 8:30 Eastern (assuming I'm near a computer then), so you can comment on it here.

UPDATE: Bumped. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

How I Met Your Mother, "Last Cigarette Ever": Smoke up, Johnny!

I'm on a light schedule this week, but I'll have a few thoughts on tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I'm with Germans...

If not as emotionally rich or romantic as last week's "The Window," "Last Cigarette Ever" was a fine example of a different type of "HIMYM": one that puts the whole gang together in the same plot, that takes advantage of Future Ted's role as unreliable narrator, that deal with life as a (relatively) young, (relatively) unencumbered person in the city. And it's one that drops a lot of hints about future stories, both Mother and non-Mother-related.

The idea that the gang had been smoking all these years without us seeing it nicely played into the idea that so much of what we see in the series is either shaped by Future Ted's perception of events, or of how he's framing the story for the sake of his kids. (And speaking of the kids, does anyone remember the "WHAT?!?!?!" clip from an earlier season, or do you reckon that's one of those things that Bays and Thomas have been sitting on all these years, like the pieces of footage they allegedly shot of the kids reacting to the news of the Mother's identity?)

Bob Odenkirk's appearance wasn't as memorable as in season three's "The Chain of Screaming" (the episode which gave us Lily's crotch grab, pictured on the left). But the episode had plenty of nice, distinctly "HIMYM" touches, like Marshall traveling through time to beat up 13-Year-Old Marshall (not to be confused with 15-Year-Old Marshall), Lily's voice turning into Harvey Fierstein's under the influence of too much smoking, and Don's love of his jockey shorts becoming infectious for the staff.

And speaking of Don, the episode told us that he and Robin will be dating within three months (around February sweeps?), and that Lily and Marshall will have a son at a date to be determined (which gives the writers some wiggle room on if/when they want the characters to have a kid during the run of the series), and that Barney will still be alive in 2017. (This is noteworthy only because I believe we still haven't seen a glimpse of Future Barney, so you never know.)

But the continuity hints were only one small part of a funny episode, and a nice note for the series to end 2009 on.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "The Window": Maggie may

A review of last night's "How I Met Your Mother" (one of the best episodes they've done in a while) coming up just as soon as my rat-tail grows down to my waist...

I go back and forth a lot on how important, in hindsight, the search for the Mother is and should be for "HIMYM." Like many of you, I consider season two - the one year that put the search entirely on hold, since Ted spent nearly all of it in a relationship with a woman we knew wouldn't be the mom - the series' strongest from start to finish, and I reached a point during the Stella arc where I would have been happy to never hear Future Ted mention the kid's mom again until the last scene of the series.

But Carter Bays and Craig Thomas have long insisted to me that they have no regrets about the title and premise, and not just because they wouldn't have gotten on the air if they were a more blatant "Friends" imitator. The search for the mom, they argue, not only gives the show access to Future Ted to narrate and let them play around with the storytelling(*), it gives the series a yearning romantic quality that's at least as important as the wacky hijinks and Barney catchphrases. When I think about the series, I remember the slaps and the goat and Robin Sparkles, but I also think about Ted making it rain(**), or the two-minute date, or Barney looking at Robin with new eyes, and those moments are all propelled or inspired by Ted's search for the woman of his dreams.

(*) Of course, you could have Future Ted just boring his kids with non-specific stories of his late 20s and early 30s, but the title does make him seem a little more focused (and less cruel) than that.

(**) In a non-PacMan way.

A terrific episode like "The Window" illustrates how important that romantic quality is to the series.

First, Romantic Ted is massively less of a d-bag than Between Relationships Ted (or Dating Stella Ted). Ted isn't always that likable (even the show will cop to this), and there are times when he actually seems superfluous to his own series, but when he's on a mission to land a woman and has more than sex on his mind, he becomes a much more appealing, much more justifiably central, character. Joe Kelly's script did a very good job of showing Ted finally moving on from Stella and getting back to looking for the Mother, even as it showed him acknowledging that he was never meant to be with Maggie. (Note that Future Ted calls the story at the end "the second greatest love story" he ever heard; I have to assume the first is the one he's been telling his poor kids all these years.)

Second, that feeling of romance then extended to the Marshall and Lily B-story, where Marshall's own regrets about the past's collision with the present were cast aside by the awesome woman in his life. The scene at the basketball court was one of the sweetest, best-played Segel/Hannigan moments of the series, and then topped perfectly by the tag, where the joke about Combover Marshall traveling back in time to send back the chicken turned swoon-y itself with the way Jason Segel played both his present and future self's complete and utter adoration for his wife.

