Episode 3 - I Heart NJ
14 December 2010
Review
Synopsis: Ted keeps missing out on things because he is rushing back and forth from New York to New Jersey. So he brings the gang to Stella’s house for the evening. Barney refuses to put his arm down until he gets a fist bump. Robin, having quit Metro News One, rushes back there when she doesn’t get the new job she thought she was getting. Despite his dislike of New Jersey, Ted agrees to live there because of Stella’s daughter Lucy.
The Good: Marshall’s affection for New Jersey fits his Minnesotan background and is a good way to incorporate him into the story. Barney’s desperation for a fist bump will amuse you more or less depending on your enjoyment of his acting. And at least Ted’s dislike of New Jersey has been established before (302).
The Bad: The writing of this show is so childish. And on this occasion I don’t mean because of the awful double entendres. I mean childish because everything gets reduced to the most simplistic, implausibly stupid extremes.
First we have a montage of Ted’s dislike for New Jersey. What comic magic do we get there? Ted wearing a T-shirt which says “I Hate New Jersey.” Then we get Stella making perfectly understandable sarcastic comments about why living in New York wouldn’t be good for her daughter and we get Ted grinning like an idiot misunderstanding her. There was no excuse given for this misunderstanding, it was just a painfully obvious and implausible joke. Then when Stella tries to point out how unfriendly New Yorkers can be she claims a woman once threw a cat in her face. But if that seems implausible, Ted tries to prove a point to Marshall and asks a couple at Costco when they were last in the City. They say they were recently at a restaurant there. Of course they make Ted’s point (that no one comes back to New York from New Jersey) when he points out that that restaurant has been closed for six years! Yes six years, the random couple had mistaken six years for recently.
There is no subtlety or realism in this show and it makes their lives and conversation seem so fake, so plastic and so unrealistic. Finally we have Robin who does a silly celebration dance (unlike anything she has done before) for the exact right length of time to avoid hearing the important details from the man on the phone. She follows this up with a ridiculous bike jump which has no comic value as she returns to work. Metro News One and its ludicrous puns have been gnawing at the show’s credibility for a while but now Robin, completely unprofessionally, quits in the middle of a news cast. I’m surprised anyone would hire her after that.
There is of course lots of bad writing on television. The whole nature of trying to be entertaining on a television show means that more often than not implausible things will happen. The problem with How I Met Your Mother and this episode in particular is that when you line up so many unconvincing and pathetic looking scenes together the whole show becomes very damaged. The show just keeps smacking you across the face and saying “we are a cheap, badly produced television show.” When that happens you can’t suspend your disbelief and get absorbed by the characters and their stories.
Finally I will say that if I believed for a second that Ted and Stella were going to end up together then his decision to move to New Jersey would have been a nice development. And I did like Marshall turning on New York for justified reasons but his rant went on and on and ruined the point he was making by trying to cram in jokes about elf-like doorways.
Comic Highlight: The only pun I thought had a bit of wit to it was this exchange:
B: “I want to take another crack at that chick Doris. I know I can land that lesbian plane.”
M: “No snakes on that plane.”
How I rate your episode: How I Met Your Mother at its excessively simplistic worst.
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