joshradnor

(S05E11) You know you have a good episode going when Harvey Fierstein is cast as one of the female character's "smoking voices," and that's only the third funniest thing that week.

Sure, it was great to hear Harvey's painful-sounding voice coming out Alyson Hannigan's mouth after a few days of smoking. It seems like it would fit well with her character; you know that she's only a few years from calling people "dollface," whether she's smoking or not.

But what carried the episode was seeing a new side to the gang that we haven't seen before, and how they all deal with it. Oh, and it was also good to see some new footage of Ted's kids, even if they're both visibly older.

(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?

(S05E09) Let me start off by stating that any HIMYM episode involving the famous slap bet between Marshall and Barney is going to be funny. Just the act of Jason Segel's exaggerated slapping and Neil Patrick Harris' equally exaggerated pratfall in reaction is enough to get me rolling. I just wish the slaps weren't telegraphed so much in advance.

You have to remember that tonight is a sequel to the original Slapsgiving from two years ago. As sequels go, it's not bad; not as good as the original but satisfying nevertheless. But you knew at some point, Marshall was going to say "That's four!" and Barney was going to rub his face. So we have to examine the journey to get there. That journey started off well, but got a little predictable. Still didn't make the slap itself any less funny.

(S05E08) Could it be that, after the whole season five build-up to the Swarkles relationship, everyone would more or less go back to normal by episode eight of season six? It seems that way, and I don't know how I feel about it.

Relationship Barney wasn't that pleasant to watch. Some of his patented awesomeness tried to come through but he was increasingly becoming a content guy, which is no good for comedy. But to see him immediately snap back to the way he was pre-Robin was equally jarring. Maybe that's the way it has to be for Barney ... I don't know. But, as funny as the exploration of Barn's playbook was, it felt like the last two dozen or so episodes never happened.

Oh, and it seems like Robin's quickly moving on too, so it's not all on Barney ...

(S05E07) During most episodes of HIMYM, you tend to forget that this whole show is told from the perspective of Old Ted, who's telling his kids the longest, most boring meet-up story in history of the world. Bob Saget's narration often just goes in one ear and out the other, like the background music. But there are some episodes where the storytelling aspect of the series is firmly in place, with the exaggerations, changes, and bad memories often associated with this activity.

This was one of those episodes. Was Barney really that fat? Was Robin really that haggard? Did Archisexture really accidentally "fly" into Ted's VCR? Of course not. But those whoppers from Old Ted were what made this episode so entertaining. That and Alan Thicke. But Alan Thicke always makes things entertaining; he's Alan Thicke, for crissakes.

(S05E06) The thing that always amazes me about this show is that how Old Ted is perfectly content to tell his kids about all the tawdry things he or Barney did back in those heady days of the mid-to-late-'00s, but every so often he realizes who he's talking to and substitutes a clean term for a dirty term. I'd imagine this inconsistency is done on purpose by Bays/Thomas and their writers; why have Old Ted pull back on his stories unless there's a laugh to be had?

This is how we got the references to "sandwiches," for instance. And this is how we got the running joke about bagpipes tonight. I liked how it was just a joke in the background and didn't really reference any major story. The major stories, though, were both pretty funny this week.

(S05E05) Sometimes an episode of HIMYM is full of "mythology" advancement. Sometimes it explores the romantic relationships between the characters. Sometimes there's a goofy website or video to accompany the episode. But sometimes, HIMYM just tells one or two semi-isolated stories. Last year, many of those episodes weren't all that great. But this season is different; everything's been funny, including the mostly silly episode we got tonight.

Which reminds me... I have to figure out where to get a hold of some Tantrum. That stuff is more powerful than 12-Hour Sudafed.

(S05E04) Let's get this notion out of the way right here: Couples "dating" other couples isn't exactly a new idea in the sitcom world. Countless comedies have had the episode where the lead couple is blown off by another couple they really like, and they go through the same process that a someone goes through when he or she is jilted after a first or second date. This week we saw all of that.

But, it was done with some funny touches, not the least of which is a photo montage, website, and music video (embedded after the jump) that gave the tired story a unique spin. And there was enough other fun stuff packed into this episode to make you forget that the main plot has been done since at least the days of Sam and Diane.