And where some romantic episodes of the series don't have as much room for laughs, "The Window" had a great balance of comedy and pathos. Barney's self-challenge to have sex in bib overalls - and Robin's own self-challenge to humiliate him for it - was a strong comic relief C-plot (and one that eventually tied back into the Maggie story), but the other two stories had plenty of jokes on their own. The use of music and flashbacks nicely illustrated Maggie's uncanny ability to land in a relationship, and Ted's terror of not being the next guy for her, and Robin's attempt to seduce Maggie's disinterested co-worker (played by Jamie Kaler from "My Boys") gave Cobie Smulders some of her more inspired moments of late (non-Canadian division). And, of course, every glimpse or sound byte of 15-year-old Rat-Tail Marshall was gold, particularly him quoting Snow's heinous-yet-catch "Informer"(***) at the end of his letter to his own future self(****).

(***) Does this count as another "HIMYM" Canadian joke? Or is Snow unintentionally funny no matter his nationality?

(****) While I was happy to see the return of a more likable, purposeful Ted in this one, which only enhances the tie between the Josh Radnor present and the Bob Saget future, I think I might just as happily watch a version of the series told from Marshall's POV where we bounce between him as an awkward teenager, him in the present and him with a combover, "Time-Traveler's Wife"-style.

At its best, "HIMYM" makes me laugh, and it puts a broad smile on my face for reasons that have nothing to do with the jokes. "The Window" was "HIMYM" at its best.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap": Slap your hands, everybody, and everybody slap your hands

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

"Slapsgiving 2" was a fun episode, and in some ways a sequel that improved on the original. Where the first "Slapsgiving" had one story that was a lot of fun (Slapsgiving), it also had one that was a big downer (Ted is still angry about the break-up with Robin). "Slapsgiving 2" certainly had its emotional moments with the story about Lily and her dad, but was more successful in draping jokes (the awful board games, Lily's increasingly silly reasons for the You're Dead To Me face) around the pathos.

And watching Barney try to manipulate his way out of being tied to a chair and slapped was a great showcase for Neil Patrick Harris. (As James Poniewozik puts it, it was like watching NPH get to play Ben Linus for an episode.)

Mostly what I want to talk about, though, is the distribution of the four slaps so far, which the show neatly reminded us of in flashback. (Along with reminding us that guys being slapped hard across the face is always funny. Always.) To date, it's broken down like this:

Slap #1: Marshall does it within minutes of Barney foolishly agreeing to the five slaps over all eternity (rather than 10 slaps right now). On the one hand, an episode called "Slap Bet" kind of needs to end with a slap, but given that Marshall had already struck Barney several times in that episode, perhaps he could have saved this one.

Slap #2: Marshall does it to punish Barney for his awful one-man show, which was itself conceived to taunt Marshall's wife. Easily the best, purest use of the slap bet so far, in that it was both unexpected and totally appropriate.

Slap #3: The first Slapsgiving. Making Barney spend several days living in fear of the next slap was a good way to exploit its power, and it did give us The Slapsgiving Song. But before Barney started taunting Marshall at the dinner table, he hadn't done anything particularly slap-worthy in the episode.

Slap #4: As seen last night, a slap that was bequeathed to Robin and Ted, but only because Marshall knew they would pass it back and forth, and then around the table, until the power of the slap brought everyone together. This time, Marshall mainly slapped Barney as a surprise, and not because he had necessarily done anything to merit it.

With only one slap to go - and my hope that the writers save it for a flash-forward to Combover Marshall holding it over Old Man Barney's head until they're in a retirement home together - I do look at that list and wonder if Marshall and/or the writers couldn't have used the slaps more efficiently. I'd have liked to see at least one more slap along the lines of #2, where it was both unexpected and deserved, rather than giving us a second Slapsgiving, even though the episode overall was just fine.

Some other thoughts:

• Yet another "HIMYM as the next Friends" bit: Christina Pickles, who played Ross and Monica's mom, is here cast as Lily's grandma. But if IMDb ages are accurate (always a questionable assumption), then Pickles (74) is age-appropriate to be the mother of Courteney Cox (45), but much less so to be the grandmother of Alyson Hannigan (35). She could have had at 20, who in turn had Alyson at 20, but... Won't someone please think of the underemployed octogenarian actresses?

• For that matter, Chris Elliott (49) is even iffier as Lily's dad, but I can't object too much when he gets to complete his Guy Living in Parent's Basement trilogy, which began with "Get a Life" and continued through "Everybody Loves Raymond."

• Did Lily ever do the "You sonuvabitch!" thing before last week's episode? I'm assuming it's a random homage to Eli Wallach as Tuco in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," and if so, I'd like to think I'd noticed it had they done it earlier.

