Tag Archives: How I Met Your Mother

Ladies and Gentleman, the network Fall TV Season has officially begun! What better way to kick things off than with an old favorite looking to rebound after its shakiest season so far. My complaints about How I Met Your Mother were pretty well noted at the end of last year, but I was actually very excited to see where the show would head after its finale and executive producers Carter Bays and Craig Thompson’s promise to return the show to its old form in Season 6 (six!). So how did they do?

Pretty well actually. Sure there was a classic HIMYM fake out, but unlike last season, this fake out seemed to be heading somewhere, not just for the sake of prolonging the Mother Mystery for another year. I think part of this fake out was important because it brought back Ted’s pursuit of the Mother. I was pretty certain the girl at the bar wouldn’t be Mrs. Mosby, but by bringing back Cindy, we got the chance for Ted to go back to searching for the Mother without a pronouncement to make it painfully obvious. It was an organic return to the central premise of the show, which the show had gotten away from last season, and was a promising turn of events.

What really made the episode was that it was pretty damn funny. I’ve always thought Cobie Smulders is the funniest of the amazing cast, and she absolutely killed it in this episode as Robin was plagued by “cartoon squiggly lines” of filth in the aftermath of her breakup with Don. I’m laughing just at the thought of her sitting on the couch, covered in food, telling Ted she was ready to have sex with him. Throw in Barney being Barney towards her, and you have a series of classic HIMYM moments.

Jason Siegal also had a chance to shine during Marshall’s struggles with his father and Lilly’s low neckline, making it all payoff with a really sweet moment with Lilly at the end. They always get the best emotional beats on the show, but after a year in which most of their moments were pretty cheesy, it was nice to see a pretty genuine, nice bit between the two of them.

So all and all is HIMYM back to its old form? It’s definitely too early to tell, but it was a start that had a lot of potential. There were several great moments, and despite the overly overt umbrella references at in the episodes’ closing moments, I liked it a lot. I don’t know if I’d give the episode a high six, but an old fashion five sounds pretty good.

Michael’s Score: 83
TUiW Grade: A-

I’ve had a lot of complaints about How I Met Your Mother this season. It definitely became a more episodic show, one that has relied less on its premise. That’s not to say it’s been bad by any means, but in the show has, at least in my opinion, slipped from the high perch it once occupied. It’s still the smartest comedy on CBS, not that that requires much, but it’s not as solid as it once was.

In the shadow of the Lost finale, it may seem like I’m forcing in a reference here, but the universally loved part of its finale was the emotional resolutions each of the characters got. I couldn’t help but think of that as I watched “Doppelgangers.” From the start, HIMYM has been about these five characters. We’ve grown to know love them, felt like we were a part of their inside jokes, and even a character as sleazy as Barney has endeared him self to us. It’s with this in mind that I watched Season 5 come to a close.

Interestingly, “Doppelgangers” didn’t have a single reference to The Mother. In fact, Ted was the fifth string in the episode. In the A Story (or really the A1 Story), Marshall and Lilly decide their going to have a baby after seeing the final doppelganger, a brunette cab driver Barney. But when Marshall finds out that it’s actually Barney in disguise working on a plan to sleep with a girl from every country it the world, he pauses long enough to realize that perhaps Lilly isn’t ready to have a baby and is going through with it because she thinks she’s seen a sign. But as the episode ends, four months later, Lilly sees a pretzel vender she thinks looks just like Barney, but in fact, they all realize it looks nothing like him. But that’s okay. It just means that Lilly is ready, and next season, she and Marshall are going to try and have s baby.

Meanwhile, Robin is starting to fall seriously in love with Don, just as she gets a call from a station in Chicago that wants her. Despite the protests of her friends, Robin again chooses her career over romance, and decides to go to Chicago. When Robin calls Chicago, however, she has a change of heart while looking at a picture of her and Don. It’s a huge character shift for Robin, who in the first season could hardly be in a couple. But the kick to the stomach comes from Don, who accepts the job in Chicago she had turned down earlier that day. A heartbroken Robin moves back in with Ted, and as he comforts her, the begin to lean in towards each other, ready to kiss, when she remembers that Ted, after being tricked into it by his friends, has dyed his hair blonde.

As I said at the top, I had a lot of complaints about this season of HIMYM, but overall, I think “Doppelgangers” was a solid episode, and one of the more rewarding episodes of the season.  As Ted points out Robin, the gang has grown up a lot in the last five years, sure they’re still having telepathic conversations and tricking each other into dying their hair blonde, but now they’re buying houses, settling into committed relationships, and having kids. Sure, I’ve been frustrated that a show I love doesn’t have the same magic it once did but part of that is that I’ve been expecting it to be a show about the people from five years ago. HIMYM has been growing with its characters.

