CBS Cancels 'CSI: Miami,' 'Rob' & 'NYC 22,' Renews 'CSI:NY'
Is Chevy Chase Quitting 'Community'?
How I Met Your Mother: Spoiler Alert
(S03E08) HIMYM has always been at its best when it is shifting perspective and twisting time in a knot. This episode does both of those things. While neither plot was very earth-shattering from a creative standpoint, the time-shifting involved in telling the stories (along with some very funny sound effects in one case) made them both very funny.Oh, and just as an aside, I'd like to finally welcome back Cobie Smulders and her character of Robin Sherbatsky back into the fold. She's been kind of on the outside looking in all season, but the she's been fully integrated back into the gang the last couple of weeks, and the show's much better for it.
Ok, back to the "spoiler alert" part of the plot. Look, friends not liking a friend's new girl for some unspoken reason has been done before (Seinfeld) and friends annoying each other with their grating habits has also been done before (every other sitcom ever made). But this was a case where writing trumped plot. Take when we first see the dinner the gang had with Ted and his new girl Kathy. It's from Ted's perspective, so it seemed like his friends were just being impatient with Kathy. But after the spoiler was revealed (with a nifty glass shattering sound effect that we heard throughout the episode), we found out what really happened; she yammered on so much that Robin and Lily blurted out responses just to get a word in edgewise.
But there was a bit of re-direction there, wasn't it? We didn't really see or hear much about Kathy after the shattering occurred, because we moved on to everyone getting some annoying personality quirk about themselves revealed. Lily chews like a jackhammer. Ted corrects people (fitting, given how snotty he can be). Robin says "literally" all the time. Marshall sings everything he does. And Barney talks in a high voice, spews catchphrases, and spaces out when people are talking to him (well, we knew about Barn's "stuff" already).
The funniest quirk was Lily's loud chewing; not only were the over-the top chewing noises hilarious -- especially when she was eating cotton candy -- but so were everyone's colorful observations of how it sounds. "It's like you're sticking a screwdriver in a pencil sharpener" said Robin. "It's like you threw drywall screws into the garbage disposal," was Marshall's impression. To think that the dainty flower girl Lily has such a loud gross habit...
Marshall's singing was funny, too, especially the song about how he uses the charity address labels even though he doesn't give money to that charity. I've always wondered what kind of return on investment those charities get on those things, because no one I know makes a donation in response to getting those labels. Nice job by Bays and Thomas of tying the habits into Marshall's quest to find the password that will allow him to see his bar exam results. If it weren't for his catchy song that spelled AOBC8663, he would have screamed at his grandmother a few more times before getting the results in the mail. And Barney played that anxiety to the hilt, pretending to hack into the bar association's web site just to trick Marshall into seeing the video of a dog pooping on a baby. That's the Best Barneyism of the week, especially when he called the dog a "Caca Spaniel" and a "Golden Reliever."
So Marshall passed. He's on his way to being the balding corporate stooge. Good for him... I think.
There were a few more funny moments this week. Ted used his sign language abilities to spoil Kathy for her deaf fiancee three years later, complete with the subtitle "(Glass shattering)." Marshall writing in his bar exam blue book until it's ripped from his hands. The romantic montage between Kathy and Ted turned into an annoying montage after the spoiler is dropped. Marshall's list of sweets and his love of UFOs. Barney's non sequitur story of his "romance" with a woman named Lucillia. But there wasn't much extraneous in this episode; just two standard sitcom plots taken to a funny place by smart writing. Let's hope the pre-strike episodes that are left are at least as good as this one.
And, just an FYI, the Slap Countdown clock is now at less than one week and counting. I'm looking forward to the slaptacular episode next week, aren't you?
| Yes. I want them to be honest. | |
|---|---|
| Heck no. The less I know about him/her, the better. |
20 Comments