• Carter Bays did an interview with Ausiello last week where he said that, yep, they split Barney and Robin up because he and Craig Thomas and the others missed writing about single Barney. Now, it's entirely possible he's dissembling - Craig and Carter have made an art of misleading interviewers about long-term story arcs - and that this is all setting us up for an unexpected, much more awesome Barn-Man & Robin 2.0, but if he's being sincere and doesn't think the idea was a good one, then I'm disappointed.

• Getting back to the subject of Jason Segel songs, if you haven't seen his performance of an original tune at a Swell Season concert, you need to.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "The Playbook": Smeet Sme at SmacLaren's

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I focus on my "Star Trek" fanfiction...

"You're a real boy now. You can't go back to these cheap tricks." -Lily

I will say this upfront: "The Playbook" was very funny, as you would expect any episode with this many Barney Stinson scams, flim-flams and bamboozles to be. And it helped that the subplot gave Marshall a chance to be smug for an entire episode, because that's a note Jason Segel plays well.

That being said, at times the episode felt like Carter Bays and Craig Thomas were overcompensating for the return of Barney Stinson: Single Guy as Barney himself was. It was as if they were so frustrated at the challenge of writing Barney as one half of a couple, and/or they wanted to make it clear to the audience why they had broken up Robin and Barney so quickly, that they gave us an episode that was just wall-to-wall jokes about Barney's evil genius at tricking women into having sex with him.

And I have a few problems with that. One, it did feel a little forced, particularly in the payoff with the explanation for The SCUBA Diver. Two, as both Lily and James Poniewozik have pointed out, the show has established that Barney is a real boy with real emotions, who's capable of being in something vaguely resembling a healthy adult relationship, and that's a bell that can't be so easily unrung (or unrung at all).

And three, as I wrote last week, I liked the idea of Robin and Barney as a couple, if not all of the execution of it. I recognize that not everyone shared that opinion, and plenty of people last week said they were relieved Bays and Thomas had brought that storyline to a close. But for me, an episode whose subtext is, "See? This is why we bailed on that couple so quickly!" was as troubling in its own way as all the contrived shenanigans on last night's "House" that allowed the writers to reconfigure the team in the way that they wanted.

Again, it's not that my love of the show is based on whether or not any one couple gets together or stays together. But I thought that pairing had a lot of potential, both comic and emotional, and unless the break-up (and the introduction of future Robin boyfriend Don at the end) is only a temporary stumbling block towards Barney/Robin 2.0, then that potential feels squandered.

Now, maybe the match worked better on paper than it did in practice, and maybe it hamstrung Bays, Thomas and the other writers from making the best show that they could, and perhaps they were right to bail on a fundamentally flawed storyline as quickly as they could. But, like Robin, the abrupt end of that plot feels a little too close for me to have enjoyed Barney's gamesmanship as much as I might have had we gotten an episode like this much earlier (or much later) in the series.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "The Rough Patch": Fat suits me

Quick thoughts on tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I figure out why any non-TV critic would bother buying a DVD/VCR combo...

How I feel about "The Rough Patch" long-term is going to depend on whether Barney and Robin's break-up takes or not.

It's not that I'm a 'shipper whose enjoyment of the show is going to rest on whether or not a specific couple stays together. It's that I feel like there's a lot of comic mileage to be traveled in a Stinson/Scherbatzky relationship, and the show hasn't covered very much of it yet - and at times has had to bend either Robin or Barney into unrecognizable characters in order to make the stories work. Now, I'm not in the writers room, and maybe writing these two as a couple is a lot harder than I'd think, but if it's just a handful of episodes and out, that seems like a waste.

But in the short-term, "The Rough Patch" was a pretty funny episode of the show. It took advantage of the occasional device of showing us the present from the skewed perspective of Future Ted (hence Barney in a fat suit and Robin looking like a hag). It had Marshall and Lily trying to steal from the porn collection. It had some good callbacks to past episodes (not just Alan Thicke having been in "Sandcastles in the Sand," but the use of "Murder Train" over the quick glimpse of Barney and Robin strangling each other). It had that great overlapping argument scene in the surveillance station wagon between Ted, Marshall, Lily, Thicke, the robot and Badger from "Breaking Bad" as the pizza delivery guy. And it gave us the promise of one day showing us a glimpse of the Sparkles/Thicke failed Canadian variety show.

Not a great episode, and, again, one that will be annoying if it brings us a permanent end to this duo, but I laughed a bunch. And some nights, that's all that matters.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Bagpipes": A lover, not a fighter

Quick spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I get you to call me A-Sep...

