Episode 7 - Not a Father's Day
12 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Marshall wants to have a baby but Lily isn’t so sure. But she gets drunk and rushes to Marshall’s office insisting he impregnate her. Robin agrees to move in with Ted to give Marshall and Lily their space. Barney avoid becoming a father and decides to celebrate Not-a-father’s Day. The Good: Marshall and Lily’s decision not to have a baby now is sensible. Robin moving in with Ted ought to create an interesting new dynamic. Ted does strike you as a bit of a Dad already, so that bit had some resonance. The Bad: Oh dear. This is more bad stuff from How I Met Your Mother. I think there are two major problems at work here. One is laziness and the other is exaggeration. In comedy neither is easily forgivable. The laziness comes in the details of the plot. In this case, as Lily acknowledges, Marshall has just started a new job. He is now a lawyer for a bank (see 402). Yet in this episode we see Marshall giving a presentation on a merger between his bank and presumably a major Chinese bank or financial institution. That makes no sense. First off we all know that corporations and especially banks would have more than one lawyer and certainly their most junior one wouldn’t be giving a major presentation like this. It all seems so generic and lazy; you can see the writers worked out the “Lily embarrasses Marshall” part before inventing something for Marshall to do. Well if you don’t establish that what Marshall is doing is important and serious then no one will laugh or become engaged at the thought that Lily might jeopardise the meeting. The exaggeration comes in both the performance and the writing. Drunk acting is incredibly difficult to do in a comic way and Lily doesn’t do it convincingly. But worse is the scripting of Robin taking mean spirited shots at the size of Marshall’s head. It just doesn’t sound like something she would say, especially not to Lily’s face. Then the cheerleader syndrome is classically bad How I Met Your Mother. Yes, Barney makes a point we can relate to, that people in a group can seem more attractive by the energy they are giving off. However by doing completely over the top makeup jobs on both male and female groups all the humour is lost in the lack of reality. Just for good measure we have Marshall in drag, just in case you needed reminding that this is a crappy TV show and not something worth investing your emotions in. Comic Highlight: Tough choice and not in a good way. Probably Barney greeting Marshall’s boss “Hey Nolan, how are the kids? Ha ha ha!” It’s all in the delivery. How I rate your episode: A very forgettable episode. Even the subject matter is incredibly generic. Lily and Marshall aren’t ready to have a baby, got it. Can we have some decent jokes now?
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