Episode 18 - Rebound Bro
12 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Barney misses Ted as his wingman and struggles to find a replacement. Stella and Ted have been dating for two months but she is making him wait before they sleep together. It turns out she hasn’t had sex for five years and she is not happy when Ted shares this news with his friends. The Good: This is a very simple episode for How I Met Your Mother. They break their sequence of single character episodes but keep things limited to just Ted and Barney stories. The Ted and Stella story is as logical as you could expect. He breaks her trust but it isn’t a big deal and she doesn’t let it drag them down. No silly drama here and Stella (Sarah Chalke of Scrubs and Roseanne fame) is a strong sit com actress. Meanwhile Barney’s story is suitably silly and may just about get a laugh out of you (see Comic Highlight). It’s nice to see that the other friends don’t blindly share Ted’s attitude to Barney and miss him. There is no reason why they would be particularly annoyed with him. There might even be a hint at the end of a romance between Robin and Barney but we shall see. The Bad: There are only so many ways I can say this. Imagine if you had two teenage children. Would you ever tell them the story of how you slept with some single mother back in the day? Or about how their “uncle” helped some random guy to pick up a woman in bar? It is pretty futile to ask this question and in a way I am being unfairly literal in my criticism of the format. But they open the episode with a shot of the two children so it seems a logical question to ask. Often we are not shown them and it gives the show that extra slice of plausible deniability. The comedy of the episode is placed on nervous, awkward Randy. The writers make him implausibly bad at picking up women so they deserve the blame for the jokes which don’t work. His performance is passable and he does what is asked of him with more subtlety than he might have done. A couple of times the writers ruin a joke by pushing it too far. Randy amuses by following Barney’s instructions until he calls her a whore. Similarly Marshall almost fakes shock at Stella’s revelation before going over the top with it. Ted’s acting is also questionable as twice in his scenes with Stella his attempts at nonchalant are far too unconvincing. Comic Highlight: Barney is getting desperate to find new ways to get Randy to talk to women. He walks up to a new pair of girls and comments on one of the girls’ broach. She says it’s a koala bear. So Barney tells them that Randy is an Australian expert on koala’s. The girl asks him what his favourite thing about them is. He pauses awkwardly before bringing out an even more awkward Australian accent to say “Their…meat is delicious.” How I rate your episode: This isn’t funny enough to be a good episode. But as two stories it is perfectly bland entertainment. That is praise.
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