It's interesting: when Ted and Robin were together in season two, the show occasionally did stories about the state of their relationship (particularly towards the end as they were doomed). More often(*) it felt like just a fact of life, while the stories usually focused on other characters, or on Ted and/or Robin stories that weren't specifically about them dating.

(*) With the usual caveat that it's been a while since I've watched most of those episodes, and that memory can re-write history to suit your whims. And in some cases, it's a gray area; the Robin Sparkles plot from "Slap Bet" was partly about Ted's concern that his girlfriend was keeping a secret from him.

Season five, on the other hand, has been checking early and often in on how Robin and Barney are working as a couple. And for the most part, it's worked. With Ted and Robin, the issue was that they were a couple who wanted different things, which is only funny to a point. With Barney and Robin, it's two people who don't really want or know how to be in a relationship, but who like each other too much to not be in one. So the potential for comedy about it has been much greater, and paid off well in an episode like "Bagpipes," which put them in contrast to ultra-functional Marshall and Lily.

"Bagpipes" had a lot of distinctly "HIMYM" comic touches - Future Ted substituting bagpiping for sex (plus, bagpipes often just sound funny), a throwaway Slap Bet between Ted and Marshall (paid off immediately so that Thomas and Bays don't have to answer even more questions about future slaps), Barney imagining himself as Lily's husband (and then Marshall's epic fail at restating Barney's imagined argument) - and would have worked for just being silly. But I'm also curious to see what basic relationship hurdle the writers place in front of Robin and Barney next.

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How I Met Your Mother, "Duel Citizenship": Take off, eh!

Quick spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I bar the door handles with my hockey stick...

"I'm a Canadian. I was born there. My family's there. It's who I am." -Robin
"Yeah, I know. And it's provided us with a lot of laughs." -Barney

While Robin's Canadian heritage has, indeed, provided us with a lot of laughs, to my amazement I found the biggest laughs of "Duel Citizenship" came in the Ted/Marshall subplot. Between the running gag about Tantrum! cola, the belated reaction to the bad pizza ("It's like a hot ball of lead!") and Ted's complete despair at becoming a third wheel on what was supposed to be a dude's adventure (complete with an audiobook featuring the honey-dipped vocal stylings of Mr. Kenny Rogers), it was stoopid and silly, but very, very funny. And, like most of the better "HIMYM" storylines, it got at the core tension between people in different phases of romantic life. Ted thinks Marshall's being a selfish jerk who's ruined the trip, and vice versa, and they both have a point. (Though, as a married guy, I think Ted has the better point. Springing Lily on Ted at the last minute was a massive Road Trip Foul.)

And I don't mean to slight the Robin/Barney storyline, which had the usual physical mayhem we've come to associate with any full-on Canadian incident for Ms. Scherbatzky, plus a visit to Tim Horton's. And for once, a Canadian subplot turned into an excuse for the writers to crack jokes about America, particularly during the Foxworthy/Varney argument, when a delighted Barney proclaimed, "Not only are you wrong, but you are belligerently sticking to your guns and insulting me in the process. Robin Scherbatzky, you are an American!"

Maybe not the deepest episode they've done, but it was plenty funny, and after the debacle that was Joe Girardi's over-managing in Yanks-Angels game 3, I needed some good laughs, and I got 'em.

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How I Met Your Mother, "The Sexless Innkeeper": It takes four

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I sleep on the gouda again...

"The Sexless Innkeeper" was pretty light on story, and had a gaping hole in what little story it had - wouldn't Robin have experienced Lily and Marshall's over-eager desire to double-couple during the brief period when she and Ted were together and Lily and Marshall had gotten back together? - but it was also gloriously silly, and at times very funny.

Usually, Marshall and Lily stories deliberately have the two of them operating on different emotional frequencies to create some comic conflict, but because this was about putting them in conflict with Robin and Barney, they both got to be over the top in their emotional neediness, and Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan played those notes together well. And turning the story into a parody of romantic comedy cliches, complete with the big emotional gesture conducted standing in the rain, was a nice closing touch.

And, of course, whenever "HIMYM" mentions a fake website, it has to be real, as things turned out to be with ItWasTheBestNightEver.com, which includes a more elaborate version of the song, featuring guitar by Nuno Bettencourt (in a parody of this Extreme video). Alas, it does not include an expanded version of Marshall's various songs about the cat he killed.

As for the titular tale of Ted the nookie-less hotel manager, it didn't take up any more time than was needed, Barney's initial poem was funny, it's nice to see Robin now teaming up with her man to mock her ex, and Neil Patrick Harris did his usual stellar job at playing Barney's visceral reaction to seeing the hot blonde in Ted's room and realizing the path he has chosen in life.