Now I’m not saying the whole season gets redeemed or even that “Doppelgangers” was a perfect episode. But it was one that relied on the same things that made older episodes work. “Slap Bet” was funny, but it also was significant as it features a big step for both Robin and Ted. “Doppelgangers” gave us the framework for a season where we continue to see our characters grow, and while I wasn’t blown away, I’m looking forward to seeing how they change next.

Michael’s Score: 77

TUiW Grade: B+

How I Met Your Mother generally does two things very well: coming up with rules/concepts and handling celebrity guests very well. For rules/concepts, we’ve seen things like Slap Bet, The Bro Code, The Window, and, most recently, Rabbit or Duck work well in helping the overall mythology of the show. As for celebrity guests, they took guest turns from Brittney Spears, Mandy Moore, and Enrique Iglesias and managed to integrate them ably into the story. So in theory, “Hooked” should have worked well, with the gang coming up with the concept of Hooking, keeping someone into you enough to keep them doing nice things for you, and a guest appearance from Carrie Underwood as a girl Hooking Ted.

But it didn’t. “Hooked ended up being the weakest episode of the season for HIMYM and was incredibly disappointing coming out of the Olympic break. It had some bright spots, but overall, it wasn’t really the cohesive or funny. The story is thus: Ted falls for Tiffany (Carrie Underwood), who has a boyfriend but strings him along anyway for cake and foot massages. The gang tries to show him that not only does Tiffany have him Hooked, but he himself has a girl on the hook, Henrietta, a girl madly in love with Ted. Predictably, Ted keeps going after Tiffany, going so far as attending an out of town wedding with her, only to realize that she was Hooked by her jerky boyfriend. So Ted bolts, goes to tell Henrietta he doesn’t want to be with her, and in the process accidentally proposes. It was one of the funnier moments of the episode to see her open the door to Ted picking an engagement ring up off the floor.

Meanwhile, Marshall was using Barney’s teacup pig (his bait to lure women to his apartment) to get Lilly to practice getting Scooter (!) off the hook. It took a lot of work, and once Lilly finally did it, Marshall fell for Scooter’s puppy dog eyes and negated all her progress. Barney went nuts with Tiffany’s co-workers, “pharma girls,” which according the Barney, is the hottest profession in the world right now. His explanation of the history of the hottest professions was hilarious in the typical Barney fashion, and provided a highlight for the episode. Robin was around a little bit, having a cameraman on her Hook, doing her laundry for her.

I really think the big problem with “Hooked” was a weak story and too many mediocre jokes crammed in. It wasn’t the fault of Carrie Underwood, who did fairly well with what the writers gave her. It felt like an episode going for goofy jokes the whole way, and even the gags that worked (Barney’s previous baits, Marshall as a teenager, Barney flipping the bowl of nuts) were coupled with gags that didn’t work (the teacup pig, Scooter’s puppy dog eyes, Henrietta’s parents).

I think with every show, there’s a tendency to want to call the episodes that won you over as a fan better than new or current episodes, so I’m hoping that I’m just watching HIMYM in a different light than I did with seasons one and two, but I’ve been a little unsatisfied so far this season. I realize HIMYM isn’t Lost, and the mythology of the mother shouldn’t be the centerpiece of the show, but it’d be nice to go back to having a guiding theme to the season. Season One had Ted going after Robin, Season Two was about their relationship, but after that, it’s been a string of shorter plots that have caused the show to veer towards typical CBS sitcom territory. Like I said, I’m not asking for a highly serial show, but rather something that has a decided direction and knows where it’s going as opposed to trying to put different spins on frequently used devices. So there’s my rant. J. Lo is on next week, so we’ll see how that goes. Until then, I’ll rewatch the part with Teenage Marshall, always the funniest part of the episode.

Michael’s Score: 54

Tangled Up In Wires Grade: C

Alright HIMYM fans, those of you that have been watching since the beginning got rewarded last night with an episode full of call backs and classic HIMYM storytelling. Was it a perfect episode? Not quite. But it was sure satisfying to watch, especially if you’ve watched any older episodes recently.

The title of the episode, “Rabbit or Duck,” referred to an optical illusion, where you’d either see a rabbit or a duck. After a vigorous, angry, and hilarious debate, the gang decided that you love a duck and hate a rabbit, though much to Marshall’s chagrin. This all came out of Robin’s hatred for her co-host, Don (hey! it’s the dude from Big Love!), and the gang’s teasing that perhaps she actually loved him. You see, Don’s not caring about what he says or does on air had extended so far as to ask Robin to come to his Valentine’s Day party on the air. She was put off by this, but went anyway, bringing as back up Ted “Teddy Westside” Mosby. When they arrive, Don is prepared with The Naked Man (!), causing Ted to turn and leave and Robin to decide once and for all that Don is a Rabbit.

