Episode 6 - Bagpipes
7 November 2009
Review
Synopsis: The couple who live above Ted are making love so loud that it is disturbing him. Barney claims that he and Robin never fight but Ted suspects they are lying. Barney advises Marshall to confront Lily over washing dishes. Marshall does and it leads to a huge fight.
The Good: The plots intertwine better than the last few episodes and there is a clear focus on relationships and arguments. Having Ted speculating about why Robin and Barney are suddenly so couply also provides a little intrigue to keep you watching.
The Bad: This wasn’t the usual awful stuff. But it was a misunderstanding of how a sit com works. The idea of these short stories is to set up a dilemma and then resolve it showing the path the characters are on in the longer term. The point made here isn’t made well. The story is simple, Lily and Marshall may have petty disputes but they know how to compromise because they have been a couple so long. Where as Robin and Barney are so bad at relationships that they end up fighting all the time and don’t know how to make things better.
The key to this episode should have been what Robin and Barney are arguing about. That is the most important story in the show right now and that is the focus of their characters. Barney has never been in a relationship since he became “awesome” and Robin knew that. So what are they fighting about? How are they dealing with it? The story and the jokes ought to flow from that.
But they don’t. Instead we waste a lot of time on Barney’s silly argument. Seeing Lily and Barney play husband and wife should be such easy comedy. Just the sight of different permutations of the group always got big laughs on shows like Friends or Seinfeld. But because of the silly 1950s misogynistic vision which Barney describes, the humour drains away because it’s so blindingly obvious that Barney is wrong in what he’s saying. Worse of course Marshall takes it on board, even after so many years with Lily he decides now is the time to argue about washing dishes. It makes him look like a moron and considering they have been living together for years it just didn’t feel credible.
Two bad points arise from this. One is that Barney’s anti-women comments get ignored. If Barney really thinks women are stupid then that is an issue which ought to come out in his relationship with Robin. That could be a whole season’s worth of stories. The second bad bit is Marshall then confronting Lily. In typically implausible fashion he bumbles his way through Barney’s argument, forgetting what he was supposed to say. But instead of just giving up on Barney’s words and trying to explain what he meant himself the argument blows up.
The whole bagpipes as a metaphor for sex would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that Ted has talked about sex in so many of his stories now that “protecting” his kids from that word is irrelevant. It’s also yet another completely fake sounding conversation for Ted and Robin to have. No show has hurt the double entendre more than How I Met Your Mother. And yes I know that sounds ridiculous.
Comic Highlight: I don’t think the writers meant this to be as funny as it came across. They later had Barney quote Gandhi in a completely ridiculous context. But by luck or design this line really had a streak of brilliance about it.
Barney explains that he always walks away from Robin whenever they are about to have a fight. “You can’t fight if you’re not there. That’s what Ghandi taught us.”
How I rate your episode: At least this tried to make a point and had an understandable purpose. But it wasn’t good.
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