Episode 23 - As Fast As She Can
14 September 2009
Review
Synopsis: Ted, Stella and Tony have an awkward catch up on the pavement. Tony comes to see Ted afterwards and expresses his guilt over stealing Stella from him. As Ted is out of work Tony tries to find him a job to make things right. Ted eventually tells Tony that he doesn’t miss Stella and that she did a horrible thing to him. Tony ends up breaking up with Stella. She comes to see Ted and they pick up Barney from a New Jersey jail. She encourages Ted to keep waiting for the right woman. Stella and Tony get back together and move to California. Meanwhile Robin and Marshall brag about the speeding tickets they have managed to get out of. Barney never has and sees this as a challenge. He is arrested after he accumulates a large number of tickets in only a few days.
The Good: It’s nice to hear Ted address the frustration he is having waiting for the one. It goes back to the core of Ted’s character. It’s also somewhat realistic to show Ted seven months after being left at the altar achieve some real closure on his relationship with Stella.
It would seem that the show is going to keep stringing out Ted’s search for the mother, rather than push the story forward quickly. The reason why meeting Stella at this moment seems key to Ted is foreshadowed when he mentions that Tony is going to turn their story into a movie script called “The Wedding Bride.” Presumably Ted’s involvement in that will provide plots in season five.
Tony could actually be a fun semi-regular character. His overzealous displays of affection are an obvious easy joke. But more than that he is warm and positive and slightly blind to how he comes across which gives him a plausible comedic persona.
Barney taking on the challenge of getting out of speeding tickets very much fits his character. He really is a great comic creation, the second he sees something which others have and he wants, he sets off to get it.
The Bad: This episode just feels flat. The previous episode really built up the meeting with Stella as monumental. But the inference from this story is that all the events in Ted’s life are vital to getting him to the place where he will meet the woman he is meant to be with. It means we may have to sit through more Ted relationships which don’t really go anywhere in future seasons.
The Tony job offers felt like an irrelevant side plot. Particularly the creepy school friend who wanted a killing room built in his house. The idea of bringing murder into a sit com is deeply foolish because it jars against the tone of what else is going on. The horrible campy reactions of Marshall and Robin aren’t funny.
The speeding tickets story feels even more irrelevant. The jokes are classic How I Met Your Mother, either straightforward but not funny (Marhsall and Robin getting out of tickets) or a silly exaggeration (Barney being scared of two pre-teen boys in jail with him) and not funny.
Lily’s return provokes another uncomfortable question which is how can the gang justify hanging out with Barney when he does such immoral things? The show has too often crossed an uncomfortable line with his character and to suggest he is going to take advantage of a woman who has lost her memory is not funny. Why? Because you can’t pick and chose what you take seriously. We are meant to see Barney as a real person when he talks about his love for Robin, we are meant to care. And yet apparently we are meant to switch off that reality when he talks about causing someone real emotional pain.
I understand that the gang all wanted to support Ted and be mean to Stella for leaving him but Robin was too rude. She wanted to do a fist bump in front of Stella because Ted had somehow caused Tony to break up with her. That’s just not something real people do and Robin is portrayed as a real person. She wouldn’t have been so callous and inappropriate.
Comic Highlight: Marshall imagines the ideal scenario for Ted to have met Stella and Tony where he would have looked the best. In it Ted introduces his new fiancée which is basically a French Stella with huge boobs. To add insult to injury Tony seems interested in her. A nice easy joke.
How I rate your episode: Flat and not funny. Perhaps though with this chapter finished Ted will get a new sense of direction.
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