Episode 2 - Double Date
29 September 2009
Review
Synopsis: Ted goes on a blind date and realises he went out with the same woman seven years before. Barney takes Marshall to a strip club where they find a stripper who looks just like Lily.
The Good: The Ted story has a familiar moral but it’s pretty well told. Ted is looking for the one, someone who will love him for him, warts and all. The story is interesting as we learn all the little things that he and Jen did to turn each other off. Ideas like the “cheque dance” are easy to relate to. The mystery of quite what happened seven years before keeps the story moving and Ted’s realisation about why he didn’t want to have a second date made sense. As I say, it’s a familiar tale but it is the root of Ted’s character and the premise of the whole show.
The strip club plot is far more problematic (see The Bad). Marshall’s elaborate fantasy was a nice idea though. He has been with Lily for so long that he has to kill her off in any fantasy where he is with another woman. It’s an idea that you can imagine being true for such a committed guy. Seeing him trying to surprise Lily to remove her hiccups with a paper bag was a fun idea.
The Bad: The biggest problem here is that Barney and Robin’s story has no conclusion. It didn’t really have anything to it whatsoever. At first it seemed like an interesting way for Barney to cope with suddenly being in a relationship. But as Robin got angry and he ignored her it became stranger. Then the episode ended. It was a bizarre decision and worse it didn’t make them look like a couple. They barely touched all episode and this abdication of their storyline got their relationship off to a pretty piss poor start.
Doppelgangers are one of the lamest tricks in a sit com’s arsenal. They don’t exist in real life and so almost every time they are used in comedy they come across as a desperate attempt to get a cheap laugh. This is no exception and in some ways is worse. At least when Friends has a second Ross (210) the other characters were amazed and excited at this event. By throwing in duplicates of Robin and Marshall too the plausibility of the whole episode goes flying out of the window.
Lily’s excitement at strippers and the like is vaguely consistent with her character. The trouble is that one moment she is disgusted by Barney (423) and the next she is just as filthy (418). Even last episode she was fighting for Barney and Robin to define their relationship and yet here she suddenly wants to be a stripper for the evening. It would be nice to have a little more definition on her moral lines. At least her excitement about the stripper here comes from her own ego.
Comic Highlight: Barney tries to soften the blow of being in a strip club by telling Robin that he doesn’t come here that often. The waitress immediately comes over to serve him his usual. As he fights to ignore that, the man on the p.a. begins to announce the next dancer. Having already heard him announcing dancers earlier, this joke landed nicely. “Ladies and Gentleman, oh hey Barney, I didn’t see you come in, I’ll load up some ACDC for you buddy.”
How I rate your episode: This episode didn’t achieve a lot. Ted’s story was familiar and Barney and Robin’s was non-existent. A lack of jokes didn’t help either.
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