Don felt bad however, and not only apologized profusely to Robin for the incident, but decided to do the news for real and even put on pants. His sincere apology had an effect on Robin, as she no longer saw him as a rabbit, but now a duck. When Don first appeared, Future Ted made it sound like he’d be important to Robin’s arc. So far, we’ve seen Robin really only be with two guys, Ted and Barney, so I’ll be interested to see her go off with someone we don’t already know. I’m thinking this will be a way to work with Cobie Smulders’ pregnancy, giving the writers a way to write her out for a short period of time, just as they did with Alyson Hannigan last season, but we’ll see.

As for the rest of the gang, Barney was struggling with the gift and curse of the  phone that never stopped ringing with women. As any of the millions and millions of you that watched the Super Bowl, you probably saw Barney pop up holding a sign with a phone number. Well that phone wouldn’t stop ringing, and Barney hired Ranjit (“Hello!”) to drive him around from woman to woman. Only problem? he couldn’t resist putting down the phone long enough to sleep with any of them.

The phone ended up in the hands of Ted, who had asked Marshall and Lilly to set up an arranged marriage for him after Ranjit shares the story of his own. Ted too got addicted to the never ending stream of phone calls, and it took a drop in a pitcher of alcohol to finally silence the phone and get Barney and Ted out of their obsession.  It was a clever plot line for sure, and I’m glad to see Ted back looking for a wife. It was a goofy B-plot that was vintage HIMYM. It was reminiscent of old school HIMYM adventures, and was fun to watch.

“Rabbit or Duck” was a near perfect episode that was solid, even when it missed the mark. It seems like the episode would have done better with maybe an extra five minutes to it, as, especially towards the end, it felt a little rushed and compacted. But I’ll take it as is: a rewarding episode that reminds me of why I fell in love with this show in the first place.

Other Notes:

-Callbacks: The Super Bowl party with wings, Ranjit, “lawyered!,” The Naked Man, and references to Ted’s exes Trudy, Natalie, and Blah Blah.

-”One patient will be receiving a very special chocolate heart.  A human heart.”

Michael’s Score: 86

Tangled Up In Wires Grade: A

There are few people in Hollywood that are having as big of a hot streak as Neil Patrick Harris is right now, and episodes like “The Perfect Week” show exactly why. Barney started HIMYM as a one joke character, but NPH has helped make him so much more than that, which is why he steals the show so often. From the start we knew him as the ultimate player, a guy who every episode went home with a different girl. His relationship with Robin earlier in the season showed he had the potential to settle down, but he’s just more fun to watch when he’s making up ridiculous tasks and rules and using a seemingly endless imagination for the most unseemly purposes. A perfect week was Barney’s ultimate goal, seven girls in seven days. In an imagined interview with a surprisingly decent Jim Nantz, he recaps his biggest triumph and every obstacle that stood in his way. Sports gags, like Ted’s awesome “mound visit” in the bar come in abundance as Barney’s goal becomes the center of attention for the gang. It’s like if you combined Hoosiers with American Pie into a perverse inspirational sex comedy.

Marshall reveals, however, that while all of this is happening, Barney is facing a possible firing at work for messing up a merger. Lilly wants to help remind him of this, to help him get his head in the right place, and it seemingly gets in the way of his larger goal, the perfect week. But Lilly realizes what countless ESPN stories have already taught us: that sports is a distraction to the real world, and Barney’s quest would be not only be a big break for him in a bad time, but for the rest of the gang as well. You see they were all having problems too: Marshall and Lilly lost the potential friendship of a couple when they let slip that they shared a toothbrush, Ted crushed a girl named Cook Poo by mocking her name, and Robin was fretting over the fact that a nerdy guy she didn’t like on their first date hadn’t called her. A win for Barney would be a win for everyone.

In the end, Barney reached his goal, albeit with some help from everyone else, and everyone got to forget about their problems for a while. Barney got to keep his job too, which added another good thing to the end of a bad week. Which meant more to Barney, keeping his job or the perfect week, is hard to say, but it doesn’t matter: he got both. The rest of the gang didn’t get as much resolution, but there problems were much more minor in comparison, so really, that’s okay. “The Perfect Week” was a pretty classic HIMYM episode, and continued a string of solid episodes that’s really helping this show rebound from a shaky start to the season.

Other Notes:
- I feel like a broken record saying that Cobie Smulders is so damn funny on this show. When Robin was asked why she thought her date would call her, her reaction was perfect and one of my favorite moments of the episode.
- Also, Lilly’s analogy of the Yankees to the “Cachucks” was hilarious. One of HIMYM’s funniest recurring bits is making fun of Robin for being from Canada.
- On a related note, how was Nick Swisher the highest profile Yankee player they could get?
- Watch the first 2 minutes of the show that follows HIMYM, the atrocious Accidentially on Purpose, and you’ll really get a sense of how HIMYM is hands down the smartest comedy on CBS.

Michael’s Score: 84

Tangled Up In Wires Grade: A-