Episode 18 - Old King Clancy
14 September 2009
Review
Synopsis: Ted’s project to design a new Goliath National Bank building gets scrapped but Barney and Marshall pretend it hasn’t to spare his feelings. Robin admits she once went home with a celebrity who made an unusual sex request.
The Good: The twist that Robin was actually the kinky one at least gave her useless story a punch line. Though Lily getting the hiccups out of excitement at the gossip seemed pretty fitting.
Ted’s fake phone call to try and impress a woman in the elevator was a nice idea and Bilson is a consistent character. Otherwise the story relied entirely on Barney for any comedy (see Comic Highlight). The montage of him firing people was easy slapstick comedy but did rather demonstrate why a special room to fire people was needed. I loved Barney being the voice of reason when Ted announces he’s going to start his own firm. As the others all rush to congratulate him Barney can be heard asking “In this economy?” And as a sucker for classic sit com jokes I liked his pathetic attempt to get Marshall to tell Ted he had been fired. As Ted enters the bar Barney says “What the white dude or the Asian fellow? See! I barely know the guy.”
The Bad: In the previous episode Lily confessed that much of Ted’s romantic life had been manipulated by her. He claimed he had never been so mad at her. Well, Barney and Marshall were too busy playing around in their nightshirts to care and this week do the same thing. They organise a huge lie to prevent Ted from knowing that Goliath National Bank no longer needed a new building. They even organised a fake softball game for him with some random guys. Like Lily, no one ever calls them out for how their lie totally humiliates Ted and must make him feel like such a fool. Especially as he wasn’t fired for doing a bad job. The economy is bad and the Bank couldn’t afford to pay him anymore.
The trouble with these ridiculous deceptions is that they remind you of what a dumb television show you are watching. As Ted points out, he could have been out finding new work while they foolishly played games with him. Even worse than reminding you that real people don’t behave like these characters, by having two deceptions in a row we are reminded of how uninspired and unoriginal the writing is.
It’s been ten episodes since Ted got the job to design the Bank and we haven’t heard anything about it in between. In fact it’s been two years since we last saw anything serious about his work as an architect (213, 215). So now we are asked to care about his career change as if it will impact the show. Why should we care if it’s so unlikely to make any difference to the plot?
Oh and you can not have Ted hitting Bilson with a chair. That’s assault and Bilson seems like the type who would love to sue Ted. When an old man is seen on security footage hitting Barney with a chair, that’s more acceptable. You can create from that a more plausible reason for the man’s anger. Ted is just being a jerk.
As for Robin’s plot...did Bays and Thomas (the show’s creators) once get saved from certain death by a Canadian who loved to make double entendres? If so then How I Met Your Mother is certainly a loving tribute to him. Randomly naming sex acts after well known Canadian items and places isn’t really comedy writing. It’s ironic that they have Marshall reading off a list of fish to no laughs because that’s basically what they are doing here. I have no problem with dirty jokes or word play. But they usually work when they are either witty or take the viewer by surprise. When you just calmly list dirty sounding but obviously fake expressions the joke just doesn’t have any resonance. The viewer knows what’s coming and the fact that the sex acts are made up just for the episode adds to the feeling that there’s nothing really to laugh at.
As for yet another Canada joke…I don’t know. It’s the fact that they have Robin say obviously American stereotype things and just replace the details with Canadian ones that make it sound so manufactured. She goes from completely normal to suddenly sounding weird and that isn’t funny, it’s just jarring.
Why does Louisa say she is engaged to Mr Barney? Unless I’m missing something the implication is that Barney has already slept with and deceived her. But why would she want to marry someone she can’t speak to?
Comic Highlight: Barney and Marshall come to make things right with Ted. “Good morning lying bastards. Anything you want to lie about before I head off to work to get fired?” Ted asks. “That’s a nice shirt” says Barney. “You’re the devil” replies Ted.
How I rate your episode: Not good. It’s a simple rule of television not to repeat the same story from last week. Particularly when there are no real consequences or jokes from this one either.
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