Episode 20 - Home Wreckers
21 April 2010
Review
Synopsis: Ted's mother marries Clint which makes Ted miserable about his own single status. He leaves the wedding early and impulsively buys a house without inspecting it first. The gang all head out there and discover just what a mess the place is.
The Good: The moral of Ted's story is just fine. His frustration over being single is entirely fitting and it's not an implausible leap to see him buying a cheap house. Marshall turning up with a barbeque to surprise him was a beautiful moment. I actually think they should have dwelled on that simple act of friendship for a little longer. The final shot of the broken down house transforming into the set where Ted is telling the story was a clever ending and was visually impressive.
I don't normally point these things out but it was a little odd seeing Ted's mom (who I know well as Angela Petrelli from Heroes) sucking face excitedly with Clint (the Mayor from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Too such 'evil' characters playing completely different roles is kind of interesting to see.
The Bad: Everything else about this episode was a letdown. One of the reasons I am so hard on How I Met Your Mother is because I think their presentation is completely out of synch. If you look at a show like The Big Bang Theory, its comedy flows from its settings. The characters constantly say snappy one liners in a manner that real people don't. But the characters are written in a confrontational way and the presence of a studio audience all fits together to make you ignore that lack of reality. Similarly The Office is played out by awkward people reacting to a live camera in an exaggerated simulation of real life. The humour and drama come from characters dropping their facades or inadvertently revealing their true feelings and motives.
How I Met Your Mother wants it both ways. Their cast are all fine actors who can play their roles perfectly straight. In fact if you gave them dialogue from a serious drama they could probably perform it all in character and do it well. Yet the show then asks those straight characters to violently break from that reality to say unconvincing scripted jokes, play silly games, have sudden unexpected emotional outbursts and so on. They also have a half hearted laughter track because they don't want to be subject to the rigours of either entertaining a live audience or playing the show in silence.
This half hearted approach to the show gets exposed badly in an episode like this one. For long stretches the characters are forced to stand around in an awkward line (so the camera can see all their faces) having implausible conversations. Marshall's game about being drunk or a child was so inappropriate. I don't buy that his friends would interrupt a serious conversation to play a silly game. There are ways to make that plausible but this just reeked of desperation to get a laugh. And of course the jokes themselves were implausible exaggerations involving a child driving a car and falling into a coma.
Barney is the one character whose childish delight in breaking social norms made his behaviour believable. But his constant mocking of Robin for crying got tired really quickly. The payoff was of course that it was he who was actually crying at the wedding. That revelation led to the apparently true story of how he made out with Ted's mum. It wasn't clear if we were supposed to believe that they actually did kiss. It seemed like we were which is ridiculous. Not that it happened, but more that Ted didn't turn the sledgehammer on Barney. When Barney slept with Robin, Ted wouldn't speak to him anymore. Again it was an unnecessary joke which undercut the sense of reality because the writers don't know how to be naturally funny. I'm also pretty sure Clint was with Ted's mother before she met Barney.
Their obsession with double entendres reared its head once more in an imagined scene where the house inspector assessed Lily as if she were a house. Not only are those jokes really worn out but there was something grubby about the line "didn't you always picture yourself in something Spanish?" The inspector hammed it up too much as well; his braying laugh was deeply unconvincing.
The opening scenes also visited another of my dreaded comedy clichés: the over-amorous and inappropriate older couple. Movies like Meet the Fockers drove those jokes to an early grave and that just isn't how 99% of parents behave. Throw in the inappropriate song which everyone sings along too and it was all pretty cringe worthy.
Comic Highlight: Poor Barney was fighting a lone battle this week. I managed a smile at his sheer chutzpah as he once more attempts to have a group conversation on his own while telling one of his elaborate lies: "It was Robin...wuuuhhhhat?...Yes it was Robin who cried at Clint's song...'but she said'...I know what she said but here's what she didn't want you to know!" The writers' commitment to Barney's selfishness is definitely worthy of praise.
How I rate your episode: I didn't hate this. I had no vitriol in me. The writing on this show is poor and it amazes me that they think their jokes are funny when I find them so relentlessly tone deaf and unbelievable. But the overall story moves one step close to completion which was fine.
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