(S05E03) Well, it seems like Bays and Thomas are batting about .750 to this point in the season. Of the first three episodes, they made solid contact on each one, only really missing with the "double date" A-story of last week's episode. This week stood out not just for the fact that it was a heavy Brobin (Rarney? I'm still trying to find a nickname I'm comfortable with) episode, but it showed that even Ted can see the dark sides of the cartoons and balloons perspective he brings to relationships.

Oh, and I've seen the Robin nostrils-flaring look. It's different on every woman, but it means the same thing. It means: Run like the wind! No time to go back for your things! Run! Hopefully, Barney will get less of this look and more of "You're an idiot."

(S05E02) If there was ever an episode that demonstrated how creative Bays and Thomas and their writing staff can be, it's this one. Not only did we bend time and space -- Ted even had an alternate universe-ish goatee -- but we got a doppelganger and an elaborate fantasy about hiccup disease thrown in for good measure.

What's interesting about it is, the bending-time-and-space A story, while fun to watch, turned out to be not much different than what we may have seen in the past. The B story was much more entertaining, and it gave us some insight to how the two currently active HIMYM relationships are going to run for the time being.

(S05E01) Fans of How I Met Your Mother had reason to worry that, with last season's ratings success, the funny little show that they'd been watching for four years would get away from what made it fun.

Fungible timelines, comedic head fakes, the burgeoning relationship between Barney and Robin, and Ted's eternal search for The One were all there last year, but the show's syndication-friendly embrace of more self-contained stories forced a lot of that into "subtle reference" territory. But the fourth season finale reassured fans that Bays and Thomas are going to continue to explore these issues, even as the show approaches its 100th episode and beyond.

The fifth season premiere does a good job of reinforcing this. Everything's there, including Indiana Jones' bullwhip. And it's funny, to boot. And as Bays and Thomas assured me, the location of the Mother revealed in the finale is reinforced... sorta.

During last night's CBS party at the Huntington Library, I spoke to How I Met Your Mother honchos Carter Bays and Craig Thomas about the upcoming season. They wouldn't reveal much -- besides the fact that Carter is the only single person left on the staff ... he's available, ladies! -- but what they did tell me was that we'll see the mythical "mother" on the first episode of the season.

We already knew from the season finale that Ted's designated "one and only" took the Columbia University architecture class that he started teaching. But we didn't know when she'd be in that class. Bays clarified it for me: "Oh, she'll be there, in the first scene of the first episode back is Ted and the mom in the same room together."

Of course, that could mean anything, since Ted teaches in a huge lecture hall. Bays wouldn't clarify more than that; all he would say was that "we've narrowed the field tremendously. Up until this point, this woman was somewhere out there in the greater New York metropolitan area. Now, she's in a fifteen-block radius."

(S04E24) It's been an interesting season for How I Met Your Mother, hasn't it? The ratings for the show have never been better, but longtime fans (me included) have been concerned about its inconsistency this season. Episodes that would be considered in the pantheon of Mother classics -- ones that mess with timelines and talk about the "mother mythology" and the stories of the rest of the Scooby gang -- were mixed in with standalone plots that were sometimes funny but other times were contrived and sitcommy.

I knew that the standalones would be more prevalent this season -- Carter Bays has told me and others as much -- but as I watched this season, I wondered why they were trying to make the show more accessible. Now that I've seen the fourth season finale, I completely understand why the show is going in that direction. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.

(S04E23) Earlier today, I received a rough-cut copy of HIMYM's season finale. I was all giddy and wanted to pop it in the DVD player right away, but I wanted to wait until I saw tonight's episode first, figuring it would set up the finale, as it did in past seasons. This episode does so, at least a little bit. But the most important part of the story -- the results of Ted's chance meeting with Stella on that street corner -- was at once disappointing and refreshing.

Confused? Well journey with me after the jump and I'll tell you why.

(S04E22) Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are a couple of clever guys, aren't they?

They're not only good at playing with time and space in their show -- something they did exceptionally well in this episode -- but they're also pretty good at tweaking the wording of an episode to make the audience feel like they're getting somewhere in the story when in fact things have only inched forward.

Just think about the words they used to describe the monumental outcome of Ted's day. Did they say everything you thought they said? Ruminate on it a second before you rejoin me after the jump.