THEY'RE ALL COMING BACK
'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
Review: How I Met Your Mother - The Window
by Joel Keller, posted Dec 7th 2009 11:29PM
(S05E10) I'm really starting to think that Carter Bays was telling the absolute truth when he told Mike Ausiello that the writers threw the Barney-Robin relationship into the trash heap. He wasn't being coy about a future plotline; I get the feeling that the writers wanted Single Barney over Relationship Barney and wanted to make sure they got there as quickly as possible.Why else would we see an entire episode of Barn trying to get laid while wearing Marshall's old overalls? Here's the problem, as others have mentioned: we've seen how much of a good guy Barney can be. So seeing him back to his old tricks seems a bit emptier than it used to, doesn't it?
Either way, the overalls gag kind of felt played out pretty quickly, though I did like Robin's attempts to thwart his efforts by telling farmer jokes. "Challenge accepted!" They're so alike, it's not even funny. "I actually dated that guy." That seemed to be the only acknowledgment that the first third of this season even happened.
Anyway, on to the other two plots. Neither really did much for me this week. I loved seeing a fifteen-year-old, rattail-sporting Marshall write to his thirty-year-old self, but for some reason, thought that the plot would have a better payoff. In the past, every time Marshall had a emotional crossroads about his law career, it led to a big development. All it led to here was him not being able to dunk, even after Lily lowered the basket by a foot, and Lil about to go to town on him on the roof. Big whoop. The most fun thing was seeing Old Marshall (who, for some reason, looked more like 75 than 60) send his young self some wings.
Ted's lurch through "the window" to try to finally land Maggie, the woman of his dreams, was equally unsatisfying. Not because it didn't resolve well -- that second-greatest love story montage was very sweet -- but because it was mostly unfunny. And I need to call a penalty on Bays and Thomas for the blatant underutilization of the charming and adorable Joanna Garcia. All she did was look cute and said a few lines here and there. She could have done more to show us why she was the "ultimate girl next door" who was such a guy magnet that even Robin was no competition.
If anything, the plot served to open the door for Ted to finally "get back out there," at least as far as his search for "the one" is concerned. He again wants what he had with Robin and Stella, but hopefully he'll be less pathetic about it this time around. It would be nice to see Ted take some charge and not be the romantic sap he's been in the past. His students encouraged him to do it, so that should be enough, right?
More fun stuff:
- "What's in the box?!" Either Robin's Brad Pitt in Se7en was horrible or pure genius. Not sure which.
- It would figure that a kid who called himself "Vanilla Thunder" would listen to "Informer" by Snow, the whitest rapper of all time. And he'd listen to it on a 45, no less (did they still have 45s in 1993? I think the last one I bought was in 1990).
- I don't want to see a photo of dogs doing it "people style" at an erotic pooch photography exhibit. I don't even want to think about it.
- The Best Barneyism this week was when he compared his need to get laid in the overalls to the long-term crushes of Ted and Maggie's buddy from work.
- Does Barney doing Mrs. Douglas just to complete his challenge means he's all the way back? If not, then it's close. Still not sure if he'll ever completely be the Barney of old, though.
[Watch clips and free episodes of HIMYM at SlashControl.]
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