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How I Met Your Mother, "Robin 101": You can still call me Nwanda

Quick spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I mention hockey's lack of popularity in the US...

"And don't take a picture of it. She will punch you... and you will cry... for the third time... that night." -Ted

If you can look past a really dumb and unfunny subplot about Marshall's favorite barrel, "Robin 101" was probably the strongest episode so far of "HIMYM" season 5. It highlighted the various eccentricities that make Robin one of the more successful Pretty But Also Funny female sitcom characters in recent memory. It showcased Barney both at his most immature ("They said I had A-D-something... Can we have class outside?") and thoughtful (as Ted said, he was actually trying to keep Robin). And Ted was a good mix of earnest and smug (particularly in the flashback to Robin's POV on her "surprising erogenous zones").

It was odd to have two sitcoms in less than a week do a "Dead Poets Society" parody, but when most TV shows are being written by producers of a certain age, and therefore have similar pop culture touchstones, (See also "The Karate Kid," which was sort of alluded to right before that, when Ted challenged Barney on all he'd learned.) You just don't usually see those same touchstones on different shows within a few days.

Overall, very funny (particularly the scene I quoted above), and very "HIMYM." What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

How I Met Your Mother, "Double Date": Dopplegangland

Quick spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I do the check dance...

Ted solo in the A-story and everyone else in the subplot isn't the ideal construction for a "HIMYM" episode, and unsurprisingly, the parts of "Double Date" that worked mostly took place in the Stripper Lily plot. Lily's excitement over seeing her hot doppleganger got old after a little while, but Marshall's elaborate fantasy of Lily's death(*) got funnier the longer it lasted. And Barney's obliviousness about Robin's disgust at his strip club-hopping ways was amusing. Plus, I feel pleased that, of all the weeks they could do a Mustache Marshall gag, it would be the one where I have the current blog logo.

(*) My wife pointed out that this was also a "King of Queens" storyline, albeit there the Dead Wife Fantasy wasn't nearly as elaborate, or tender.

As for Ted's replayed first date(**), I actually think it was a good idea - and one that featured the bare minimum of Ted as d-bag - and I always enjoy Lindsay Sloane, who played Jen. But Ted's not an incredibly funny character on his own and needs a strong personality like Barney (or Blah Blah, or some of his other weird girlfriends) to bounce off of, and cute cat fixation aside, Jen was fairly mellow. So it was 20 minutes or so of two nice people figuring out they weren't exactly right for each other. A decent story, but not a comedy goldmine.

(**) And before a million people ask, the song played as Ted imagined an alternate timeline where they got married was "Rewind" by Goldspot.

One thing: now that we've met Stripper Lily, Mustache Marshall and Lesbian Robin (who looked not dissimilar from the raised-as-a-boy Robin we met in "Happily Ever After"), we had better meet the other two dopplegangers that Future Ted promised - and soon.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "Definitions": Whip it good!

Spoilers for the "How I Met Your Mother" season five premiere coming up just as soon as I remember to call you on Tuxedo Night...

The later episodes of "HIMYM" season four had to tread water because the writers wanted to end the year on Robin and Barney getting together, and because of the complications created by Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulder's pregnancies. Lily's back full-time, Robin doesn't have to spend every episode in the booth at MacLaren's, Robin and Barney are a couple of sorts, and so we can all get on to business, funny and otherwise.

I've reached the point where I no longer care about clues to the Mother's identity until we reach the point where we hear Bob Saget say, "And that, kids, is how I met your mother." So the Mother apparently being in that Econ lecture hall doesn't matter to me. On the other hand, I like that the writers (including basis-for-Ted Carter Bays) have embraced the character's inherent douchiness and have turned it into a conduit for jokes. Ted-as-professor is a bit of a retread of Ross-as-professor on "Friends" (also featuring a character with a high smugness quotient), but if it gave us Ted with a bullwhip, and Marshall egging him on to whip stuff with it, I'm on board.

The episode's highlight, though, was the dynamic duo of Barn-Man and Robin, and their attempt to be casual sex buddies een as Lily tried to insist they were anything but. That storyline offered us Barney's attempt to apply the rules for the safe handling of Mogwai to sexual conquests, Robin going all Canadian at the Rangers game, and Barney cowering in fear after sucker-punching Brad. Neil Patrick Harris (who rocked the Emmys, even if he didn't win one) and Cobie Smulders just work together, but in a way that's not going to disrupt the comedy.

Solid start to the season. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post